And I feel like if I move my knee wrong, I won’t be able to walk on my right leg. This winter has aggravated my joints a great deal but this… It feels…bad…
-Allēna
Category: Allēna’s Posts
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“never be your normal” live @ Linneman’s Riverwest Inn 12/8/2025
Over the years, my poetry has become something like my diary. As a result, there are hundreds of poems in my Google Drive that I’m rediscovering that sometimes I only remember a few lines from, or perhaps don’t remember at all. This was one such poem. I only remembered the section about my uncle dying twice, a true story. It stuck with me from the day I wrote it. I’m glad I found this one again and performed it at Linneman’s last night.
I wrote it during my first marriage while I was being neglected and abused and was trying to ignore those facts. My headmate Peri ended up finding the courage to leave the following year and we finally divorced our first husband five years later on July 23, 2025.
It’s called “never be your normal”. Enjoy.-Allēna
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“18”
about our experiences at St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD
I was only 18 when you lost me
it was more than just a flesh wound
I had just lost my father, it was second semester
and everyone there was different, more liberal or
left leaning than me
alcoholics alone in their dorms, trying to wash
away their sins and praying for whiskey and the pulsing of drums to absolve them.
they talked about God as though he were just
another thing to dismantle, unfathomable to
my sheltered, rubbed raw mind
and you dashed me open like I was an egg,
forgotten and left over after breakfast,
carelessly tossed over the railing
you mishandled all of me
when my friends told you that the same boy
who'd used me up with empty promises
and then discarded me like I was nothing
had done it to at least 4 other women,
you did nothing, only sat there on your pedestal
on your impenetrable hill, and allowed him to
continue.
I learned about it all and I never forgave you
and I wanted to kill him.
I was only 18.
I was only 18 when I became a corporeal ghost
barely breathing
barely eating, barely getting out of bed
haunted by the boy who'd raped me
haunted by my father's death
haunted by the fact that you'd still allow him
to share these halls with my friends.
haunted by the gaping void my life had become
see, my friends talked about God and saints
like they were dead. Little did they know that
I was becoming one of the bodies. all because you refused
to listen.
I was only 18.
I was only 18 when you saw me slipping away
and still you demanded more, more blood from
an already fragile stone. all the help you gave
only made it worse.
I'm still finding pieces of myself in the dark 10
years later. I still grieve for all the time I lost.
how foolish of me to think that this was home.
how could I have known any better?
I was, after all, only 18...-Allēna 12/7/2025
Fediverse Reactions
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I had my poetry performance with mk this afternoon!
It went very well, even though my voice shattered midway through the last poem in the set, “hurricane lazarus”.
-Allēna
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Presenting Extremely Accurate Littlebeany 2.0.
She’s now in color!
AI could never make art this god awful .
Here’s Extremely Accurate Littlebeany 1.0, from last year, for reference.
-Allēna
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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
