to the conversations i replay in my head, here’s what i’d say instead

to the conversations i replay in my head,
here’s what i’d say instead:

1. what’s the point of you even trying to get to know me when you already made up your mind about me? you think i’m going to sit here and waste my time trying to convince you of who i am? you’re so stuck on me being where i’m from and the fact that i’m bipolar. so what if you read some fucking poems? stop calling me crazy. i already know that. i don’t need you or anybody reminding me of that. 

2. people are always saying they belong to the moon. that they’re moon children. well i’m not. i stay up with the moon but i’ve never belonged to her. i am a sun child. i just always end up hiding from the light that loves me and run with the darkness instead. because as soon as something good like light comes into my life, i expect it to abandon me right at the moment that i’m vulnerable. so i hide in the shadows of the moon instead because it’s so much easier. to not deal with the pain, you know?

3. i love you. i’ve waited a long time to tell you that.

4. i don’t like using terms of endearment anymore. it’s too personal and then men think i’m taking whatever we have way too seriously. i mean ask the men who i write poems about. i call them baby in my poems more than i fucking call them that in real life. wait, that means they would have to know the poems are about them. oh yikes. okay.

5. you should stop looking for me. if you wouldn’t have married the side chick, the woman that you cheated on me with, then maybe your life wouldn’t have been as messy. but you know what? you men never learn to stop fucking with a woman like me. i didn’t send anyone to fuck up your car but i’m glad that shit happened. you know how me and karma roll.

6. me being accepting of who i am and my sexuality isn’t going to damage your goddamn reputation or your image. don’t even mention me as your family member if you’re so embarrassed of me. i could care less who’s coming into the picture now, i’m not changing who i am for anyone. it took me years of self-sabotaging, of hating my body, of all this reckless abandon to finally….finally being okay with the woman i am, and you think i’m going to change that now? might as well start laughing now cause jokes on you.

7. if aliens came knocking on my door right now, i’d ask them to take me with them. i’d beg them to leave this planet because there’s nothing here for them but a bunch of morons. anyways, you mentioned deja vu. i think we experience it because there’s a parallel universe and sometimes we did something at the same time as our parallel that caused deja vu. i wonder what my parallel is doing. i wonder if she’s with that guy i always dreamed of being with one day. i hope she’s having a good time. i hope he’s getting her sunflowers. i hope she took him to south street seaport.

8. i’m so sorry about your dad dying. he was an amazing man. this isn’t fair at all. please let me know if you need anything, if there’s any way i can help. i want this pandemic to die just like you do. i’m sorry. i really am. is your mom okay? how’s your son holding up? here’s my number.

9. you feel like you don’t know me because you realized that i am more than my poems? wow. imagine that? being a person outside of the art? being a whole ass human being outside of a few words that i string along? being this complex woman who’s more than her heartache and the fight against women? being fun? did you think you were meeting someone broken that you needed to fix? because that’s condescending and utterly disrespectful for you to assume that i’m just a walking trauma.

10. tell me what you want. be specific. tell me so i won’t make mistakes when i see you. so i won’t push myself away when you tell me no. like can i choke you while i bite your lips and i’m straddled onto your hips? can we hold hands? can we just be? because i’ve made the decision that this time, i’m going to be very open with you.

– gretchen gomez

June TBR

UMM WHO THE HELL AM I? First of all I haven’t done a TBR in god knows how long. I swore them off during my booktube days. Yes, you read that right, booktube days, which was YEARS ago.

However, I know exactly what I’m going to read this month because I’m in the mood for all these books so yay!!! My TBR is also not huge because I’m going to Puerto Rico this month for a wedding. EEEEEEEEEEK!!!

*all titles link you to the Goodreads page*

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My Book of the Month Picks:

Cycling safety / poor visibility to oncoming traffic

• A Nearly Normal Family by M.T. Edvardsson is a mystery/thriller novel. It was my June BOTM pick. “M.T. Edvardsson’s A Nearly Normal Family is a gripping legal thriller that forces the reader to consider: how far would you go to protect the ones you love? In this twisted narrative of love and murder, a horrific crime makes a seemingly normal family question everything they thought they knew about their life—and each other.”
• Circe by Madeline Miller is a greek mythology fantasy novel. This was my add-on book. “But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love.“
• A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum is a historical fiction contemporary novel set in the 1990s. This was another add-on pick. “Introducing a brave, new Arab-American voice, an unflinching debut novel that takes us inside a world where few of us have been before: the lives of conservative Arab women living in America.”

