Prehistoric Smiles by Marialexa Kavanaugh
I awoke for the first time when I saw Lily dancing. The moment was born outside on the patio. I was washing my hands at the kitchen sink in such a belligerent way I felt as if I was raking off the memory of everything I ever caressed, ever held. She was letting the muscles of the wind boss her around as she swayed rhythmically from side to side. An army of fire flies were enveloping her in a cylinder of light and wings. It was the type of vision that makes your heart crumble to an unidentifiable lump of ashes- ashes of beauty, hope and above all, pain. It was the type of vision that makes you want to write savvy poetry, and then proceed to cry at the melody of your own words.
I awoke for the second time when Lily executed the trance I was in, and came cantering into my wide open arms, into my barricaded heart. This is what the stories are all about. Those snippets of illusions that conquer your soul, the reason we unglue our eyes each morning. The things that aren’t suppose to happen but do, and we never fully swallow them. I guess being alive defines exactly that: being utterly, enchantingly beyond belief.
That day was the first and last time I cranked the music inside of me to full volume, where I felt completely in my element. The rest of my wisp of an existence didn’t sing, didn’t dance. It only ever whispered. But Lily, Lily my immortal butterfly has so many chances to attack and consume and nourish herself. Lily will inhale vitality, and send it bulleting back into the air, into all of our hearts.
We used to walk through the neighborhood, a serene oasis that charmed the rest of Menlo Park, California. Linking arms, Lily and I waltz through suburbia. This page of my life is etched away by the gray hairs of time, yet I sometimes have to remember. Memory is an angel, demon ,savior. While we were walking people would just gaze at us as if we gave birth to moonlight, we were the original goddesses. They would pass us on the side walk and gape, and we triggered that.
Sometimes men would come up to us, wink, and say “what a gorgeous day it has turned out to be.” Then they would look me up and down like I was their prize turkey. Many times the men would kneel down and breathe unctuous nonsense into Lily’s ears. She would nod and smile wide enough to liquefy the hearts of any axe murderer. Then she would just shoot her gaze through every particle of me that hurt. I just melted for her. We would walk back home, my hands cocooning her innocent, unscathed ones.
“He said you were gorgeous. He said so. He did.” Lily murmurs to me as mom and I tuck her in.
“That’s called being greasy. You stay away from guys like those.” I say with the steely earnest presence I was donated by my mother.
“But Suzy he was right. He was telling the God honest truth.”
I punctuate the conversation with a stroke of my lips against Lily’s forehead. I bolt out of the room, trying to strangle the smugness infecting me. I was only 18, and 18 year old girls can’t help but bathe in the juice of a compliment. Mom was waiting in the kitchen. She was the dictionary definition of angelic. Her passion colored hair spewed from her scalp and onto her shoulders. Her pale complexion mirrored to me all that we ever lost.
I grip a bushel of her blazing red hair in the palm of my hands. She turns her stare to me. Those leprechaun-green eyes make my insides quiver. I was never afraid of mom, just afraid of her loneliness. Our kitchen was a desperate attempt at scrubbing away our pain. The Easter egg wall paper and delicate china look like practical jokes now. But they masqueraded us from who we were slowly becoming.
“You thinking about Daddy?” I say in a fragile whisper.
“Huh?” She says as if I stomped on the beautiful moment we just split between the two of us.
“I know you always get sad this time of night and I just want you to know that we don’t need him. Nope we are survivors. We won’t bend.”
“Damn it Suzanna! Stop with this poetic trash you always give me! Can’t a woman just sit in her darn kitchen in peace!” She says this and I am stabbed, mutilated, torn apart. This was the first time my mother erupted, and certainly not the last. This was the first time Lily and I felt fear, for the little angle waddled out of her room and buckled her arms around me. I nuzzle my face in her night gown, because I knew she heard the explosion. I also knew that she would be the only one to survive it.
So here is the story, the beating, pulsing, circulatory system of the story: My daddy killed my mom. Everything else hit us like debris from 911. It stuck its fingers all the way down our throats and latched on to that beast we call a heart. Lily once was right, I was enthrallingly beautiful in a modest, shy lady-like way. I was the spitting image of a southern bell, in my floral sun dresses and blood-colored lip stick. My beauty decayed with the loss of my parents.
Nowadays I walk around our house like a zombie in sweat pants, but to tell the truth I never did go through that big of a transformation. I have been stiff all my life. Sure my appearance enabled me to carry the title of “hottest ticket in town,” but inside I am a statue. I write this knowing that you will probably feel annoyed at my incessant self-deprecation, but I never intended for you, reader, to fall for me. I just wanted someone to listen.
The day after mom died, Lily became a dancer. I let her twinkle around the house, sure, but I always caved in to my anger when she did. I taped my eyes and my heart shut. I never knew that Lily dancing would be my hero. She started going to ballet class, I started crying. This routine stapled itself to our lives.
I was 18 when she died. Lily was 7. We were young. We lived. I was beautiful. She was passionate. Mom woke us up in the infant stages of morning.
“Let’s go.” She said.
“Mom! It’s like zero in the morning!” I exclaimed but to tell the truth her sense of adventure squirted sunlight into the corners that had been darkened from her anger.
“Suzanna Sachs! You get that butt of yours up! We are going for a ride .Help Lily get dressed.”
I had no clue where why she was corralling us, or where we were going. My mom had problems, though, and if a simple little car ride would nurture her aches, then why not?
We bundled up and bolted into the car. Lily sang show tunes and the melody wafted around the car like a lovely scent. I hummed along gleefully, munching vigorously on a bar of chocolate. The munching came to a slow demise as the knowledge of our destination pummeled me in the face. Mom wanted to go to San Francisco, and I knew her dreams would be tackled and garnered as I saw Golden Gate Bridge standing upright and proud in front of us.
