I had a dream last night/this morning straight out of a Gabriel Garcia Márquez novel.
I was in Louisiana and yet somehow in my old yard at the same time and there was supposed to be a massive storm coming but we were far enough inland that the storm surge wouldn’t affect us directly, but they were calling for some very powerful waves, and before the storm came in there was a lot of fog. And I was talking with some people who were also there (because apparently that was a thing) about the storm and the waves and maybe going down to the beach to see it like dumbasses when all of a sudden a patch of fog exploded into about a thousand birds of different colors.
And I was amazed because these birds looked like cardinals but some of them were purple and yellow and I wanted to feed them so that they’d get close enough to me so that I could take pictures of them, but it turned out I didn’t need to. These birds congregated around me like they knew me as I got down on the grass and started snapping photos and laughing because I was trying not to disturb them but they KEPT FOLLOWING ME. As all of this absurdity was going on, I was composing poetry in my head, but I CANNOT REMEMBER THE LINES. And I looked up at one point and Juneau was there, leaning on one of the wooden pillars the porch my old house had, watching with this strange, knowing smirk on his face, like he had planned this whole scene to delight me even though he HATES BIRDS, and then I woke up.
I have no idea what any of that meant, but it was gorgeous.
-Allēna
I have a lot of feelings about this update and I could probably gush about this for ages but for now, I’m going to leave it at that.
-Allēna
(for me, anyway).
I’m processing a lot and my brain feels so overtaxed that it’s a struggle to think or even breathe at times. I’ve been struggling to even message Juneau, and that’s been quite easy of late. I think I’ve overworked myself into a hole.
So I’m going to have a leisurely smoke and then I think I’m going to attempt sleep.
G’night, y’all.
If y’all want to help me feel less overtaxed, please check out my Patreon. It would be a huge help. 💛
-Allēna
It is with great pleasure, pomp, and circumstance that I announce the release of “Apocalypse You” on our Patreon page. Paid subscribers to our Patreon can grab a copy at their leisure 💛
Juneau, this one’s for you.
-Allēna
If you enjoy our work, go ahead and subscribe to Open Sorcery while you’re at it!
It was simultaneously very funny but also very emotionally heavy, and I took a much needed smoke break towards the end of it. Two girls were discussing their guy drama and I told them to just be bold and also trust their gut because we live in a hellscape. I told them that that’s how I met Emerson and we’re married now 💛 They said that they appreciated my wisdom, so there’s that, I guess. I also met a very inquisitive and affectionate dog named Keaton. Both his owner and I think he might be a boxer mix of some kind, but he’s also very small, so he might have been the runt of his litter. He was a very precious baby who reminded me of my childhood dog, a purebred Lab named Eli, who was constantly excited about everything and was very handsome. Everyone loved that lad even though he was extremely small for his breed.
I also figured out that a friend of Emerson’s and mine works at County Clare. I almost didn’t recognize her outside of the events I normally see her at, but it’s a small world, I suppose, and I was grateful to run into her. She’s lovely.
It started raining on the way back to the car, and I think my body is deeply unhappy with all the storms we’re having. I feel like I got hit by a train.
I think I’m going to go to sleep soon. I definitely need it. I managed to finally go to sleep around 5 AM today. I feel like I was hit by a train.
Juneau is in one of his states again – I think he might be splitting on me or starting to. He’ll probably come around in about 2 business days with an apology or something to that effect, and we’ll kiss and make up, as it were. I think it would be in poor taste to inform him that he might be splitting on me, he’s an adult and he’ll come to that conclusion on his own. In the meantime, there’s nothing to do but live life, dispense advice to strangers on the sidewalk like I’m some faerie that haunts the shadows, see really heavy plays, and scritch adorable dogs.