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Library Books and Owned Books:

• King of Scars (Nikolai Duology #1) by Leigh Bardugo is a YA Fantasy novel set in the Grishaverse. This is one of my library picks that’s ready for pick up! I decided to grab this one from the library for two reasons. Because for one I heard many mixed reviews on this one and two, I no longer read YA Fantasy so I don’t want to run the risk of DNFing and wasting my money. PLUS!! I get to support my library anyways.
• Godsgrave (The Nevernight Chronicle #2) by Jay Kristoff is a Fantasy novel. It’s the continuation of Nevernight. I own this book. However, I did place it on hold in the library via audiobook because I have a hard time focusing on Fantasy novels ever since my reading preferences changed. I should be getting it sometime this month and I’m excited!
• Sabrina & Corina: Stories by Kali Fajardo-Anstine is a collection of fictional short stories. I received this book from the author and publisher. I’m thinking of reading one story per day. The book is super short anyways. I should get through this quickly. “A haunting debut story collection on friendship, mothers and daughters, and the deep-rooted truths of our homelands, centered on Latinas of indigenous ancestry that shines a new light on the American West.”

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I’m most excited for A Nearly Normal Family and Circe! What do you plan on reading this month? Have you read any of these? Have a great day!

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WWW Wednesday

I haven’t done one of these since October of 2017
so please forgive my rustiness lol

Hi everyone! I thought I would participate in WWW Wednesday today. This meme is hosted by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. You can link your blog post to Sam’s website that way we can interact and find other bloggers =)

The questions are:
1. What are you currently reading?
2. What did you recently finish reading?
3. What do you think you’ll read next?

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I am currently reading an Adult Mystery/Thriller novel titled Miracle Creek by Angie Kim. I’m only about 50 pages in. However, I’m really enjoying it. It’s told by different perspectives but still maintaining a 3rd POV which is really interesting. It has me intrigued enough to want to know what’s going to happen next.

Synopsis:
A literary courtroom drama about a Korean immigrant family and a young, single mother accused of murdering her eight-year-old autistic son

My husband asked me to lie. Not a big lie. He probably didn’t even consider it a lie, and neither did I, at first . . .

In the small town of Miracle Creek, Virginia, Young and Pak Yoo run an experimental medical treatment device known as the Miracle Submarine—a pressurized oxygen chamber that patients enter for therapeutic “dives” with the hopes of curing issues like autism or infertility. But when the Miracle Submarine mysteriously explodes, killing two people, a dramatic murder trial upends the Yoos’ small community.

Who or what caused the explosion? Was it the mother of one of the patients, who claimed to be sick that day but was smoking down by the creek? Or was it Young and Pak themselves, hoping to cash in on a big insurance payment and send their daughter to college? The ensuing trial uncovers unimaginable secrets from that night—trysts in the woods, mysterious notes, child-abuse charges—as well as tense rivalries and alliances among a group of people driven to extraordinary degrees of desperation and sacrifice.

Angie Kim’s Miracle Creek is a thoroughly contemporary take on the courtroom drama, drawing on the author’s own life as a Korean immigrant, former trial lawyer, and mother of a real-life “submarine” patient. An addictive debut novel for fans of Liane Moriarty and Celeste Ng, Miracle Creek is both a twisty page-turner and a deeply moving story about the way inconsequential lies and secrets can add up—with tragic consequences

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I finished Baptized in Moonlight, a poetry collection, written by Morgan Scott. I do plan on reviewing this book so stay tuned for that! This was a 5 star read!

Synopsis:
In this collection of poems, Morgan Scott depicts the story of a young girl turned ferocious woman, and ties her growth to the phases of the moon. Written with the intimacy and unflinching honesty of an untamed spirit scorned and reborn, Baptized in Moonlight is a book for anyone who has ever felt as if the odds were stacked against them. Filled with painful acknowledgments of broken relationships – and the hope of a life lived with wild passion – you will dive to the depths and ascend to new peaks as you begin your own journey through the lunar cycle. This collection is part heartbreak story, part coming of age, part love song, and part battle cry. You will find yourself among the pages, and be spurred to get to know yourself on a deeper level.

