I like to believe I'm a woman who knows what she likes.

I like Frank Sinatra. I like watching the same TV show over and over and over again. I like neck kisses and the taste of coffee in my lover's tongue. I like burning incense and candles and yellow dim lights where I feel pretty. I like being told I am pretty. I like it when people notice slight things about me and tell me, I like it when I haven't noticed myself. I like making food for my friends and I like hearing people telling stories about exciting moments in their lives.

I like being drunk. I like the romanticism behind cocktails and how they're basically magic spells, with all their ingredients and intentions.

I like songs that remind me of when I'm drunk. That happy drunk. That comfy drunk. I like it when whiskey feels like a warm embrace from the inside. I like listening to Sinatra and Dean Martin, wasted on a Las Vegas stage in 1963 telling inappropriate jokes. I like Hozier's singing of Humours of Whiskey, sounding exactly like I imagine fae music would sound in the middle of a forest.

Come guess me this riddle, what beats pipe and fiddle,

what's hotter than mustard and milder than cream?

What best wets your whistle, what's clearer than crystal,

what's sweeter than honey and stronger than steam?

I like wine and wine stained tongues. I find them funny. I like how it smoothes any difficult conversation. I like popping open a bottle of Cabernet with those I love and sharing the moment. I like popping it open for myself and starting the longest skin care ritual while listening to Ariana Grande tell me I want finer things in life and that a man should leave me the fuck alone because I'm a star in space.

I like beer when it's a party and we're celebrating. The first beer I liked my cousin Aarón gave to me at a New Year's Eve party in my cousin Alma's backyard, next to a fire pit, and he recited Alan Poe's Lines on Ale and I couldn't but contain my excitement for a sip of poetry in liquid form.

Filled with mingled cream and amber,
I will drain that glass again.
Such hilarious visions clamber
Through the chamber of my brain.
Quaintest thoughts, queerest fancies
Come to life and fade away.
What care I how time advances;
I am drinking ale today.

I like funky cocktails, with their smoke and their little drops of stuff. I like trying them, searching for my favorite one. I like pretending they say more about me than they actually do, like my zodiac signs or my favorite books.

I like all booze parafernalia. Shakers and glasses, long spoons and droppers, infused this, simmered that, I like the use of garnishes and little stainless steel utensils. I like those cool ass bars downtown where they don't use blenders and you can listen to jazz. 

I like thinking about these feelings and living them all over again.
I think I just might get drunk tonight.

 

Your kisses feel like fire
all over my skin
you leave your red hot trails
and whenever I touch the burn behind
I remember vividly
how you're made of embers
that I don't want to extinguish.

I am wind that catches sparks
send them flying through the night
into the trees and the dry lands
I feel dangerous near you.

Set me ablaze, you forest fire,
we're quick to burn
intense flames rising through the skies
I see you lighting up the horizon
I bet they can smell the smoke from here.

 

In honor of my witch friend Ely's birthday, I'm making her a little something. And as your official kitchen witch, here's a recipe with magical intention.

Vegan Lavender & Lemon Cheesecake.

Ingredients:

• 2 Cups of cashews. For prosperity and communication.
• 1/2 cup of yellow lemon juice. For beauty, logevity and self-love.
• 1/3 cup of sugar. For love.
• 1/4 cup of coconut oil, melted. For protection.
• 2 tsp lavender. For tranquility, peace of mind and psychic ability.
• 1/2 tsp vainilla extract. For friendship.
• I make my crust with a cup of crumbled cookies and half a cup of vegan butter. No necessary intention in this one, just the vessel for my spell, I may smoke cleanse it if I'm feeling extra witchy.

Procedure:

1. Mix your crumbled cookies with the melted vegan butter until you get a sandy mixture that lumps together when pressing into your pie pan, I like using a springform pan.
2. Bake your crust at 180°C for about 8 minutes or until it turns a little golden.
3. Blend all the filling ingredients together, think about your intention as you add them one by one. You will get a creamy mixture, if it's too thick to blend into the creaminess you look for, you can add a little bit of almond milk to help out.
4. Fill your crust with the mixture, pop out any air bubbles that may form, then with a silicone spatula even it out.
5. Decorate if desired, I added a couple of lemon wedges and lavender buds.
6. Freeze for 5 hours or overnight.

Happy birthday, Ely. I believe your soul and mine are very old friends.

 There's bound to be a ghost in the back of your closet,

no matter where you live.
There'll always be a few things - maybe several things,
that you're gonna find really difficult to forgive.