-Allēna
it’s images like this i’d live and die for
kept securely within my chest,
a less piercing form of homesickness
more beautiful -
you aren’t here and yet i feel - and i want you -
as if you were in the next room
it’s been years and i am just now telling you
things that i, before, kept lodged in my throat
it scares me still but i want you to know
the same way i did that way in july when i first
overcame my fear
so let me find words for the finest kind
of golden hour within my mind -
you call me a hurricane, a sea
but what if, for a moment, i was still,
held, wrists in your hands
above my head?
i am all angles and curves in all the wrong places
hard-edged everywhere i should be soft
eyes too dark to be this light
but what if i was beautiful, something close to gentle,
then, there, to you?
i’ve spent my life as soon as i could
running, but what if, for once,
i didn’t want to flee,
held fast in that early morning light?
then at last, desperation could go unspoken,
but be known and seen and felt…
Sometimes having DID and headmates that are JUST as talented as you at both the same things – and different ones – is a fuckin’ gas, y’all.
Back in 2014-ish I wrote a poem that turned into one of my better-known songs about a crush of mine. It was called “My Island”. I was obsessed with the Mutiny on the Bounty for reasons I still can’t quite articulate, and the second verse contains one of my favorite lines I’ve ever written:
“Be the Fletcher to my island, be the Fletcher coming coming home”
I’m not entirely sure why that line gets me so bad more than a decade later. It may be the fact that it’s a reference to Fletcher Christian, leader of the Mutiny on the Bounty, choosing the South Pacific over duty, country, etc., and settling with a few members of his crew in one of the most remote places on Earth, Pitcairn Island, after mutinying, and wanting to feel chosen like that. Maybe it’s my love for history references in general. Maybe it’s that I still yearn for people like I did when I was 14-17 and I struggle to express it now, and I love that line so much because it’s My Peak Teenage Yearning, something I feel like I can’t verbalize anymore, even though I’m arguably more safe now to do so than I was then.
Anyway, here’s the original take as it appeared on our first self released EP Fletcher Coming Home: Good Stuff From 2014.
A different cut appeared awhile later on our first album The Mellon Session as well:
But my favorite version of “My Island” came much later when Eight was host and he snuck into a church while bored out of his fucking skull to record this absolutely achingly beautiful take of “My Island” for his then-partner Juneau.
I can still feel the longing even now, and his arrangement is so fucking beautiful.
Holy shit.
-Allēna
“untitled still life (2019)”
I don't want to give names
to your fistfuls of hollow
coffee cup still half full, overturned
baroque broken words, reaching for something
that forever seems older
than you or I in every language
well run dry, and yet
despite yourself
each moment in atemporal space
teeming with life
when we met, I
wanted to drink myself into the ground,
an inelegant death like hemingway perhaps
after bleeding worlds onto ten thousand pages
inspired by black coffee and gin
I'm sober now and you're still empty glasses,
the smell of pages, wine
and cigarettes after two years of silence
I can still vanish into the liquor darkness of you
without ever tasting a drop
I don't want to die anymore
(most days)
and perhaps I am a fool
for wandering through your still life fortress of
melancholy
but you keep coming back to me,
three hundred year old moment
or perhaps you are a memory
I've never been good at untangling how I feel
and some days I feel like I am made of iron
but today I feel like nothing more than glass -
Allēna 3/1/2026
Eight’s ex, Juneau, resurfaced a few days ago. They broke up a whole bunch of times, most recently in early 2023 after a series of events beginning with what we now call Kiragate and ending with his polycule splitting in half over him dumping his ex, Leigh, and refusing to pick a side in the months-long conflict between his then-partner Sol and best friend at the time, whom we will call Birch. Juneau took the contingent who had bonded with Leigh and Sol in the divorce, as it were. You can read more about that situation here. We call all of this the Great Schism of 2022-23.
He’s popped up a few times since then, but given Eight’s history with him and the fact that they would break up, get back together, and break up again over the years over a variety of things, he ended up blocked on most everything. He reached out via a comment on our old LiveJournal blog that I had honestly half forgotten about since I mostly post here these days.
He didn’t know whether I was alive or not and he wasn’t sure if I was going to even respond. I responded because the fact that he’s popped back up after all this time made me laugh. He also added me on Snapchat. I despise that app, so I ended up giving him my number.
I asked Hawthorne if he’d also reached out to them, and weirdly enough, he had.
I’m wondering what the fuck he wants…
-Allēna