We pulled over at one of the look-out points. By this time Mom’s laughter had been aged and faded to a simple melody of sighs. The supernatural power that bridges withhold is that they give you a sample and sort of packaged experience of what the edge of the world must feel like. They are telescopes to eternity. Gaping, Lily and Suzanna Sachs salivated for the fatty hugs of the water. Mom smiled that smile we thought had gone extinct.
Then as if receiving a to do list from the Gods, she regained composure and face me.
“Suzy-Q. Ya gotta do me a favor. Girls like me with enough charm and modesty to win
over some yummy guy end up hurting. In you I see my teenage innocence. Honey, life is
a bully but you gotta look it in the eye. I tried and failed ‘cause it hurt like hell. You
can be the survivor for the both of us. A pretty girl like win the you can game with a snap
of your fingers.
“You make sure my little Lily grows up just great. I always saw the mother in you. She
deserves a mama like you. Now be bold and brave and honest. I love you.”
My mother’s final contribution to humanity left me astounded. My body felt like it was
manufactured out of play dough, for all I knew there was no distinction between me and a carcass. Numbness slaughters our opinions as well as soul, and all I could do was bounce my head up and down. Cascades of tears now drizzled down the mattresses of her cheeks. She mopped her lips against Lily and I’s forehead, muttering “I love you forever.”
I know I should have yanked her away from the edge of the bridge. At that moment however, my heart was a pacifist and it viewed my mother as a martyr. She plunged, and never came up to tell us how cold the water felt. She never told Lily what to do when she got her period. She never told me how to conduct a job interview. She never showed my father where to find a secure rehab facility. She never taught me how to fall in love. She never taught Lily what love is.
Her last words were, “I will always, always, always, always love you Alec Sachs.”
Alec Sachs is my father. When he found out about it, he hibernated. I haven’t seen him out of his dungeon since the funeral. He calls sometimes, to rub my scars away with small talk, or to guzzle down as much of Lily’s wind chime voice as possible. I raised Lily from the cautious bud she was when Mom commit suicide, to the booming, overflowing rose of a teenager she is today.
My father killed my mother with the bullet-holes he abandoned in her memory. My father killed my mother by coming home polluted with alcohol 5 nights a week and beating the sensitivity out of her. My father killed my mother by never letting her cease to adore him, even when he pushed her off a bridge. Quite literally. Daddy loved me though, he was head over heels for his little Suzy. He also thought Lily was a gem which would never perish.
This story isn’t meant to fuel you with yearning to go jump off a bridge. It is entirely about laying out a fresh foundation. Lily has straw colored hair and eyes like grey stained glass. Her body is nimble and healthy. I am a twenty five year old senior citizen that looks too much like her mother. These features now decorate fresh family photos, consisting of just the two of us.
I got a job as a waitress and now I manage the restaurant, earning enough to steer Lily towards success. My Lily, whose newly born teenage temper could both melt a heart and blow it up to smithereens. Yesterday she sauntered through the door after school, and caterwauled like she did when we still had a mommy. “What does everyone want from me. What am I becoming?”
I injected my stare into hers and, with one of my prehistoric smiles, said, “Your at your peak. You trip and fall and die and begin all over again. You search within your own personal encyclopedia and come up with junk, passion and fear. You don’t look up or down at anybody, you look them straight in the eye. You are undergoing one of the most excruciating, emotional, exciting, terrifying, beautiful processes of all time. You are the most intense creature made by God. You are a teenager.”
Monday, December 14, 2009
Structure Poem
Eye Color of July
By Marialexa Kavanaugh
His
Palms perspired
Liquid exasperation moisturizing
The cascading days of
July and summer fanning childhood
Mine.
Mine
And his
Those topaz globes
Projecting innocence and humor,
Across the waves of,
Teens, and our corrupted corpses,
His.
His,
That gaze,
Stabbing all my,
Guts and unopened,
Wounds that time insulted.
My heart was cocooned byJuly.
By Marialexa Kavanaugh
His
Palms perspired
Liquid exasperation moisturizing
The cascading days of
July and summer fanning childhood
Mine.
Mine
And his
Those topaz globes
Projecting innocence and humor,
Across the waves of,
Teens, and our corrupted corpses,
His.
His,
That gaze,
Stabbing all my,
Guts and unopened,
Wounds that time insulted.
My heart was cocooned byJuly.
Hospitality Poem
Hospitality
by
Marialexa Kavanaugh
She greets you at the door with a grin embellishing her moon-stained face,
She greets you like a squire sent from God to do gilded deeds,
You smile back despite your masqueraded, foggy concept of religion.
You give her flowers to compliment her maternal feminism,
A mother always has a few chunks of love to bestow upon the hollow-hearted,
For mothers practice the baffling wizardly of unconditional care,
The good ones at least.
The raging tyrants with minds mutated from the merciless hands of insanity,
Will smile but lie and hug but limply.
Deception is a sin that makes you grimy and contaminated inside.
Like the vitality-drained air inside an asylum,
Or the rickety and unhinged shimmy of the asylum inhabitant’s voice,
The same one that pulsates inside the brain of every young abandoned lover.
Are we all raging mad?
Stability and the plastered cement of normality is the religion for hospitable
Women,
The alluring ruse of domesticity,
The saint of the kitchen and the goddess of the household.
We live we die,
And in the crevice between those two inevitable realities
We all end up deranged at some points and find ourselves lost,
An island in the turbulence of love, hate and everything that spices them up.
by
Marialexa Kavanaugh
She greets you at the door with a grin embellishing her moon-stained face,
She greets you like a squire sent from God to do gilded deeds,
You smile back despite your masqueraded, foggy concept of religion.
You give her flowers to compliment her maternal feminism,
A mother always has a few chunks of love to bestow upon the hollow-hearted,
For mothers practice the baffling wizardly of unconditional care,
The good ones at least.