 

I also finished Sanctuary (Beards and Bondage #2), a Romance novel with a sprinkle of Erotica, written by Rebekah Weatherspoon. This is a companion novel to her first book, Haven. I loved the characters in this one but I definitely was expecting a little more. I feel like there wasn’t a smooth transition to the romance and them being together sexually. I rated this book 4 stars.

Synopsis:
When she needs a sanctuary…

Targeted by a sadistic former client, attorney Liz Lewis needs a place to lay low. When a friend offers her his family farm as a safe house, she eagerly accepts, unaware that she’ll have to share the farm with her friend’s brawny, beautiful brother, Silas McInroy.

…she invades his…

Weary of a world that doesn’t understand him, Silas just wants to be left alone to grow the best produce upstate New York has to offer. Still, he’s not going to toss a woman out when her safety is on the line. But the only way to explain her presence on his farm is to claim that they fell in love online…and the last thing he needs is a fake relationship that threatens to become more and more real every day.

With her world turned upside down and danger on her trail, Liz knows that this temporary refuge can’t last forever…but leaving the comfort and ease of Silas’s arms and farm to face the reality of her life may be the hardest thing she’s ever had to do.

*** WARNING: This book contains scenes of mild bondage and domination between a gorgeous lawyer and a sexy farmer who is terrible with women. And five farm dogs with varying degrees of loyalty to both the hero and heroine.***

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My next read will be Sabrina & Corina: Stories by Kali Fajardo-Anstine, a collection of short stories. Thanks to the author and Penguin for sending me a final copy of this book. I plan on seeing Kali next week Monday during her book tour here in NYC. I am really excited and would love to read this book before the event.

Synopsis:
A haunting debut story collection on friendship, mothers and daughters, and the deep-rooted truths of our homelands, centered on Latinas of indigenous ancestry that shines a new light on the American West.

Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s magnetic story collection breathes life into her Latina characters of indigenous ancestry and the land they inhabit. Set against the remarkable backdrop of Denver, Colorado–a place that is as fierce as it is exquisite–these women navigate the land the way they navigate their lives: with caution, grace, and quiet force.

In “Sugar Babies,” ancestry and heritage are hidden inside the earth but tend to rise during land disputes. “Any Further West” follows a sex worker and her daughter as they leave their ancestral home in southern Colorado only to find a foreign and hostile land in California. In “Tomi,” a woman leaves prison and finds herself in a gentrified city that is a shadow of the one she remembers from her childhood. And in the title story, “Sabrina & Corina,” a Denver family falls into a cycle of violence against women, coming together only through ritual.

Sabrina & Corina is a moving narrative of unrelenting feminine power and an exploration of the universal experiences of abandonment, heritage, and an eternal sense of home.

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Have you read any of these books or plan too? Let’s chat in the comments!

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Old Lovers

They had bumped into each other 3 years later after their break-up, randomly at a park. He had blamed himself for how messed up she turned out to be. But it wasn’t him. It was everything.

“How have you been?” he ask, looking at her weary, aware of all her movements.

“I’m okay, I’ve seen better days. How about you? How’s your family?” she says, flicking the cigarette to the floor.

He tried to hold it together. She never had smoked while they were together. He blamed himself more because he knew she wasn’t like this.

“Is this my doing?” he ask.

They had always been blunt with one another. She knew what he was asking, about the cigarette.

“No. Nothing is your doing. You need to understand that before you I was fucked up. All the years of grief and pain aren’t your doing. Everything that’s happened to me isn’t your fault. I can’t hide it anymore though. My heart hurts all the time. After you, all the years of my life consumed me. A person like me doesn’t understand happiness when happiness is taken away so young. So this” she says pointing at her heart and pointing at the cigarette “is years of shitting pain.”

They both stared at one another for a while and she walked away not knowing when there would be a next time with him. When maybe they would speak or see one another. Maybe she would apologize next time.

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Just a little note that what I wrote is from two characters that I’ve been thinking about lately. I’ll write their full story one day.