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"So that the revolution does not completely rot I leave you with a message I am old And your utopia is for future generations There are so many children who will be born With a little broken wing And I want them to fly, comrade I want your revolution To drop them a piece of red heaven So that they fly." - Pedro Lemebel from A Last Supper of Queer Apostles

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i want to exist before meaning & then I think of my name & if i'd become anything worthy of being called / i want my pain to exist without meaning, to exist as it is detached from life lessons / i want to become meaningless, which is not the same as hopeless, though it can be. can you reach me then without a name, without a story. am i alive yet. am i human yet. am i useful.

i want to exist outside of my usefulness. i want to exist the way my tears fall. i love living the most when I am not needed. when i make a big mistake and i'm deemed unworthy of attention. i furl inwards during these droughts of attention. i watch my own desires grow, i make the bed for my comforts, i sit my fears down on the floor with me and i ask them to hold my hand. it helps. i promise. and it does. falling doesn't always feel like falling. sometimes it feels like i'm flying. the sun another pit stop on the road. let me pull over to stretch, let me lay in this warmth. it burns sweetly.

i want to exist before meaning even when I try my hardest to make it.

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When the Heart Breaks

I'm a fan of the band, BTS. I've attended their concert. I own quite a bit of their merch. I am committed to their releases. There was a time when I didn't know who they were. A time when I didn't care to know. I cared about other people then. Other musicians, other writers, other friends. Closest of them all was my best friend since middle school, A. She took me to Disneyland and I brought her into my family. When she first introduced me to BTS, I listened to them out of obligation. A bus ride to tour colleges is never a short one and we were in the habit of sharing earphones. This was our norm -- extending past our wants to meet at the compromise that is friendship. When I went away to college, I learned the bandmate's names. I watched their music videos, and our friendship continued despite the distance. I was good at this. Good at being a friend. Good at losing myself in someone else's interests because somehow I understood this is what made a good friendship.

When we stopped talking my sophomore year of college, I still listened to their songs. BTS became the backdrop to countless hours in the library, my writing sessions, and my flights homes. They also somehow became, perhaps by default, the one thing I could still access about our broken friendship. I loved them. I still do. But this isn't about BTS. Not entirely.

Because while I've been to their concert and I've lost my voice yelling alongside their songs, I am still learning how to make sense of the heartbreak that comes from lost friendships. They tell you, sometimes warn you, that the friends you make in high school will not be your friends post graduation. How cruel. What does it mean to say goodbye to something before you are ready for its departure?

In his poem, "For the Hardest Days" Clint Smith writes, "How maybe / we are not so different from the leaves. / How maybe we are also being reborn / to be something more than we once were." I wonder if we are reborn after every heartbreak. If we are made new again from the pain. A renewal so strong that a band becomes its very own comforting thing. How their songs change to echo my own voice and not the combined chorus of childhood friends who no longer text each other the obligatory "happy birthday" text. I like to think we are like leaves as Smith writes. We decay. We fall. We return next spring.

Is there any alternative?

Currently, El Salvador is suffering under the dictatorship of failed president. I omit his name on purpose. After forcing the country to take on Bitcoin as its official currency, the country burns from its inevitable crash. My grandmother, Mameya, still resides in El Salvador. This is another kind of heartbreak. Watching my parent's home country return to conditions mirroring the 1980s Civil War. I think in some cases there is too much heartbreak.

Leaves don't fall year-round for a reason.

But we aren't leaves. Even if imagining we are descendent of trees is comforting. Our falling is its own special routine. A breaking that happens every season. Because we must. Because how else do we gather ourselves? How else do rebuild if not intentionally? There is a method of survival in which we fall apart and break into slices of reality we call growth to pull us forward towards something better than this. Something better than what we want to disappear into. Something that no longer makes us want to dissolve. A thing called growth because we have nothing else, nothing more helpful to name it.

I welcome the breaking. In her poem, "What Remains Grows Ravenous" Ada Limón writes, "I thought everything was behind me: / death, and dying, and sickness. I didn't know I was changing my life -- / that I would have done anything, / that what was left of me would become / so ruthless to survive." There is a desperation that comes from so much breaking. The heart breaks & breaks & breaks. It also continues. I am committed to continuing. Perhaps ruthlessly.

Sometimes all that you are left with is a question: what can I make out of goodbye? And I like to think one of our jobs as writers is to answer that question.

originally published via Sims Library of Poetry's Magazine, may 2022

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“Palestinian life (comma) love (comma) and freedom (period)”

words by Nicki Kattoura from, “A Thousand Eulogies Are Exported to the Comma” Of Syntax and Genocide.

You can read the full piece linked in this post.

i don’t have anything new to say. my words flatten themselves in front such immense grief. and still, i ask them to keep on. to remember, to rage, to witness. i ask myself to do the same. i hope you are finding ways to continue. to fight.

Danez Smith tweeted yesterday, “How must I disrupt my own life to counter the disruptive violence of the world?” I ask myself the same question.

how do we disrupt this life (this very american, very capitalistic, individualistic life) to counter the violence (often one funded by this country) of the world?

how do we take our dreams of a better world & our writings of more equitable life to this reality?

