-Allēna
Blog
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We did blackout poetry in workshop today. This is what I came up with:
I got this from an essay on Shakespeare’s King Lear. -
“quizás // unmaking” – 17 April 2023
maybe I’ll write about the things
I want nobody else to know about
in code
long after I get home –
or maybe
time will burn the pages of my diary
make me ozymandias,
and sand and hate will clear my name
from everything and everyone I made
to make way for birch trees and the wheat
field behind your house
and open skies when we drive
I haven’t decided if I want to remember us
or if I want the fire that robes these mountains
or the brandy on your mouth
to wipe my mind clean and absolve me –
maybe death is a metaphor here
either way
maybe I want you to kill me
as much or as little as you’d like-Allēna
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“treasure trove” by Eight, 2022
These are the things I keep tucked
beneath my ribcage
that the last remaining part that is human
in me tries to keep hidden –my anger at death is just longing in
disguise
society is too scared to let me have
my anger is really passion
and fear(except for the dull ache that lives
beneath my bottom left rib)(he wants god to burn and the houses of
my enemies set ablaze
to light the way to heaven’s gate)I keep my loves small
my happiness smaller
I fold joys innumerable –
millions of them –
into my chest cavity
but I never learned to cherish them
so they’ve always faded with the sun
melted into nothingI hide my longings poorly
To be seen, for a silvertongued
lost king made from the same stuff as me
I’ve looked my angels and my
demons in their myriad eyes
and ask them why they don’t leave me
alone
and they all say
“all we ever wanted was your love”
in a thousand different waysFediverse reactions
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“salvo ii”
last night I made you a promise
of a spiral staircase worth walking down
a poetically just sort of kick to the chest -
your heart nearly stops on a good day
screaming odd time flutters when you're distressed
well, I've got some words
that will keep it pounding
right from the box I keep
locked tight in my head
I don't know why I love you anymore
I'm just as much a prisoner of the emotion
as I am a prisoner here
the confusing as fuck
fact of the matter is, I
just do
I feel like less than half the person
than I did three years ago when this
began
and the time has come for me to
break these unseen chains for the last time
and I don't know what keeps me from exploding
spite, sheer force of will, practice,
compartmentalization?
you say you want better for me, then deliver
if you can
otherwise I'm no better off than I was
with the manipulative would be jailers
that attempted to control me before
so sit with this, torture yourself like I know you will
when you see it
let it burn a hole clean through
and simultaneously cauterize
what's left of your mind
I don't fight with guns, fists, or steel
I fight with words and the silences between them
and win
and frankly
that's much worse
-Allēna 10/23/2025 -
I wrote this based on a conversation I had with a cool fellow poet after Poets’ Monday last week.
“fog kisses”
the lake visits me and gives me little fog kisses
as she’s been doing since before the house
reached out its unforgiving arms and swallowed me
they caress my skin and turn
the street lights into stage lights
every turn on the drive home is a perfectly framed
work of artI once called her my wife many years ago
when I had a different name, a different life,
practically a different face
when every nerve from
my neck to my hands screamed pain and
fatigue
I was angrier then, I think, to keep myself alive
but the rage served its purpose
that name served its purpose
as did that life and that house
but I never stopped loving that lakeI’m still here, sifting through the remainder of
what was left behind when I found her
where do I go now?
how do I leave the wrath behind when it’s seared
itself into every cell in my body?
she’s more home
than my own skin…-Allēna 10/22/2025
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“regarding an incident on october 20, 2020”
dancing off the edge of the world
tired of all the motion and the sickness
it's been five years and I'm not sure if I've gotten
better or so much fucking worse
(I feel like a walking corpse)
(a snake in your garden)
I still hate you for what you did
except
I tell myself I no longer care
I still build bridges to spite the anger and the fear
you drilled into me
I still flinch when someone knocks on the door or
a bell rings too loudly
or when someone looks at me too close
what could they possibly want to know
what could I possibly have to offer them
it couldn't be
anything genuine, I thought for the longest time
those curious eyes must be another face
I'd inevitably want to spit in
but no, five years later, I find
I simply want the luxury of
not having to see your face when I close my eyes
and never having to hide myself from you
or the world
again
-Allēna, 10/20/2025
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Eight wrote this in 2022. It’s called “salome”.
my teen years taught me nothing of
importance
except how to write clear and deep
about what hurts
I've written enough by now
to fill a small library, so
look back with me -
I prayed for an ideal in cold rooms
and I still became the only one who could
save me
you look at me at my worst and you
tell me I've healed
you look at me at my best and say
I'm not enough
you told me they only recognize
greatness when it's in a party dress
dancing, not a day older than twenty
so tell me why I got more done
half dead with godlike confidence
than I ever did the way you asked of me?
would you have given me
half your kingdom
a wild prophet's head on a silver
platter
if I'd only been nice enough?
I'm not your Salome, I'm not your
beautiful daughter,
I'm iron and blood with war in my veins
I am the wild prophet you tried to kill
call for my head all you like,
I will no longer be
a pawn in your game
11/20/2022-Allēna
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I wrote this at the poetry workshop today. It’s called “strange entanglement”.
I love you in a way you cannot love yourself
in a twice divorced, second wife way that never happened, you want me so bad you don’t care
if your chokehold love is killing me
and I think it would kill you to stop pretending
I think it would kill you to let me go
even if it would save my life
you call me wife and spouse and leave me
screaming, but
when I touched you that night I think we
both knew it was over
and I was grieving, I have been grieving
and you don’t know how, you never did
one time, you took me out to eat
and everyone in the restaurant gathered to you
like flies on a carcass
I’d always wanted to be invisible, forgotten
but not like that
when we met you said you’d been wandering
since before sunrise, trying to stay out of the
house and away from your partner at the time
it had been at least seven hours and you
were covered in sweat
as you spilled all the things you thought you
wouldn’t there to me
at that table
it’s been three years of riding as a pair of ghosts
you’ve never stopped wandering
and I’m very talented at grieving
it’s practically one of my best friends now
I never thought I’d have to waste so much
of my youth grieving for the living
grieving for myself
grieving for you
-Allēna 10/19/2025 -
I got labs drawn to definitively check for a peanut allergy today.
We’ll see what happens.
I’m eepy now, though, so it’s probably nap time.
-Allēna
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Dear blog people..
Emerson did my nails today while we watched the Usual Suspects.
That’s it.
That’s the post.
-Allēna