The raging tyrants with minds mutated from the merciless hands of insanity,
Will smile but lie and hug but limply.
Deception is a sin that makes you grimy and contaminated inside.
Like the vitality-drained air inside an asylum,
Or the rickety and unhinged shimmy of the asylum inhabitant’s voice,
The same one that pulsates inside the brain of every young abandoned lover.
Are we all raging mad?
Stability and the plastered cement of normality is the religion for hospitable
Women,
The alluring ruse of domesticity,
The saint of the kitchen and the goddess of the household.
We live we die,
And in the crevice between those two inevitable realities
We all end up deranged at some points and find ourselves lost,
An island in the turbulence of love, hate and everything that spices them up.
Imagist Poem
Salute the Ghetto Gates
By Marialexa Kavanaugh
Lighting exudes her mocking gaze,
Those mocha, liquid eyes,
Fusing with the dark,
She leans against the violent masculinity,
The burly monument,
Tribute to macho superiority that is her man,
Her lover,
Her babe.
The night is charcoal save for the lustrous and boasting scintillation of his piercings.
They slouch against the car,
Their spinal columns mutated to acrobatic formations,
chiseled against the crappy metal beast.
The same one they cruised around Espanola.
It now shimmies wildly,
A careless belly dancer,
Shimmying with the vibration form the rude belches of music,
Naked, blunt and brilliant rap.
The masculine perfume of his sweat,
Fluttering through her nostrils,
The sedative taste of youth,
Of never bowing down,
To kiss someone else’s hand.
For they style and protect the crown on their head.
Royalty of the dumpster,
The moldy armpit of the world,
With its streets freckled by the carcasses of beer bottles,
Of the wrappers that used to blanket and hug Wendy’s burgers.
Right now a cigarette lies sandwiched between the inflated brutes that are his lips,
A rivulet of smoke trickling through the greased and heavily slimed air,
Hate in the organization of smoke,
Into the already ill and sickly atmosphere.
She swaggers around,
Trying to amplify those articulated hips,
Hips clenched aggressively by
Delicious yet mischief triggering jeans.
He squints at her like she is a prowling gazelle and he is a hyena and he wants the layers of her flesh to be massacred and marred by the blades of his teeth,
Like she is his glorious prey and he would like to tear her, consume her.
Her eyes feast on him like he is a God,
An inexorable alpha male,
The bestseller, the masterpiece of the heavens.
And in the contradicting buckle of their eyes to one another,
The rest of their world, shrieks and howls
And whinnies and caterwauls.
Yet they own that town.
By Marialexa Kavanaugh
Lighting exudes her mocking gaze,
Those mocha, liquid eyes,
Fusing with the dark,
She leans against the violent masculinity,
The burly monument,
Tribute to macho superiority that is her man,
Her lover,
Her babe.
The night is charcoal save for the lustrous and boasting scintillation of his piercings.
They slouch against the car,
Their spinal columns mutated to acrobatic formations,
chiseled against the crappy metal beast.
The same one they cruised around Espanola.
It now shimmies wildly,
A careless belly dancer,
Shimmying with the vibration form the rude belches of music,
Naked, blunt and brilliant rap.
The masculine perfume of his sweat,
Fluttering through her nostrils,
The sedative taste of youth,
Of never bowing down,
To kiss someone else’s hand.
For they style and protect the crown on their head.
Royalty of the dumpster,
The moldy armpit of the world,
With its streets freckled by the carcasses of beer bottles,
Of the wrappers that used to blanket and hug Wendy’s burgers.
Right now a cigarette lies sandwiched between the inflated brutes that are his lips,
A rivulet of smoke trickling through the greased and heavily slimed air,
Hate in the organization of smoke,
Into the already ill and sickly atmosphere.
She swaggers around,
Trying to amplify those articulated hips,
Hips clenched aggressively by
Delicious yet mischief triggering jeans.
He squints at her like she is a prowling gazelle and he is a hyena and he wants the layers of her flesh to be massacred and marred by the blades of his teeth,
Like she is his glorious prey and he would like to tear her, consume her.
Her eyes feast on him like he is a God,
An inexorable alpha male,
The bestseller, the masterpiece of the heavens.
And in the contradicting buckle of their eyes to one another,
The rest of their world, shrieks and howls
And whinnies and caterwauls.
Yet they own that town.
abstract thought poem
Sinking wings
A poem of sadness
By Marialexa Kavanaugh
Whatever waterway fertilizes the prominence of her doughy cheeks,
Whatever was the fuel to drive those tears,
Must have been a criminal,
To take her flourishing heart in its palms and squeeze ripped and contorted.
For there is a morbidly obese ogre of fog and mist,
All despondent grey where it used to be gilded,
Scintillating gloatingly,
With unblemished delight,
Now that merriment is pockmarked,
Wrinkled and aged to an old hag of a creature,
Waddling and creaking about the dormitories in her condemned
Old crypt of a soul,
Of a spirit,
Of a force inspiring a grin.
Now the lips are sealed.
Glued, cemented,
Zipped stapled,
Rarely unstitched to expose a still existent family of teeth,
Masquerading behind the grimy costume that is depression,
That is yearning to be in the beefy arms of sleep,
Of eternal relaxation,
Of heat and acceptance,
Into the forgiving kisses of forever,
But she can’t because there’s a rope lassoed around her throat,
Dangling her in the excruciating present.
For she is being vacuumed into this dark lagoon.
Where even her wings are sinking, strangling, drowning.
And all she can do is try to wade out of the inky waters.
A poem of sadness
By Marialexa Kavanaugh
Whatever waterway fertilizes the prominence of her doughy cheeks,
Whatever was the fuel to drive those tears,
Must have been a criminal,
To take her flourishing heart in its palms and squeeze ripped and contorted.
