​A quiet walk to her apartment midnight followed by phone call
followed by visit the following morning. Too burdened by the weight of my future to accept her offer for the help I would inevitably need.
Staring down the barrel of my decision,
I pulled the trigger and we haven’t spoken since.

I.
I tried. Five months of sulking in the North:
where white walls, barely furnished,
bore witness to a desperate attempt at feigning adulthood.
Crashing into my apartment each night, smearing paints to ease my mind.
Cigarette Cigarette Cigarette
Learned the tango between addiction and pain.
Catching glimmers of digital shade that disappeared before the sun set.
We both know I saw them, but did you see mine?
As I wailed online,
hunched over my sink,
sitting in bathtub porcelain, asylum pink.
Or out in New York. ABV enabling electronic gospels
I’d regret in the morning.
Sorrow on sleeves I’d...

Every date I went on during my year-long stint in Los Angeles reminded me of the economic nightmare we live in and how I’ve been conditioned me to assess potential partners. Nearly every face I swiped right on and had the fortune of meeting in person was job-hunting and/or living at home with their parents. I was working as a designer for a small startup at the time, which meant my entire livelihood depended on my company’s ability to convince capitalists to give us their money. The ridiculous size and nature of my income compelled me to pay for most dates, an act of camaraderie with whichever liberal arts graduate I happened to be seated across from. It didn’t make sense that my date should spend 10% of their monthly budget with some stranger when I was being paid more than most of my high school teachers (and some of my college professors) because I was fluent in keyboard shortcuts and...

It’s hard not to feel a sense of pride growing up in the Golden State. The weather rendered seasons obsolete. The people and politics, progressive for the most part, set the tone for what our nation could become if we celebrated our differences instead of demonizing them. Our Central Valley became the country’s breadbasket, ensuring virtually any ingredient was always in season. We had nature that made other continents green with envy: forests, deserts, mountains, and lakes that transcended imagination and yet somehow still managed to exist. An America within America; the state of overflowing opportunity made all the more salivating by its storied mythology: the gold rush, Hollywood, the Castro, world class public universities, and (for better or for worse) technology. California came to epitomize the zenith of the American Dream. Who cared about a white picket fence when your backyard...

They imagined towers one hundred stories high and built them.
Witnessed estates become states when settled.
But the mansions and monoliths keep migrating;
despite having tamed the Wild West.

Whose destinies are left to manifest?
What land is theirs to take.