The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Michigan in Color
Wednesday, September 8, 2021 — 7

YOUR WEEKLY

ARIES

There’s a fresh start for your 
mental health this week, and 
events in your love life look bright 
and cheerful too – lots to enjoy.

AQUARIUS

GEMINI

The New Moon in your family 
zone is very encouraging – this is 
a great week to move on from 
family dramas and into much 
more positive territory.

SAGITTARIUS

CAPRICORN

SCORPIO

CANCER

Karmic links strengthen between 
you and your partner if you’re in 
love; with Venus heading into 
your dating zone, this is a good 
week to be single too.

TAURUS

Stepping out of your comfort zone 
brings you abundance and new 
opportunities, and as Venus heads 
into your love zone, romance is 
sure to beckon.

VIRGO

PISCES

LIBRA
LEO

This week’s New Moon brings 
abundance and prosperity while 
loving family links make all your 
hard work worthwhile.

Read your weekly horoscopes from astrology.tv

The Virgo New Moon boosts your 
confidence, while Venus and 
Jupiter conspire to boost your 
income – what a lovely week!

This looks set to be a relaxing, 
enjoyable, laid-back week, but do 
be careful not to go crazy with 
lavish spending plans.

Friendships are highly significant 
this week, and you may be called 
upon to lead in your tribe.

Lots of work to do this week, as 
the New Moon shines from your 
career zone; you’ll also be joyfully 
busy with a community project.

Keep an open mind this week as 
your viewpoints and opinions are 
challenged. In love, there could be 
a surprise encounter.

Self-development vibes are 
excellent this week, and Mars gives 
you the impetus you needed to get 
past a trauma, fear or phobia.

There’s excitement around the 
New Moon in your love zone, but 
you’re also on the lookout for 
synchronistic signs from the 
cosmos this week.

WHISPER

“Al dusty!”

“Jingle-jingle-jongle.”

“I collect Legos.”

I. “Why I Write”

II. “Selfish”

III. “Ghost”

IV. “But You Made Me This Way”

V. “An Empty House”

VI. “Of Family”

I. Why I Write

Writing has always been my way 

of coping with the world around me. 
When I feel something, I pull up my 
Notes application and write as much 
as I can manage coherently. But, I have 
kept these writings to myself. In my 
published writing, I have always limited 
myself to comfortable topics, which 
often means other people’s experiences 
and feelings. I want to challenge that. 
In fear of people actually knowing my 
opinions, I have always kept them to 
myself. This is ironic because I usually 
admire authors whose work is rooted 
in authenticity and honesty, so I have 
decided to try to honor that in my work 
moving forward.

The first step was to approach 

my 
writing 
from 
a 
vulnerable 

standpoint. I wanted to write about 
the experiences this past year that had 
made me the most uncomfortable and 
still felt raw. It was important for me 
to write about these situations because 
it allowed me to confront them and 
explore new topics. The second step 
was to incorporate my Notes. In the 
following poems and stories, there 
are fragments of Notes from where I 
drew inspiration. I was influenced to 
start incorporating some of these raw 
thoughts into my work when I read 
Catherine Lacey for a class. Though 
she is not my favorite author, I am 
really impressed by the raw emotion 
she captures in her work. During 
quarantine, I was also inspired by a 
book I read, “Normal People” by Sally 
Rooney. In the book, her descriptions 
of intimacy between the two main 
characters made me consider how I 
can portray intimacy inspired by my 
previous relationships. These two 
authors really grounded me on the 
journey I went on in my writing and 
provided me inspiration when I was 
severely lacking some. 

This work aims at capturing my 

emotional state during a weird period of 
my life. In the past year, I found myself 
dealing with feelings of inadequacy in 
both my romantic life and my family 
life. Not only did I not feel like I am 
enough for other people, but I didn’t 
feel enough for myself. 