For there is a morbidly obese ogre of fog and mist,
All despondent grey where it used to be gilded,
Scintillating gloatingly,
With unblemished delight,
Now that merriment is pockmarked,
Wrinkled and aged to an old hag of a creature,
Waddling and creaking about the dormitories in her condemned
Old crypt of a soul,
Of a spirit,
Of a force inspiring a grin.
Now the lips are sealed.
Glued, cemented,
Zipped stapled,
Rarely unstitched to expose a still existent family of teeth,
Masquerading behind the grimy costume that is depression,
That is yearning to be in the beefy arms of sleep,
Of eternal relaxation,
Of heat and acceptance,
Into the forgiving kisses of forever,
But she can’t because there’s a rope lassoed around her throat,
Dangling her in the excruciating present.
For she is being vacuumed into this dark lagoon.
Where even her wings are sinking, strangling, drowning.
And all she can do is try to wade out of the inky waters.
Immitation poem
Madhouse
By Marialexa Kavanaugh
Based on a poem by Dylan Thomas
The deranged have bombarded.
Some people lunatic and mad as hatters.
They weep for the slap of mortality,
Cries inflating the night,
Their fists drumming against our borders.
Yet they enchant and spellbind while glazing the ghostly halls,
Their eyes acute,
Speculating upon the quirks of mankind.
They have arrived imprisoned.
Gripped and locked by the hallucinogenic that is abandoning reality.
Imprisoned by the heavens.
They dance for all to see yet stampede the darkest of places.
Yet they are vibrant in their element.
In the halls of the cryptic asylum.
And possessed by the glitter in their glare,
At the punctuation mark of my journey,
I serve as a witness to the image that gave birth to the sun.
By Marialexa Kavanaugh
Based on a poem by Dylan Thomas
The deranged have bombarded.
Some people lunatic and mad as hatters.
They weep for the slap of mortality,
Cries inflating the night,
Their fists drumming against our borders.
Yet they enchant and spellbind while glazing the ghostly halls,
Their eyes acute,
Speculating upon the quirks of mankind.
They have arrived imprisoned.
Gripped and locked by the hallucinogenic that is abandoning reality.
Imprisoned by the heavens.
They dance for all to see yet stampede the darkest of places.
Yet they are vibrant in their element.
In the halls of the cryptic asylum.
And possessed by the glitter in their glare,
At the punctuation mark of my journey,
I serve as a witness to the image that gave birth to the sun.
Memoir
Fields of Dreaming Bodies
A memoir by Marialexa Kavanaugh
It’s for you. You ravishing Santa Fe teenagers that gripped my heart in your hands and massaged it. It’s all for you. The DNA of this gift is manufactured out of soul, even though its blood, flesh and guts are in the form of writing. It’s a sonnet for my slaughtered confidence, a romantic poem for the city that was my infatuated lover. This gift is the structure I pieced together with the bones of the past. This is memory, love and death hailing down from the tips of my fingers.
I never meant to lose the game. I never meant to see my pieces splinter and fracture to nothing. I never meant to lose not only the game, but my reason for playing it. I never wanted to feel the knuckles of defeat socking me where I felt the most confident. Above all, it was never my desire to abandon everything that erected the memorial to individuality and light that I was back home, I only meant to survive.
It’s snowing today. In Santa Fe the air would still be clogged with the fresh cologne stench of autumn, so different than where I abide now. Santa Fe is astoundingly gorgeous at this time of year, and I miss it now while I’m packaged in thick layers to shield me against the brutality of rocky mountain winters. In Santa Fe the sunsets would be like supermodels for the cat walks of the heavens. The earth would still be dry as a heartless person’s cheek. In Santa Fe the teens will be like acne erupting across the plaza. In Santa Fe a thin girl with spouts of chestnut hair will be contracting over a pillow, her liquefied soul bubbling out of her tear ducts because adolescence will persecute the emotional, and she can’t help feeling week, especially when her dearest friend was tugged out of her life.
Homesickness is cancerous. It starts as a hideous welt and is nourished by animosity and tears. Then the fertile lump inflates ‘till it governs your soul. It refuses to yield until you bow your head down and capitulate. Then it simply slurps the enthusiasm out of you, morphing you into a carcass. I have been the prey of this emotionally ravenous disease.
Now I look out the window into the snow and all I can do is give everything that kept my flames licking and blazing back to all of you. “You love to write so much Mimi. Write us a song.” My lovely Kailani would ask me every time I showed her one of my poems.
“Ha! I’d love to actually! It might suck miserably but it will have meaning and if I get hit by a train tomorrow you’ll have some way of remembering me.” I replied happily.
“Yeah! And I’ll compose it for you, and train or no train we’ll have like, all this sentimental poetry and music about the days when we were young!” Said Kailani, always the enthusiastic musician.
“God am I going to miss these days of just being a kid and innocent and fun and not giving a damn.” I murmured regretfully. “High school awaits.”
“Worry about high school later darlin’. We have songs to write and green chilli burritos to eat!” Kailani always played the optimist when her friends needed it. This is as close as I’ve got to a song for you guys. But it has as much soul and stamina as and honey-soaked lyrics would. And it was the magician that any song would be, for it inspired me to dance.
I was the dancer, we were the teenagers. We got stoned off the mutual pissed off sensation that mashed up our brain. We used hostility as drugs. We towered over anybody who dare inflict suffering on to our pride, we became tyrants of authority. Santa Fe teen culture, however, is so much more than the hallucinating urge to demolish. Our story is about how you hibernate with your anger and with your friends. It’s about the fumes that radiate off of risk-taking, and the sanctuary we all huddled in because we needed to raise an army against any dominant force. But most of all, it’s about love, baby, love.
