Under Water

By Maygen S. Tavares

Some moments never stuck, others are vividly blazed. These are memories are stained-covered with tears, laughter and my heart. Invaluable and reflected across page.

Daring
She was born daring. 
Her bravery worn across her face, 
down through to her soul.
 
She was taught partly through scars, 
and by the nameless,
She always found without notice.
Catching her off guard,
She lives for moments like these.
 
Moments without language but so heavy with heart.
The ones felt beneath expression; not smiles, 
not grins, 
no not anything.
 
Only skipped heartbeats, electric touches.
The silently captivated by another’s soul,
The kind who flatlines you and gives you life,
all at the same time.
 
 
A Space
Like light-splattered stars
finding darkness to fill.
Your laughter reaches the spaces
I fought to keep vacant.
 
You didn’t even say a word,
no questions ever asked.
Your eyes delivered memories
that my laugh,
somehow,
remembered vividly.
 
You felt brave, so I stayed.
Slipped below my sky
my skin
my ghosts.
 
All looking for the sun to kiss their cheeks.
And how you remind me to laugh.
Like watching the night turn off the sky.
Your effortless presence made me feel
where my bones and my soul collide.
 

Girls Write Now On the Other Side of Everything: The 2023 Anthology

Do you know what it’s like to communicate with your family across a salty ocean’s divide? Do you want the sun and moon to enter your home with stories written in embers? Do you seek voices that will punctuate the darkness? Welcome to the other side of everything. It’s the other side of silence, the other side of childhood, the other side of hate, the other side of indifference, it’s the other side of sides, where the binary breaks down. It’s a new paradigm, a destination, a different perspective, a mindset, a state of openness, the space between the endless folds in your forehead, hopes for tomorrow, and reflections on the past. This anthology of diverse voices is an everything bagel of literary genres and love songs, secrets whispered in the dark of night, conversations held with ancestors under the sea. 

READ ON THE OTHER SIDE

VISIT ANTHOLOGY LIBRARY

Unknown
Its fear, I know
so sweet as it lingers.
 
Tastes like home;
Tastes like what it feels like to be unknown.
 
And its dread.
I worry forever
that I’ll only be known by the cylinders in my head.
 
This evasive line between
sharing me and keeping some as mine.
 
A tale so old
about never seizing,
trouble with just being –
everyone that I’m not.
 
I push pen to pad
until my hands keep quiet allowing me to breathe.
 
This place on paper;
it always feels like my own.
Where I melt the most,
where fire burns,
where my heart is alive.

Process

It feels as though I was writing before I could walk or speak. Writing is home, it’s where I can just be. I must have written on hundreds of pages all splattered with my thoughts, emotions, beliefs, outrage, pain, joys, and every other aspect of my life. Pen to paper is where I am most free, it’s where my spirit meets the tangible world.