Nightmares (Chase Miller - New Orleans, LA)

Dreams can be friendly, but they can also be pretty fucking mean. I often have those nightmares of situations that have happened, but they always tend to be a thousand times worse. One moment I’m gleefully slicing through zombies with double-wielding axes like I’m a character in one of the many video games I play, then suddenly I turn around and my family is behind me, thinking maybe they’re my adventuring party and they’re here to help. One moment, a zombie is about to swing at me with its rotten, claw-like fingernails and then my dad jumps in the way to beat it down. Then, he turns around and magically the cemetery battlefield we were in turns into my childhood living room.

What was once a happy moment of my superhero, the one I trust with all my being, has rapidly turned into him screaming at me and I’m doing everything in my power to hold back tears and my own anger, surging through me like an electrical current trying to find it’s open circuit. The circuit is found, and that pain and frustration is spewing out of me. I’m screaming back, I’m crying, I’m telling my dad that I won’t be treated the way he’s handling me. Something snaps in him, and within seconds, I’m against the wall and he has his hands around my neck.

Then I wake up…

…and I’m in tears, pondering why these dreams still haunt me fourteen years later, and desperately wanting them to end.

Many times, I wonder how this strange world mixed with fiction and reality has happened to me. Sometimes, I lay in bed, considering all the possibilities of how my life could have been different if I wasn’t queer, or more likely, pining for a world where the man I trust…trusted…just loved me for the way I was, or am.

But see, the thing about our wildest fantasies is that they’re just that, a fantasy. Something you wish for with all of your soul, but is way less likely to occur than a simple, run-of-the-mill possibility. You can’t just pray that a fantasy will happen, because it won’t. However, that desperate hope for a world you want more than life itself won’t just vanish into thin air, and neither will those nightmares.

Comments

Come Hither (Annette Redmond Walters - Lafayette, LA)

I meant it not this way but the tears just flow and my makeup smearing all the more, leaving behind that familiar filthy residue. I may have begun to drive myself away, dragging you down as well. But it's done, I've flipped the switch and now it's dark once more. How painful is the music to my ears, I can't stand to be alone in it, yet here I am again. I pray you fly back and safely and warmly to me, though I fear I've dug the grave too deeply. As the dirt shifts within my soul, I choke on those loving words I'd meant for you. All the fragments of light I see becoming smaller and I wish to be near you in your embrace that might make me feel the warmth I'm missing. And in reality, I doubt I'd breathe another breath without you. So come hither and quickly soothe my dying heart, you are the only cure I know. I cry and cry again, come hither to heal and love me. Come hither and help me dry my tears.

Let That Fucker Burn (John Chenvert - Napoleonville, LA)

Let that fucker burn. Let the fire crackle like the whips once did— like bone meeting leather, like screams swallowed by the trees. Let the white columns crumble to ash. Not as tragedy— but as truth, unearthing itself from beneath generations of silence. Nottoway is not a mansion. It’s a mausoleum. A lie carved in stone to honor the hands that held the whip, not the backs that bore it. They called it the “White Castle.” A place of beauty. A place for weddings, for photo ops, for pretending that horror can be made elegant if the curtains match the guilt. But no paint can cover what happened there. Blood doesn’t wash out with white linens. And pain doesn’t forget just because you renamed it history. I’m not Black. And I won’t pretend to carry that weight. But I also won’t ignore it. My people—the Guanches—were taken too. Our language silenced. Our land stolen. Our names nearly erased. So yes, I know colonization. Yes, I know what it means to be disappeared. But I also know this— my skin ...

The Peculiar New Room (Nick Perere - Baton Rouge, LA)

A peculiar fourth room has appeared in my three bedroom abode. High ceilings Higher than any ceiling in the house Perfectly pristine whitewashed gallery walls The largest window one can imagine Stretching from floor to ceiling Wide as an ocean’s horizon Revealing the lushest greenery and the bluest skies. I am meant to show masterpieces here. But in one of the corners o f the perfectly pristine whitewashed gallery walls i s an ugly patch of dirt. Dirt darker than charred coal. And the dirt is crawling And multiplying. With their spindly legs and dangly antennae Vermin covered in filth and willingly ready to spread their germs Scuffing the perfectly pristine whitewashed gallery walls. But I have to move on, I have a gallery to exhibit. Smile and act as if nothing is wrong. Come. Enjoy the show. Enjoy the artwork hanging Upon the perfectly pristine whitewashed gallery walls.

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