Downtown Santa Fe is like a sauna where the only scent snuggled into your nostrils is this delicious and flavorful concoction of cigarette smoke and chili. The girls smell like vanilla and the boys smell like a decomposing childhood. We were bad and we were brilliant. We screwed up and neglected the pollution we inspired. This is because we see beauty in graffiti and dirt. We see hope writhing in the greasy sadness of tears. We conjure up these fascinating alcohols of the strongest love and hate tousled together.
Perhaps the magic was purely an illusion, the spell binding concoction was merely lying in tiny throngs of Cathedral Park. To tell the truth, despite our hurricane-struck hair and outrageous clothing, I think we summoned the magic. It was the squealing, caterwauling teenagers of Santa Fe that stirred up its alluring potion of love and hate. We were the wizards. It’s hilarious to think that a bunch of chicken fajita-polluted teens could be so divine and dominant, but it’s the way things are.
During the school year, downtown was our sensual, irresistible lover. The passionate affairs took place at Cathedral, Ecco (the mouth wateringly delicious gelato parlor), or any of the hidden wrinkles of space at the plaza where we all unzipped our dogmatic demeanors and let our inner beasts loose. During the summer, we were the political and social authorities of downtown. All year round, the teens of Santa Fe had some sort of flamboyant friendship with our city. We whispered in its ear both vile and beautiful things. Now, alone in the mountains, I yearn for that tender sisterhood I shared with home.
One of the most enthralling yet anesthetizing days was when an emotional heap of us went to prowl and unearth our territory: the plaza. It was Montana, a candid and sincere comrade I’ve doted on since the days since we still thought barbies were the authorities of the universe and all we wanted from life was a smooch, a blessing from Mama. Kendall, an electric and resolute comedian, yet loyal sister and buddy never missed out on an opportunity to plunge her flag into the plaza soil, marking her land. Alec, a concentrated and cool preppy, often with a envelope of girls flocking femininely about him also tagged along just for the sanity of socializing with chicks who wouldn’t salivate adoringly all over him and coo mercilessly.
I felt privileged to b with Alec, for he was such an alluring alpha male among his worshipping throng of preppy converts. Yet I didn’t see in him the kind of qualities I thirst for in guys, and treasured and polished our friendship above any guy-to-girl tension or inert electricity. The four of us spent an entire day languidly slouching and swaggering about the convoluted masterpiece we call home. We were adrenalized by the temporary buzz of a Starbucks frappuccino, and currently immersing our awkwardly adolescent bodies in the luscious swords and blades of Cathedral Park grass. We were enjoying the brands of conversations estimated important in the claustrophobic niche between childhood and the stress and deadline stuffed days of growing up.
“Ah! Mark said he thinks my mom is a babe! God what a creeper.”Montana exclaimed in a successful attempt to both intrigue and disgust us.
“ Mark is a child-molester, scary man thing. He looks like he’s 110 instead of 14! He has a friggin mustache. What fourteen-year-old who is hormonally stable has a mustache.” I contributed to our grimy feast of gossip.
“Ha! I wonder what the earliest age for a human being to grow a mustache was! I mean, can you like, pop out of the womb all hairy and hormonal. Jesus Christ what an ugly little fellow that baby would be.” Kendall said.
“Shit! Kendall what the hell goes on in that brain of yours.” Alec said while shaking his head in wonder.
“Mark’s baby! Mustache baby would be Mark’s baby!” Montana squealed, flailing spastically on the ground.
“Come on Tana Mark is just a happy little fellow who doesn’t have the social graces to pick up a razor and shave!” I said. In that moment, in that shelter, petrified cluster of time, I was at bliss. Life was swimming and drowning and failing miserably at succeeding in weaseling their way out of this labyrinth that is humanity, but I was still and save and content with my head snuggled into Kendall’s abs. Squealing and whinnying and chirping about absolutely nothing, rambling about crap. Yet in those blunt, naked and exposed conversations about utter nothingness, my true colors radiated.
I don’t think I was ever as pleased with the way the world was revolving as I was while, downing Starbucks and gossiping relentlessly with my dearest friends. God do I miss you guys, I’m sure I always will. I miss the Fe and the little aesthetics that give it such a spunky swagger and style. Like the way that if you learned how to spit in gravity’s face and flew above Cathedral park, taking in an aerial view of it, all you would see is this massive field of dreamy bodies flopping over one another in a careless display of love. I miss the steroids-addicted mess that urbanization is, and while sitting in a glossy movie theater you know you are in the arteries and veins of suburban America. I miss food so spicy and temper- mental it’s as if it’s going through adolescence. I miss flavor and flamenco dancing and graffiti taking on a bullying and badass demeanor even though it’s only really gushy and profound poetry.
I miss the way perfection was taboo, and how if your life was entirely screwed up and in disarray you were labeled as an artist. What I’ve learned from these bruised months of homesickness, however, is that those merciless pangs of hollowness and loss are never your knight in shining armor. They never conjure up miracles to mend your torn soul, they just keep you lonely. Of course I will never stop missing you kids. But my story can’t be about the empty caves in my chest that you all used to fill. My story has to be about how I persevered. This little chunk of writing is like the golden gate bridge between you and I.
Nostalgia snarled with my memories, I reminisce on possibly the most transforming year of my life. Fourteen. An age where the world and I butt heads and I ended up being the one to result concussed. An age where I tackled those dreams of mine and utterly consumed them. It was an age where love scared the crap out of me but I still fell for the earth’s creatures. It was the age where I garnered up everything in my embrace and then had to lose it again.