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again.

there's something uniquely deranged about writing on tumblr. there are no accolades here. no direct likes-to-money pipeline. and yet, this failure to produce money, the inability to turn yourself into a product, the refusal to be consumed, it all makes it even more special. it’s my disaster. 

maybe disaster is too harsh of a word. but everything feels like an almost-disaster these days. instead of cowering behind social media breaks and isolating myself from friends because i simply can’t carry it all, i’m washing my underwear by hand and hanging them out to dry on the hinge of this blog’s door. i’m sitting in a library finding solace from NY’s brutal wind. i’ve spent the day bouncing between coffee shops and this chipped wooden desk. looping the block and re-greeting the same baristas and librarians hours within our last encounter. i smile when they say, hi again! 

my thermos is no longer hot, my headphones are almost dead so they’re beeping every few seconds, and it’s still a precious day. i get to visit my memories. i’m thinking of my friend, Chente. i can still think up his smile. how big. how bright. i haven’t left flowers for him yet. not since his funeral. but it makes sense. it doesn’t make sense to meet him in the cemetery. i look for him in my music instead. i play kali uchis, because he would have adored her new album. would have called her beautiful. good people have a way of appreciating others. of vocalizing their love. i find chente in my love for our friends. i send messages with blue butterflies wishing everyone a soft day. i don’t know how else to hold the grief except with tender hands. 

tumblr is good with tenderness. with rage too. maybe our feelings are so present because of the disaster. you can’t carry shame in the void. it’s good to return. to maintain the drafts. to extend them into other drafts. to stumble through trying to find a throughline. to keep writing. 

i want to see Chente again. pick him out of a swarm of people walking the opposite way. have him yell my name should i miss him. hear him laugh. how loud. how big. i find chente in my hello. i keep him with me in the again. 

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"Since, anyway, it will end one day, why not try it — life — one more time?" - James Baldwin, from "Nothing Personal"

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on keeping the light on

My personal grief does not exist outside of the world's grief. I forget sometimes. Sometimes my own yearning for a lost loved one overshadows the weight of the world around me. And I think this is okay. To be flattened by your own and sometimes another's sadness. A loop of grief sustained by you and everyone around you. I'm also learning how to hold that grief alongside everything else that is good but often forgotten. I don't want to lose love. I don't want to preemptively mourn our world into death.

In his essay, "Nothing Personal," James Baldwin intertwines the self with the whole. They (the self & the whole) are their own, and they are connected. We are selves, each of us, living in the world, but we are not suddenly separated from our history. We are not disconnected from one another even if capitalism wants us to think we are.

I think that's why I was really struck by this essay. We need to pay attention to each other, to our history, to our selves. More specifically how it all informs our lives, our futures. Or else, we'll float away.

As Baldwin writes, "For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out."

Let's keep the light on, friends.

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i think of you & i see a future where love is possible. a future that includes romance with all of its tangents. like our walks to coffee shops & our evening conversations in your apartment. i think of you & i feel the softness of your hand in mine. i feel your cheek gently resting against my palm, my thumb close to your bottom lip. your eyes closed in relief. i think of you & i remember our thighs pressing against each other, sitting too close on such a big bed. i think of you still & i know i am capable of loving this way.

i love you differently now. less body and more distance. i love you quietly. i have yet to make meaning out of this. all i know is that i think of you. still, i think of you. and i hope you think of me too.

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i hope it’s okay that i let you go. even with all these posts about what reuniting would look like, i am saying goodbye. in this version of our lives at least. and i think it’s okay. i hope you’re surrounded by love. i hope you have new friends who you can confide in & call up randomly without any worry. if possible, i hope our friendship stays in your memory as a warm afternoon. the night is here. the moon is out and the sun has gone down. we have reached our horizon. I am thankful for how bright & beautiful it was. thank you.

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mi querido amigo 🦋,

ya van dos años desde que te fuiste de este mundo. estoy pensando en ti. en tu sonrisa tan bella. recuerdo todos tus abrazos y palabras de aliento que me decías los días que no pude esconder mi tristeza. eres y todavía sos un luz tan brillante. te llevo aquí conmigo en mi corazón. y le pido al universo que el amor de todos te alcance en donde estés. mi hermoso amigo. bello amigo. inteligente y cariñoso amigo. nada en este mundo tiene razón, y aveces me enojo en pensar lo injusto que es tu ida de esta vida, pero estoy aquí bailando todavía. bailando por vos y tu memoria. siempre me recordabas que éramos fuertes y que éramos gente que si podía, y estoy tratando de seguir tus palabras. te quiero mucho mucho. espérame ahí en donde estás. te veo cuando me toca verte y te voy a contar sobre todos los lindos canciones que han salido y los libros que te gustarían y todo todo lo demás.