"I've been afraid, I guess, of feeling orphaned. I'm scared of losing my mother to a disease like I lost my father so many years ago. I wasn't ready to lose him then, and despite it all, I'm not ready to lose her now. I'm terrified of the idea of being parentless before 30. 

I thought I would have at least one to go with me through it all.

I want to have a parent when I get married. I want to have children spoiled to pieces by a grandparent. I want to have a parent to rely upon when I am in shambles, confused about diapers and breastfeeding, potty training and all that crap that has to get done eventually. It's not nearly in the horizon yet,  but I wanted to feel like I could have that little support."

There's gonna come a day when you feel better,
you'll rise up, free and easy on that day,
and float from branch to branch,
lighter than the air
just when that day is coming, who can say? who can say?

She looked at me like if she could touch me through the motherfucking screen and she said,

"Loretta, dear, I'm going to let you know something you're not seeing. It's going to hurt you a lot, but knowing it will definitiely help you heal someday: You've been orphaned for many years now, you do not have parents. One because he died, and the other one because she chose to stop being your mother and tried to become your daughter. You have made it as an orphan for quite a while."

I'm gonna get myself in fighting trim
Scope out every angle of unfair advantage
I'm gonna bribe the officals, I'm gonna kill all the judges
It's gonna take you people years to recover from all of the damage

I stared blankly at the screen, feeling sore and empty, but somehow relieved.
It pains me to know how absent my parents have been in my life. How much I've had to do my own bringing up. It makes sense, all my quirks and my special ways of doing my responsible human things. I feel sad, and hurt but proud.

Our mother has been absent ever since we've founded Rome
There's gonna be a party when the wolf comes home.

 

my mom dates like if it was a professional sport
she goes all in in a matter of seconds
she gets lovebombed and she collects it all 
saves the feeling for posterity
she picks up fights when things don't go her way
she chooses men that become violent
who hit her the first chance they get
sometimes i feel she wants to fight them back
that if she were a man, she'd be violent too
hitting before speaking, never thinking before acting
she's a small woman like me
or i am small like her
she's full of energy and reckless ideas
bouncing up and down like a clumsy golden retriever dog
pawing around, tripping over her own tail
she goes around and around
every mistake repeated
like a broken record
that skips and skips and skips
every turn causing the most umpleasant of sounds
until shes's down on the ground
pushed down by herself of by her most recent acquisition
she breaks up with them
she makes empty promises i never asked for
she calls on the phone more
she gets a facebook request
she calls to let me know she's going out with the most amazing man
the record skips and it skips and it skips.

 

i'm 16 and feel melted and salty, like butter on a sidewalk,
i slide down my bedroom walls and spot my rug with stains
i become smaller by the second
drop by drop on the way down

outside my house i hear yelling and shouting
a fight has begun
it smells coppery and violent
i ponder how to run away

a fist breaks through my bedroom's window
glass comes raining down on my little twin size bed
shimmering with the moonlight
i try to recover, to unmelt and hide away

i'm 16 and i feel terrified of dying
way before the thought became desirable
i want to fix my broken window and my broken heart
unaware it will take about 10 years to heal

i stay scared
for years and years
the fear arises in the strangest moments
nothing but a sound, but a smell

i want to heal this pain from my mind
to become put-together
to no longer fear the smell of copper and the raining glass
i want to stop mentioning this incident in therapy

 

I'm getting older, and I'm getting dumber. Or at least now I know less than I did when I was younger. I used to profess, now I more like pro-wonder. I used to fear death, now I'm set to go under.

Estaba leyendo mis poemas viejitos y mis escritos de años pasados, y veo lo que está mal, lo que está herido. Sé que el tiempo me está ayudando a sanar. El tiempo, la terapia y el aprenderme yo solita. 

Escribí un post hace tres años -in the before times,- donde estaba estresándome de que cuando cumpliera 24 años ya me iba a sentir "adulta", que iba a sentir que ya todo tenía sentido y que estaba creando mi "picture perfect life" que soñaba en la adolescencia.

I'm turning 27 this year. Los del club. Los que tenía mi papá cuando me tuvieron.
Me gusta el 27, suena a que sigues siendo cool pero ya agarraste la onda tantito.

Han sido unos años bastante de la chingada para todes. Si no se me va la gente, la alejo poco a poco cuando me hacen daño. Estoy aprendiendo a cuidarme yo. También otres vuelven, como ALF en forma de fichas. Aquí están buscándome el lado. Tratando de arreglar lo que ya no tiene vuelta.
Hay personas nuevas, que me traen experiencias mágicas y diferentes y que no sé cómo le había estado haciendo sin ellas.