On these pages are all my toxins, my guts and my blood. My intention is not to depress, just to get those pollutant gasses out of my system, and finally be able to have some form of documentation as to how much I care for you guys. How much I absolutely adore you. Year 14 of Marialexa Kavanaugh’s life was one of anguish, beauty, and hope. The hope that I would enter high school with all of you was my fuel, and I guzzled it down. I was a brilliant merit scholar with populous throngs of friends blowing me kisses every day, and a future any day- dreaming adolescent would lust after. Nostalgia snarled with my memories, I reminisce on possibly the most transforming year of my life. Fourteen. An age where the world and I butt heads and I ended up being the one to result concussed. An age where I tackled those dreams of mine and utterly consumed them. It was an age where love scared the crap out of me but I still fell for the earth’s creatures. It was the age where I garnered up everything in my embrace and then had to lose it again.
I never thought anything could kill me, but ripping myself apart from girls like my dearest Eva nearly did. I never knew that the last time Theo laughed at one of my jokes would scar me and pierce me forever. I wish I had known, because guys, if I had known how much this would end up hurting I would have written a thousand songs for each of you. I would have dictated the heavens to give me the gift of light, and I’d eject that light upon all of you.
I used to be so extraverted, people felt my energy like a tornado battering them. I used to be gilded and kind, open to love and the affection of the universe. I was Maddy’s life long link to childhood- the puzzle piece that completed our incredible jigsaw. I was Sarah’s only candle as she navigated her way through too many God forsaken tunnels. I was downtown Santa Fe’s duchess, and though I may not have had the crown squatting on my head I still had rank and reason for smiling at all who passed me. I remember all the I love you Mimi’s, and I know I held a place in the world. In your world.
Nowadays I’m a little less vibrant and a little more faded into the mirage of the crowd. I don’t appreciate the sunrise for its intoxicating beauty, and the sunset seems like a warrant for my execution. At night time the stars are masqueraded by a bridal veil of my longing and helplessly wishful thinking. It’s all just dark, dark, dark. You all used to be my torches, I fed off your light when stranded in gloomy tunnels.
After searching mercilessly for another torch and coming up with ash, I’ve had a baby epiphany. The mountains are lovely here and the air tastes like that of utopia. I accept that in Colorado, and will accept much more that traverse my path. It will bandage the battle scars from my hatred and ignorance. And hell, it might work darlings, it might work. But the epiphany elasticizes beyond acceptance of Colorado and where I am now. The thudding soul of the epiphany lies within the fact that despite my pacification with Colorado, I will never lose you guys. We all need our guiding lights, and I found mine in all of you.
But I have to show a little empathy for the girl who always gapes back at me when I look in the mirror now. She may not be gilded on every surface, but the melancholy has only made her more durable. That girl that used to whip out rows of straight As and blow kisses at humanity is still there. I thought I’d sucked the light out of her and buried her under mounds of dirt. But no, she is still alive. She comes alive in this proclamation of individuality. Marialexa comes alive in writing, in dancing, and above all, in the memories of all of you.
So I raise my glass and toast you. I let you know that with every bird chirp and glorious dawn, it is another day to come to the realization that I love you. I always knew that I would have a gorgeous parade of brides maids at my wedding, and they would consist of all of you. I thought my groom would be the boy that coated my summer in faith, laughter and tears of forgiveness. A fourteen-year-old’s dreams can conquer the universe, however, and my new arch rival Reality tells me that this certain boy is sending a world other than mine down to its knees with laughter.
I’ll never assassinate the sentimental adoration I had for him though, just like I’ll never stop caring for all of you. I may not call as often as I wish, or email every day. It’s hard to keep in touch when you feel like you’re in the midst of a blood-shedding battle with high school and youth. This is my way of tossing all those fractions of phone conversations and letters into one big cauldron of love, my undying love for home and the friends that made it so sparkly. During sleepovers we all used to strangle the cruelty of school and growing up, and due to my lack of social vitality I’ve had to look all those terrifying things straight in the eye. So without colorful pajamas, facials, and movie marathons, this is my way of slipping into the genuine Marialexa, who cares more about giving fruitful hugs than about the meaning of life.
To Marialexa, otherwise known as Mimi: this new, regretful me wants you back in my body, and I am not going to lose you, the true me who harbored and returned so many people’s affection. Yet I will sign the peace treaty with this new me in permanent ink. Accept, forgive, but never forget. To all of you: Keep going down town and flourishing, towering above your kingdom of freedom, art and love. I’m still with you, I will always be with you.
A memoir by Marialexa Kavanaugh
It’s for you. You ravishing Santa Fe teenagers that gripped my heart in your hands and massaged it. It’s all for you. The DNA of this gift is manufactured out of soul, even though its blood, flesh and guts are in the form of writing. It’s a sonnet for my slaughtered confidence, a romantic poem for the city that was my infatuated lover. This gift is the structure I pieced together with the bones of the past. This is memory, love and death hailing down from the tips of my fingers.
I never meant to lose the game. I never meant to see my pieces splinter and fracture to nothing. I never meant to lose not only the game, but my reason for playing it. I never wanted to feel the knuckles of defeat socking me where I felt the most confident. Above all, it was never my desire to abandon everything that erected the memorial to individuality and light that I was back home, I only meant to survive.
It’s snowing today. In Santa Fe the air would still be clogged with the fresh cologne stench of autumn, so different than where I abide now. Santa Fe is astoundingly gorgeous at this time of year, and I miss it now while I’m packaged in thick layers to shield me against the brutality of rocky mountain winters. In Santa Fe the sunsets would be like supermodels for the cat walks of the heavens. The earth would still be dry as a heartless person’s cheek. In Santa Fe the teens will be like acne erupting across the plaza. In Santa Fe a thin girl with spouts of chestnut hair will be contracting over a pillow, her liquefied soul bubbling out of her tear ducts because adolescence will persecute the emotional, and she can’t help feeling week, especially when her dearest friend was tugged out of her life.
Homesickness is cancerous. It starts as a hideous welt and is nourished by animosity and tears. Then the fertile lump inflates ‘till it governs your soul. It refuses to yield until you bow your head down and capitulate. Then it simply slurps the enthusiasm out of you, morphing you into a carcass. I have been the prey of this emotionally ravenous disease.
