Open Sorcery

Category: Allēna’s Posts

  • “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

  • “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

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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

  • 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

  • Fatigue continues. I’m so eepy.

    -Allēna

  • I wish I wasn’t so tired today. It’s been like day 3 of weird chills and fatigue.

    -Allēna

  • I was born in the eep. Molded by it.

    -Allēna

  • 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

  • “We really are very small, aren’t we? Fungi are like a map of the stars here on this planet”

    -fire bars from an unknown headmate who said this upon learning more about the fungi growing at the Chernobyl meltdown site and promptly vanished