I. It is not an angel at all, that reaches out to me just to ask, “Are you still hungry?”, “Do you still want more?”. I think, “Yes”, I think, “Of course I am”. I think of solvent sliding down my throat, way past where two plump fingers can reach. Still, I have drank enough green juice to drown out the merciless sun. Please God, send me an owl, send me an angel who talks back just a little less, send me someone who knows, who will run their fingers through my hair and assure me it’s okay if I don’t write, it’s okay if I don’t feel, it’s okay if I don’t exist at all. I dream of stabbing people, but I never see the weapon in my hands. In dreams there are ladybugs that say my full maiden name, janky and sluggish, and just hearing that makes tiny cracks in me. II. Feeling just a few inches removed from the world, Not separated by glass like the poets would write. I am not a whole poet, I am lonely, and my notes say: red coat, red string, red scissors, red moles on necks where lovers kiss, not blank like mine. Red nose, it’s cold outside, and inside of me. See the air I exhale turn to clouds, This song breathes and my lungs writhe. “Hey, just so you know, you are mortal, even if you don’t act like it. Even if you don’t feel it. Which means there’s no use crying about it. Well… why aren’t you crying about it?” III. In truth, I don’t lay awake at night dreaming of axes and sacrificial blades. I feel my dreams like a hum, or a pulse instead. And the poems I write are sanitised, and clean, because my parents read them, and I feel things so intensely sometimes that on paper I must read like the loneliest girl to ever exist. Well. I am, I am, I am. Shedding my skin is only what I call a pastime, it’s only what I do for fun, don’t read too deeply into it, mom. Please? I need to eat myself to survive sometimes, it’s only the truth of being alive. I fear my stomach has fluttered with moths and poems for a long while. If I open my mouth and hold up my palms to face the sky, maybe then I’ll have something to show for my time spent alone- in solitude, in thoughts. Something to keep me awake at night and put my fears to bed. So, presently, there are words. Words I’ve coughed up, arranged, stitched together like a monster of my own and I spoke with the angel one last time, and they assured me, that fear is a fig, it exists outside of me, (so it isn’t me), and it’s ripe now. Right now. “You said you were hungry, so devour, and release”
Sabrina Angelina is dedicated to the intersection of love and violence, a term she coined to describe classical Romanticism's tendency to pair passion and suffering, tragedy and pleasure, together. Consumed by this concept, she writes on Substack and curates a White Lily Society Instagram page dedicated to arts and culture. In September 2020, she released her debut poetry collection “a Cult of Butterflies”- a pandemic project about longing, nostalgia, and her teenage self’s very first steps in poetry.
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