Now I look out the window into the snow and all I can do is give everything that kept my flames licking and blazing back to all of you. “You love to write so much Mimi. Write us a song.” My lovely Kailani would ask me every time I showed her one of my poems.
“Ha! I’d love to actually! It might suck miserably but it will have meaning and if I get hit by a train tomorrow you’ll have some way of remembering me.” I replied happily.
“Yeah! And I’ll compose it for you, and train or no train we’ll have like, all this sentimental poetry and music about the days when we were young!” Said Kailani, always the enthusiastic musician.
“God am I going to miss these days of just being a kid and innocent and fun and not giving a damn.” I murmured regretfully. “High school awaits.”
“Worry about high school later darlin’. We have songs to write and green chilli burritos to eat!” Kailani always played the optimist when her friends needed it. This is as close as I’ve got to a song for you guys. But it has as much soul and stamina as and honey-soaked lyrics would. And it was the magician that any song would be, for it inspired me to dance.
I was the dancer, we were the teenagers. We got stoned off the mutual pissed off sensation that mashed up our brain. We used hostility as drugs. We towered over anybody who dare inflict suffering on to our pride, we became tyrants of authority. Santa Fe teen culture, however, is so much more than the hallucinating urge to demolish. Our story is about how you hibernate with your anger and with your friends. It’s about the fumes that radiate off of risk-taking, and the sanctuary we all huddled in because we needed to raise an army against any dominant force. But most of all, it’s about love, baby, love.
Downtown Santa Fe is like a sauna where the only scent snuggled into your nostrils is this delicious and flavorful concoction of cigarette smoke and chili. The girls smell like vanilla and the boys smell like a decomposing childhood. We were bad and we were brilliant. We screwed up and neglected the pollution we inspired. This is because we see beauty in graffiti and dirt. We see hope writhing in the greasy sadness of tears. We conjure up these fascinating alcohols of the strongest love and hate tousled together.
Perhaps the magic was purely an illusion, the spell binding concoction was merely lying in tiny throngs of Cathedral Park. To tell the truth, despite our hurricane-struck hair and outrageous clothing, I think we summoned the magic. It was the squealing, caterwauling teenagers of Santa Fe that stirred up its alluring potion of love and hate. We were the wizards. It’s hilarious to think that a bunch of chicken fajita-polluted teens could be so divine and dominant, but it’s the way things are.
During the school year, downtown was our sensual, irresistible lover. The passionate affairs took place at Cathedral, Ecco (the mouth wateringly delicious gelato parlor), or any of the hidden wrinkles of space at the plaza where we all unzipped our dogmatic demeanors and let our inner beasts loose. During the summer, we were the political and social authorities of downtown. All year round, the teens of Santa Fe had some sort of flamboyant friendship with our city. We whispered in its ear both vile and beautiful things. Now, alone in the mountains, I yearn for that tender sisterhood I shared with home.
One of the most enthralling yet anesthetizing days was when an emotional heap of us went to prowl and unearth our territory: the plaza. It was Montana, a candid and sincere comrade I’ve doted on since the days since we still thought barbies were the authorities of the universe and all we wanted from life was a smooch, a blessing from Mama. Kendall, an electric and resolute comedian, yet loyal sister and buddy never missed out on an opportunity to plunge her flag into the plaza soil, marking her land. Alec, a concentrated and cool preppy, often with a envelope of girls flocking femininely about him also tagged along just for the sanity of socializing with chicks who wouldn’t salivate adoringly all over him and coo mercilessly.
I felt privileged to b with Alec, for he was such an alluring alpha male among his worshipping throng of preppy converts. Yet I didn’t see in him the kind of qualities I thirst for in guys, and treasured and polished our friendship above any guy-to-girl tension or inert electricity. The four of us spent an entire day languidly slouching and swaggering about the convoluted masterpiece we call home. We were adrenalized by the temporary buzz of a Starbucks frappuccino, and currently immersing our awkwardly adolescent bodies in the luscious swords and blades of Cathedral Park grass. We were enjoying the brands of conversations estimated important in the claustrophobic niche between childhood and the stress and deadline stuffed days of growing up.
“Ah! Mark said he thinks my mom is a babe! God what a creeper.”Montana exclaimed in a successful attempt to both intrigue and disgust us.
“ Mark is a child-molester, scary man thing. He looks like he’s 110 instead of 14! He has a friggin mustache. What fourteen-year-old who is hormonally stable has a mustache.” I contributed to our grimy feast of gossip.
“Ha! I wonder what the earliest age for a human being to grow a mustache was! I mean, can you like, pop out of the womb all hairy and hormonal. Jesus Christ what an ugly little fellow that baby would be.” Kendall said.
“Shit! Kendall what the hell goes on in that brain of yours.” Alec said while shaking his head in wonder.
“Mark’s baby! Mustache baby would be Mark’s baby!” Montana squealed, flailing spastically on the ground.
“Come on Tana Mark is just a happy little fellow who doesn’t have the social graces to pick up a razor and shave!” I said. In that moment, in that shelter, petrified cluster of time, I was at bliss. Life was swimming and drowning and failing miserably at succeeding in weaseling their way out of this labyrinth that is humanity, but I was still and save and content with my head snuggled into Kendall’s abs. Squealing and whinnying and chirping about absolutely nothing, rambling about crap. Yet in those blunt, naked and exposed conversations about utter nothingness, my true colors radiated.
