by Mateo Lara
to cease to exist and to die are two different things entirely
– Erika L. Sanchez
Truth:
Remind me of light
white pill destroys darkest woe
now the heavy fades
Every bright thing the pills gave were all greedy bastards. Sometimes when I wake up there’s a fog floating above, right before my mind recognizes where it’s at. I remind myself I’m alone again in Virginia and it won’t be too long until I finish my degree and go back to California to all my friends. The stink of the future is odorless, but I can still feel the stench on my tongue, taste it, which creates the smell. I know what it feels like to wade in rotten, bacteria-infested water.
When I started going to therapy and taking my pills – I felt guilty. I was going against my mom (though she told me to seek help) and my grandma (who insisted I just needed to be stronger), they just thought I needed to talk to someone and didn’t require medication. But the wounds were infesting my livelihood and ruining my friendships. I was a poisonous, acidic serpent wanting to dissolve anyone who stifled my fury – which meant I was tired of keeping emotions in, which meant – the reason I needed to seek help would benefit all the people in my life: without worrying about rent, or being gay or whom to love or straddle or simply existing without scarcity of love or trial by fire.
Find a tomb where my papa resides, is still alive and fidgeting with anticipation for the next life – in which he is still protecting me and my mom and sister and grandma, where he takes us to the mountains and saves us from completely drowning in dreams. I’m always the last one to keep themselves away and awake from terror. And I pray like the bitch (God) expects me to. The curse in the bones from existing in my mom’s blood and generational trauma seeping into the core of who we are and how we’ve been struggling so long to be taken care of taken seriously. So I pray, the bitch turned into a prickly cacti of bitterness, so here I am praying, becoming the goddess, queer divinity they always expected me to be.
“St. Anthony, perfect imitator of Jesus, who
received from God the special power of restoring lost things,
grant that I may find Healing from Grief, which has been lost.
At least restore to me peace and tranquility of mind, the loss
of which has afflicted me even more than my material loss.
To this favor, I ask another of you: that I may always remain
in possession of the true good that is God. Let me rather lose all things
than lose God, my supreme good. Let me never suffer
the loss of my greatest treasure, eternal life with God. Amen.”
Then each cavity echoes – a flashing light pulse hitting steel – a loud chaotic city dream of my emptiness restored without any scar or mark still leaving skin raw and bleeding from pink queer glittery stain on this bare-ribbed chest. The white pills become my resurrection shroud, plummeting each careless thought into oblivion, every infernal emotion finding its place, sought shelter and finally, finally relieving me to rest.
Mateo Lara is an Editor for Rabid Oak. He is proud to be Mexican-American, learning to embrace and find who he is inside its history, language, and culture. His collections of poetry, La Futura Tuga and X, Marks the Spot, are available on Amazon, and his poems have been featured in The New Engagement and Orpheus.
The Sunday Solace series focuses on mental health and medication. We hope to provide a judgment-free space to explore and discuss our issues in a creative manner.