I imagine many people feel this way 

during transitional periods of their 
life. I was really driven by these 
emotions when writing this collection 
because I wanted to finally confront 
it. I wanted to understand the times 
where I felt like I could not compare 
to someone else or that I wasn’t worth 
fighting for.

***

II. Selfish
 

i kissed my world
and i told him
“love me”
forgetting our lovers or children
what i want is to be held by my world
i know if I can’t have what I want
i want it more
i climb, struggle, fight
i reach my understanding world
and squeeze him

***

III. Ghost
 

A hand presses against my thigh
Begging- to go higher 
Calloused hands 
 tell me a story 
 last year 
December, 
 when she broke your heart 
Even though you gave everything 
 you were still 
Fighting till your knuckles bled 
 but soon you were forgotten 
Gone for a while 
 but I was still painfully aware 
 of you 
Hearts pounding, your breathing 
 a rough staccato 
“I want you,” you say 
Just barely a stutter 
Kiss me, Kiss me 
Love me, Love me 
Me,
Not her, never her 
Open your eyes 
Please see me
Quiet except for
 the rustle of clothes
Regret, so heavy, screaming at you
She’s here
There,
 filling the space between
Us,
Veiled
 in each murmur, each 
touch, 

 each kiss
Where you picture your
X, leaving me thinking
Yearning to be enough
Zelotypia- excessive jealous

***

IV. But 
You Made Me This Way

 

The match is burning and I can’t stop it 
Orange embers paint shadowy figures 
of the dark
Gray tendrils fight to rise against the sky
You caress my palm against the heat

Dark figures shadows orange embers
There’s intimacy in that
You force my palm against the heat
One finger at a time, you mold me in 
your image
Where is the intimacy in that?
In creating a monster out of a woman
You molded me in your violent image
And cursed the burns inflicted
In creating a phoenix out of a woman
Gray tendrils overcome the sky
And embrace the burns inflicted
The match is burnt and I-

***

V. An Empty House

This house is not a home. Walls 
peeling, a bucket of paint primer left 
to its own devices, half-written plans 
scattered across the floor drift with 
the wind from the half-open window 
and it’s all empty

This house is not their home. Rats eat 
at the peeling walls, paint primer opens 
on its side, the wind pushes the solution 
to slowly cover the half-written plans 
as the bucket is almost empty

This house is no longer a home. Vines 
grow with its age, covering rat eaten 
wallpaper, the floor decorated with rat 
prints and paint and yellowing half-
written plans that don’t make it look 
empty

This house is our home. Wallpaper 
lovingly placed against paint primer, 
a bucket of paint, which acts as a stool 
as our son writes the plans for his 
room that was once empty

***

VI. Of Family

Vivid color encompasses the darkened 
landscape. Green sways, fighting 
to stand strong against the wind. A 
gentle rustle whispers among the 
plants that create the softest sound. 
In the mountains, there is no light 
pollution, no smog, no noise. There is 
nothing except for this and the soft 
breaths of a family gazing up.The dark 
blue sea in the sky is endless, where 
little islands shine in a kaleidoscope of 
light. Once the eye has adjusted to the 
dark, four figures become distinct.

“This was the same place your 
grandfather decided to leave the island. 
He saw the stars and knew there was a 
life for his future beyond this pueblo. 
La familia regalaron todo a él. Y él regaló 
su vida por nosotros.”

Father is tall, a formidable figure that 
lacks fear and affection, but whenever 
he talks about his own father, there 
is a certain kindness to his voice that 
he lacks when speaking to his three 
children. The eldest, Hermana, listens 
attentively. Her gangly limbs hang 
disproportionately to one another, 
having hit that awkward period of 
growth where she is in constant flux. 
She repeatsw her father’s Spanish in 
her head, rolling the words around, 
willing them to make sense.

“Dad, what does regalo mean?”

Her face burns, flooding with shame. 
She should know this.

