ren08642

[ren08642]

June 21, 2025 10:47pm

This message marks only hours after the United States attacked three of Iran’s nuclear sites. This decision was made without congressional approval and without any input whatsoever from the citizens of the US. Not only that, but Iranian officials have cited the attack as “not that loud”. They have also limited civilian access to internet citing “enemy cyber attacks”. Our government has been warned that any strikes made on Iranian soil will be met with dangerous levels of retaliation. I fear not my own danger, but the danger of those too ignorant to realize our proximity to war before it was far too late.

[ren08642]

On Mike Lee

I wonder if the men and women on the Oregon trail thought of how their settlement would affect the US in the broader scope of world history. Did they consider how their westward journey was truly a theft opposed to a divinely led migration? Likely they didn’t, blinded by myths of unused land and sold on the notion that “unused” was to say uninhabited, and that uninhabited was to say up for grabs. I wonder if that’s how Mike Lee feels, seeing the last of our lush and abundant earth as nothing but an opportunity for industrial expansion. Does he look upon the doe’s humble home as invision an open plain to be liquidated? He says he needs 3 million acres for housing and “infrastructure”, the political man’s translation for “whatever we see fit”. Even this is an half truth, he has no clear plan for what he plans to build and profit from on these lands, only that he intends to be the first to do it. Even then there’s no guarantee that said “housing” -say, apartments- would be made remotely accessible for the population it’s meant to serve. Especially in a time where economist’s idea of expansion of wealth is stealing land and selling it to the poor for extortionate prices, we can not fool ourselves into thinking that this bill is to benefit us in any capacity. This bill is nothing more than an attempt to buy out the last of America’s rich pastures and habitats to create more opportunity for the rich to scalp the poor. What happens when all of the land is bought, what then? We cannot keep expanding and expanding with no clear goal instead without sinking ourselves into a dystopian nightmare. This is not a business deal, this is a land heist, a scheme to make assets out of our living Mother Earth.

[ren08642]

Common Sense for the Complacent and Complicit

Shadows of men much bigger than ours dim our own. I know many of my peers will grapple with the weight of the world on their minds, never to speak it into the zeitgeist. I know speeches of eloquence and direness weigh on their minds heavy as stones, an unspoken protest. I will not be the same, for I do not carry the belief that all of history’s biggest hero’s are already written and long dead. Paine thought the same about Nietzsche. I cannot imagine that the world of politics has already ended, I know that it never will. There is so much history left to be made and I will not stand by and wait for someone else to make it. I will make a fool of myself every day if it means this fool has the honor of planting a seed of distrust in a sea of blind obedience. I refuse to stand and let the soil I was bred from burn itself into ashes. Our president believes he has twice the power of King George while being half the man. He plates the White House in gold while our children starve, and do not think I speak in distant metaphors. Our schools have become factories of Catholic obedience instead of factories of thought. So I must write. Even if I make a fool of myself and my paragraphs make no sense maybe to someone somewhere it will strike a chord of civil disobedience. I am only 17 and female at that. I have so much more time to refine and repose but for now I will speak with all the volume my youth asks of me. Write. Speak. Take back democracy from the prying hands that strangle it. History is not yet written and it never will be.

[ren08642]

Dreams

Life is far too short to settle for dreams and visions of what could’ve been. Many don’t realize that until they’re at the very end of it. That they’d’ve rather died trying to make their fantasies reality than dismissing them as childish nonsense. I realize that Id rather fall to the deepest pits of the earth than feel my stomach turn at what could’ve been. That Id rather carve my delusions into the limestone of every cave and canyon with a pocket knife than feel the pain of regret. I’m not afraid of failing, because failing while trying is incomparably better than denying yourself that taste of ecstasy of success. And when death doth take my hand, I will grip my fantasies so tightly with the other just before reluctantly slipping them into the hands of my children. And I will feel peace.

[ren08642]

The First Time God Spoke to Me

I remember the first time God spoke to me. The too-tight saddle shoes pinching my toes, the scent of waxed wooden doors and steam-cleaned carpets, the cold holy water traced onto my forehead—all of it is etched into my mind. I remember the scratches that would litter my knees from spending hours kneeling on crimson tweed pews. Each breath in the heavy, stagnant air felt like drowning, but I pressed on, not on my own accord, but for the dozens of revered church members analyzing 6-year-old me closely for any signs of boredom or careless inattentiveness. Father Carlos gripped the finger bone of St. Clare of Assisi, preaching salvation and fire, sins and damnation. I tried to picture a lifetime of endless torment and flesh-melting flames, but all I knew was the fleeting pain of a stovetop burn. A hard lump would spring up in my throat when I would shift my focus from my certain future to my hollow present. Back and forth, my mind ocelated. What god could look upon a crowd of children strictly dressed in fine uniforms, marching rhythmically into his home before standing at attention before him, eager to follow his every word, and shame them as if they were demons sent to poison the earth? Twice a week, I was promised God would call me to join his army of doting devotees. Twice a week, I knelt, pleading for his voice. And then, one night, he spoke. A whisper. My name. I spun around—nothing. Another whisper, warm breath ghosting my ear. Again, nothing. Was he testing me? Taunting me? My whole life, I had been told God would take me into his arms and teach me how to be saved. Instead, he teased me with his absence, calling my name only to vanish into the void.