con amor, tu amiga, sandra ☁️

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hello!! while i mostly write about the shape of my sadness & grief & & &. i’m happy to share this more hopeful piece written for a beautiful project all about tomorrow. hope (feeling so much of it these days!!) you can give it a read. click on the link if you'd like to read about libraries & community-making & childhood!!

small excerpt: "Childhood isn’t easy. Nothing seems to be. But I think it was a time when community meant something beyond the page. We tasked ourselves, with every game we played, and every fight we had, to read one another carefully. How are you feeling? Should we fight pirates today? Your dad is looking for you. My mom asked your mom if I can stay over while she goes to the market. I’ll see you later. Let’s play mañana."

here’s to finding how to best continue forever & ever !! may tomorrow be gentle & if it’s not, may we organize with our communities & find ways in our daily lives to bring about that tmr.

with care,

sandra <3

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"Sometimes I think it is sentimental, or excessive, certainly not intellectual, or perhaps too naïve, too self-wounded to value each life like that, to feel loss to the point of being bent over each time. There is no innovating loss. It was never invented, it happened as something physical, something physically experienced. It is not something an "I" discusses socially. Though Myung Mi Kim did say that the poem is really a responsibility to everyone in a social space. She did say that it was okay to cramp, to clog, to fold over at the gut, to have to put hand to flesh, to have to hold the pain, and then translate it here. She did say, in so many words, that what alerts, alters." - Claudia Rankine from Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric

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an elegy in progress

nona, you’re good with words. can you write

something for Papi? we need someone to read

for the velorio. it can be in english. he loves—

loved your writing. sorry. we know it’s hard.

i think about dying & then i think about Papi’s

gabetta. a brown deteriotting thing thrown out

for the city to keep. it held loose change & old

business cards with a list of birthdays on the back.

nona, we have to go. ya levantate. we need

flowers. don’t forget the water bottle. clean

the tombstone. rip the weeds out. vamos.

we have to go home soon. say goodbye.

guilt shakes me awake on the nights i forget

to pray to Papi. when did breathing become

this difficult? i dream of kneeling on rice,

bloodied hands held above my head in penance.

nona, can we sell the truck? we know you want-

ed to keep it. we can’t afford to fix it. please

don’t be sad. we’ll keep the seat cushion for you.

the money will help pay the rent. please say yes.

i try not to think about dying. i google

El Salvador instead. learn about el Flor

de Izote. imagine taking its white petals,

like cumulus clouds, and devouring them.

by sandra sanchez (that's me!!) originally published via the Sims Library of Poetry's Poem A Week series. you can find it here: ta-da

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on writing

I can’t breathe when I think of everyone I miss. Dead and alive. I turn 25 next year, and I still don’t know how to hold so much ache. I don’t think I’m supposed to do it alone. But how do you turn to someone who is also hurting? I write instead. My own way of communing with the dead. 

I didn’t start writing-writing when I was young. I journaled half-heartedly. I wrote some lines for father’s day & mother’s day. I did my homework. I wrote my assigned essays and journal entries. Used the proper fanboys. And then Ms. Amreen took us, her entire advisory class, to an open mic somewhere in downtown LA and I just knew. I have something to say. I also want to connect with a room full of people. I want this. 

Sometime during an evening of snaps & whoops in between readings, I felt a hand extend towards me. And I grabbed it as hard as I could. Saving a life, turns out, can happen anywhere. 

Writing feels like coming home.

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i love you. i miss you. i wish we could relearn how to be friends again. but that seems impossible now. i know I know. but i remember your birthday every year and I listen to the music you showed me and the pain isn’t so loud. i really did believe we’d be friends in every reality. maybe we still are in another world. i like to think so. and if our wounds heal, i like to hold onto the hope of meeting you again in this world. i love you. stay safe.

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the librarian recommended some books for me to read & i checked them out bc it always feels nice to read books recommended by others (especially librarians). i thought of you when i spoke to her about the different authors & who she liked most bc i realized i don’t remember who your favorite author is anymore. i still have this vampire book you gifted me for a birthday (or was it navidad?) some years ago and i wonder what kind of book you would gift to someone now? i miss you. how are you? what are you reading? let me know. my dreams are open to you, friend.

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do you think we’ll be friends again in another life? could we extend ourselves past mistakes & selfishness & ego to meet at what i imagine true safety feels like? i miss you again. i always do. perhaps more these days. can i tell you a secret? i’d happily befriend you again in this life. i would. and i don’t know if it has anything to do with my recent need to find love but i do know that after losing so many people to death, the hard and fast rules i used to hold onto don’t make much sense. i can love you even after feeling hurt. i think i can. because what of all the other moments & years you held me tenderly in our friendship? what happens to all those moments we spent building our own little world full of inside jokes & a shared interest in being the best people we could be together. im sorry my pain spread the way it did. for not forgiving you quickly. i write this here for a reason. because i know that as much as i wish to befriend you again, i won’t. because even as i wish to disregard my own ache, it’s still here. and the wound is big my friend. but how silly is it that even this wound, this giant hurt, i cherish because it came from my love for you. no wonder it still fucking hurts. how can it not?