I don’t think I was ever as pleased with the way the world was revolving as I was while, downing Starbucks and gossiping relentlessly with my dearest friends. God do I miss you guys, I’m sure I always will. I miss the Fe and the little aesthetics that give it such a spunky swagger and style. Like the way that if you learned how to spit in gravity’s face and flew above Cathedral park, taking in an aerial view of it, all you would see is this massive field of dreamy bodies flopping over one another in a careless display of love. I miss the steroids-addicted mess that urbanization is, and while sitting in a glossy movie theater you know you are in the arteries and veins of suburban America. I miss food so spicy and temper- mental it’s as if it’s going through adolescence. I miss flavor and flamenco dancing and graffiti taking on a bullying and badass demeanor even though it’s only really gushy and profound poetry.
I miss the way perfection was taboo, and how if your life was entirely screwed up and in disarray you were labeled as an artist. What I’ve learned from these bruised months of homesickness, however, is that those merciless pangs of hollowness and loss are never your knight in shining armor. They never conjure up miracles to mend your torn soul, they just keep you lonely. Of course I will never stop missing you kids. But my story can’t be about the empty caves in my chest that you all used to fill. My story has to be about how I persevered. This little chunk of writing is like the golden gate bridge between you and I.
Nostalgia snarled with my memories, I reminisce on possibly the most transforming year of my life. Fourteen. An age where the world and I butt heads and I ended up being the one to result concussed. An age where I tackled those dreams of mine and utterly consumed them. It was an age where love scared the crap out of me but I still fell for the earth’s creatures. It was the age where I garnered up everything in my embrace and then had to lose it again.
On these pages are all my toxins, my guts and my blood. My intention is not to depress, just to get those pollutant gasses out of my system, and finally be able to have some form of documentation as to how much I care for you guys. How much I absolutely adore you. Year 14 of Marialexa Kavanaugh’s life was one of anguish, beauty, and hope. The hope that I would enter high school with all of you was my fuel, and I guzzled it down. I was a brilliant merit scholar with populous throngs of friends blowing me kisses every day, and a future any day- dreaming adolescent would lust after. Nostalgia snarled with my memories, I reminisce on possibly the most transforming year of my life. Fourteen. An age where the world and I butt heads and I ended up being the one to result concussed. An age where I tackled those dreams of mine and utterly consumed them. It was an age where love scared the crap out of me but I still fell for the earth’s creatures. It was the age where I garnered up everything in my embrace and then had to lose it again.
I never thought anything could kill me, but ripping myself apart from girls like my dearest Eva nearly did. I never knew that the last time Theo laughed at one of my jokes would scar me and pierce me forever. I wish I had known, because guys, if I had known how much this would end up hurting I would have written a thousand songs for each of you. I would have dictated the heavens to give me the gift of light, and I’d eject that light upon all of you.
I used to be so extraverted, people felt my energy like a tornado battering them. I used to be gilded and kind, open to love and the affection of the universe. I was Maddy’s life long link to childhood- the puzzle piece that completed our incredible jigsaw. I was Sarah’s only candle as she navigated her way through too many God forsaken tunnels. I was downtown Santa Fe’s duchess, and though I may not have had the crown squatting on my head I still had rank and reason for smiling at all who passed me. I remember all the I love you Mimi’s, and I know I held a place in the world. In your world.
Nowadays I’m a little less vibrant and a little more faded into the mirage of the crowd. I don’t appreciate the sunrise for its intoxicating beauty, and the sunset seems like a warrant for my execution. At night time the stars are masqueraded by a bridal veil of my longing and helplessly wishful thinking. It’s all just dark, dark, dark. You all used to be my torches, I fed off your light when stranded in gloomy tunnels.
After searching mercilessly for another torch and coming up with ash, I’ve had a baby epiphany. The mountains are lovely here and the air tastes like that of utopia. I accept that in Colorado, and will accept much more that traverse my path. It will bandage the battle scars from my hatred and ignorance. And hell, it might work darlings, it might work. But the epiphany elasticizes beyond acceptance of Colorado and where I am now. The thudding soul of the epiphany lies within the fact that despite my pacification with Colorado, I will never lose you guys. We all need our guiding lights, and I found mine in all of you.
But I have to show a little empathy for the girl who always gapes back at me when I look in the mirror now. She may not be gilded on every surface, but the melancholy has only made her more durable. That girl that used to whip out rows of straight As and blow kisses at humanity is still there. I thought I’d sucked the light out of her and buried her under mounds of dirt. But no, she is still alive. She comes alive in this proclamation of individuality. Marialexa comes alive in writing, in dancing, and above all, in the memories of all of you.
So I raise my glass and toast you. I let you know that with every bird chirp and glorious dawn, it is another day to come to the realization that I love you. I always knew that I would have a gorgeous parade of brides maids at my wedding, and they would consist of all of you. I thought my groom would be the boy that coated my summer in faith, laughter and tears of forgiveness. A fourteen-year-old’s dreams can conquer the universe, however, and my new arch rival Reality tells me that this certain boy is sending a world other than mine down to its knees with laughter.
I’ll never assassinate the sentimental adoration I had for him though, just like I’ll never stop caring for all of you. I may not call as often as I wish, or email every day. It’s hard to keep in touch when you feel like you’re in the midst of a blood-shedding battle with high school and youth. This is my way of tossing all those fractions of phone conversations and letters into one big cauldron of love, my undying love for home and the friends that made it so sparkly. During sleepovers we all used to strangle the cruelty of school and growing up, and due to my lack of social vitality I’ve had to look all those terrifying things straight in the eye. So without colorful pajamas, facials, and movie marathons, this is my way of slipping into the genuine Marialexa, who cares more about giving fruitful hugs than about the meaning of life.
To Marialexa, otherwise known as Mimi: this new, regretful me wants you back in my body, and I am not going to lose you, the true me who harbored and returned so many people’s affection. Yet I will sign the peace treaty with this new me in permanent ink. Accept, forgive, but never forget. To all of you: Keep going down town and flourishing, towering above your kingdom of freedom, art and love. I’m still with you, I will always be with you.
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