[ren08642]

Speech on the Current State of America

As I stand here today delivering this speech, I stand on the very same land that was stolen from my ancestors through means of force and senseless violence. Today, I see the same violence I recall reading about in Textbooks handed to me by my Texas history teacher. From the very beginning, America has made it clear that this is no place for us. This is no place for the immigrant, the poor man, the elderly, or the colored. As a Mexican American, I see blatant racism in my everyday life. The Mexican American has never known a day of peace in America. However, I still sit alone on my bed, wondering how the rich and powerful in this country can stand to be so openly hateful and vile towards the innocent and vulnerable seeking aid. Days after Donald Trump was elected, a helicopter collided with a plane in mid-air before bursting into flames and crashing into the Potomac River. This along with other events is surely representative of the future of his presidency, down to the Potomac River being the sight of such an omen. As I turn on the news every morning I am reminded of the state of this country; sliding down a slippery slope into a ruthless dictatorship driven by a child only taught hate. As I step out into the world I am suffocated by the easily misguided supporting the fall of this country with everything they have. Still, though, a small group of the compassionate among a sea of powerful ignorance is doomed to lose. In other words, there is strength in numbers, and hateful ignorance has numbers. Due to this, my brothers and sisters are being shackled with heavy chains and hauled to Mexico swiftly. For once I felt as if I had been transported to the 1800s in the very same spot I stood. I saw people who looked like me being raided, forcefully arrested and shipped country borders. I ask the government why. Why must you wrongfully raid your most faithful, your most vulnerable, and your most innocent? The government responds in a clear and shameless tone, "We don't like your skin tone, your culture, your people. Unfamiliarity terrifies our ignorant brains and in response, we shall exterminate it by any violent means necessary". The America I live in seems more like a joke to me now. A felon with little diplomatic and political background shamelessly leading a group of hate and ignorance, hellbent on seeing my blood spilled. My blood will not spill. I will go to every courthouse in America and scream at every passerby "My blood will not spill." I will walk with my handcuffs linked to my shackles, blood pouring down my face and my voice raw from screaming. Sweat will drip down my neck, dripping onto my blue cot in a cold cell. My head will be cut from my body. Still, I will scream louder than my body can handle, and my message will never change. We will survive hate. We won't ever leave. This land is our birthright. Ignorance will not represent us. My blood will not spill. We shall overcome.

Today marks the beginning of what the news calls the Canadian-U.S. Trade war. I believe this is one of several wars our country fights at the moment. Mass deportation, criminalization of the innocent, Racism, and much more- too vile to mention. Even when white supremacists have killed every last Mexican in the country, we shall survive. If not for the future of Mexico, love, and adversity, then for its past to be honored.

[ren08642]

Masterlist

Non-fiction Stories

🔒-Four Perfect Hours- A story about an encounter

Poems

-The First Time God Spoke to Me- A retelling of a personal event

-Dreams- A statement on failure

Vents

🔒-Do I look like him- A vent about having an absent father

-Robert Wun AW24- A vent focusing on creative imagery

Quick letters to the public

-Speech on the Current State of America- Self-explanatory

-On Mike Lee- A response to the “Big Beautiful Bill”

-Common Sense for the Complacent and Complicit- A half baked manifesto

-June 21, 2025 10:47pm- Urgent

[ren08642]

Robert Wun AW24

I hear drums beat rhythmically, approaching from behind. Soldiers in red wail on their bass drums with relentless and imposing devotion. The soldiers hold themselves with the same equanimity as the Lord's angels rescuing Peter from his iron cell. The resounding, thunder-like strike of the drums in unison vibrates slowly through my body, starting from my feet and absorbing into my heart.

Inside my head, there is nothing but a white lime-wash wall. Child-like scribbles and sketches in various shades of waxy crayon cover the uneven eggshell walls. Layers and layers of wax hold memories and stories that describe everything from gut-turning terror to innocent bliss. The vibrant colors on the wall meld into an ugly, muddy buildup; I mistook it for a dark purple wall. The coats of chroma resemble a healing skin graft, splotches of scabs and puss disguising the soft flesh underneath.

I grab my hair frantically, banging on my skull with a closed fist as if trying to break down a door, behind which a woman hanging from a rope swings. That urgency, despite resignation, is mirrored exactly in my actions. My breathing matches the 169 bpm drum strikes that the soldier's chorus approaches with. As my fleshy limbs tremble, I am reminded of my weak cage, the spongey layers that cover layers of coincidental miracles and cosmic anomalies. My soul is trapped inside a tender shell of sinew and tissue. The shell has a certain expiry date of which I know not. As someone diligently scribbles lines of crayon into the ivory bone of my skull, my cage activity rots around my porous bones.

Suddenly, a drummer steps out of his colleagues' organized and practiced formation. He walks towards me with even, ridged steps and utters, "You know what you must do." And I do. I must cut my soul from the cocoon that rots around it.

Act 2.

The tendons are most resistant to the sawing motion of the OXO kitchen knife I hold in my infirm grip. One might expect me to describe the process of removing my soul as hammering the image of Ixtab from a refined block of marble. Instead, it closely resembled slicing a foamy specimen of grape agate from the middle of a bloody porchetta. The smell of Iodine and freshly cut chicken breast fills my nose as bright red secretion frantically spills from my neck onto the framed photograph of my anticipatorily optimistic pregnant mother.