Open Sorcery

Month: December 2025

  • Peak Milwaukee queer culture is

    slipping off for a smoke at the ER in below freezing weather and smoking in the deserted, practically flash frozen garden dressed in at least two layers (including your Carhartt coat, which you got from one of your kindest exes and is two sizes too big for you, even now) until you can’t feel your fingertips.

    Peak Milwaukee queer culture is being afraid to leave your house for years because you ran into the person who made you homeless again over a series of cascading misunderstandings at the same hospital, only to find out through a person you’ve always carried a torch for that they were so afraid of your eventual return that they packed up most of their polycule and fucked off to Denver.

    Peak Milwaukee queer culture is, despite your isolation, sounding Midwestern despite not being born or raised here.

    Peak Milwaukee queer culture is moving away from Milwaukee with her with only the clothes on your back for eight months under the guise of a visit after your partners no longer seem to hear you and it feels like talking to your mother all over again.

    Peak Milwaukee queer culture is missing the lake and her dull, deep silver roar even months after you’ve last seen her, no matter how much you love your new city, no matter how much you want to move back East. You call her your wife, just as you have since the first moment you saw her, and your love for her feels more queer than any relationship you’ve ever had.

    Peak Milwaukee queer culture is always moving back to Milwaukee.

    Peak Milwaukee queer culture is building a life with your soulmate and your soul community in Milwaukee, no matter how shitty and cold it gets here. You learned a long time ago that this town will provide, and you saw the best and worst of humanity here. You saw bitter winters shudder into the most beautiful springs you’ve ever beheld. You know and love this city’s underbelly (and you firmly believe you cannot truly love a city without loving the soft, violent, vivid, pulsating underbelly of it first.)

    Peak Milwaukee queer culture is forever having to show other queers who aren’t from around here where your town is on a map – and despite your mixed feelings and experiences here, being goddamn proud to live here.

    -Allēna 12/2/2025

  • I wrote this today. It’s called “why I love you”.

    you asked me once 
    suspended over a chasm of grief 
    why I loved you 
    I couldn't string the words around you to tell you then
    so I shall attempt to tell you now 

    you are a lavender field 
    earth still wet from spring rain
    and loving you is learning to dance again 
    hair still wet through the rows of flowers on 
    these crippled legs 
    no matter how long it takes to get the steps right
    no matter how long it takes to move without falling 
    you are a game of chance 
    and loving you is taking the tenderest risk I've 
    ever known 
    loving you is lilac, pale blue, and gold like the 
    subtle ring around your irises when you look at 
    me

    loving you is slow mornings and evenings that 
    always seem to go too fast 
    loving you is enough memories to fill a Martian 
    year and enough emotion to fill an entire planet 
    loving you is savoring 1001 days and nights 
    for all they're worth and never, ever taking each 
    other for granted
    loving you is allowing myself to be broken open
    and reborn, again and again 
    loving you is allowing you to do the same 
    and loving you is meeting the people you love 
    (because it's never just been us against 
    this crazy world)
    and finding that I trust you even more after doing 
    so because they're some of the finest people 
    I've ever known 

    you are multiverses 
    you are adventure 
    you are passion and fire 
    you are the ripple of time dancing 
    you are everything and nothing at once 
    loving you is learning to hold all of that
    in a single touch (and God does it feel so good) 
    I bet everything I had and then some on you
    because the moment I saw you, I knew I was 
    yours 
    and I would fucking do it again in a heartbeat 
    that is why I love you. 
    -Allēna 12/1/2025