“His family gave him their entire 
savings. Every single one of them 
sacrificed what they had earned for 
him to build a future for everyone. 
Abuelito had to take their gift and leave 
them for the future. He didn’t stop 
when he missed his home. He didn’t 
stop when home missed him. He didn’t 
stop when his father died. He stopped 
once he succeeded. He ran back home 
to what was left of his family and gave 
them the future he had fought for.”

Thump

“Papi, he hit me!”

The littlest one, Chiquita, clutches her 
arm in pain, a big tear trickling down 
her cheek. She shoves the slightly 
taller boy beside her. Hermano yelps, 
echoing across the green. Their father 
continues to look at the stars.

–

She is no longer an imbalance of limbs. 
As years pass, the awkwardness of 
Hermana’s youth shaped itself into a 
reflection of her grandmother. She sees 
her grandmother’s hair in the mirror 
as she brushes out her own thick, curly 
hair into flat, black terrain. This was 
her first day of graduate school, another 
step on her path to her own individual 
success. On her own. Not on the back of 
her grandfather’s legacy but of her own 
work. Of her own effort. She reminds 
herself of this as she walks into her first 
classroom. Especially when she tells her 
students a fake last name, denying her 
family in the process. The same feeling 
she had on that starry night blossoms 
fiercely within her, flushing her face 
with shame.

Tears swell in her eyes as she inhales. 
Chiquita is spellbound by the colors 
around her. Stark red and gold lay 
flush against the grey concrete. Bodies 
thrash against the music, which is 
primarily bass and conversations that 
turn into a roar.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispers to herself. 
She’s seeing double as the colors begin 
to blur into one another. She lays 
down on the floor. Cool metal presses 
against her back. There are stars in the 
industrial ceiling, ones only she can 
see. She makes out the constellations, 
reaching out to touch one.

From Hermano

1:39 AM: What r u doing? We talked 
about this NO more

If she just took another hit, then she 
could get there, to abuelito’s stars.

1:50 AM: U are wasting ur life away

Burning in her throat, she attempts to 
get off the club floor. “Great party,” a 
man in a grey mask says as he passes. 
She thinks she says thanks before 
everything grew too hazy and

2:00 AM: This is what ur going to do 
with what abuelito left u

–

The light from his Klipsk personal 
office unit, purchased from IKEA, 
one in rows and rows of offices. Pain 
radiates between each knuckle, a 
familiar feeling of fatigue roots itself 
within him. Hermano stares at the 
door, wondering if it is time to go home. 
His grandfather, in the photo, stares 
back at him from his desk.

“Why don’t you work harder,” his 
grandfather’s brown eyes, so similar 
to his own, mock him. “When I was 
your age, I had immigrated here with a 
family of four and worked till the skin 
on my hands se rompieron y tu quieres 
ir ahora?” His grandfather’s voice 
manifested from his own imagination.

“I’m trying,” he responds into the 
empty air. It would never be enough. 
The sacrifices that he makes will never 
be equivalent to his grandfather’s. 
Despite his hands’ protest, the brother 
continues to work into the long night.

–

They never have nights like this 
anymore. Green encompassed the 
landscape; the “Variegata” had taken 
over all the available garden space 
in Abuelito’s house. On the hill, his 
home stands far away from the light of 
the town. The air is different up here. 
Clean. The siblings exhale. Identical 
brown eyes search one another for 
relief. Reuniting is never a simple 
reflex; sentences start and are left 
unfinished. Pauses are a near constant. 
But, despite the difficulty, side by 
side, they could exist. No thoughts of 
accomplishment, of work, of legacy, 
only the warmth of being embraced by 
family, of acceptance.

when will I be enough and cuándo no me da miedo cuando sales

Senior MiC Editor Katherina Andrade–Ozaetta can be reached at kjao@umich.edu.

KATHERINA ANDRADE-OZAETTA

Assistant MiC Editor

Design by Jessica Chiu

