Living in the Imaginary

Living in the imaginary. As a kid and now as an adult, my reality has manifested into my imaginary. Living in the space between the world that exists when I close my eyes and when my eyes open, I find the four-fold way oxygen that is needed to survive in the imaginary. Breathing in the dichotomous worlds of closed and opened, my survival is dependent on the interface, imaginary, to legitimize my existence as a writer, poet, chicano, and queer. The imaginary oxygen is what fuels my fingers to type and sets free my testimonies to allow new ones to formulate. As bell hooks wrote in her essay Women Who Write Too Much, “I feel an urgent need to write ideas down on paper to make room for new ideas to arrive, keep my mind from becoming too crowded.” To liberate is to make the closed conversations the open and the open conversations insightful understandings of the human psyche−my own psyche.
It is difficult to write. It is difficult to travel between worlds and not feel as though the instability will be my defeat.

[for] Chicanos Who Write Too Much:

Continue to write,
Continue to travel between worlds,
Continue to be defeated.

My survival is dependent on the ability to write,
To bridge between the closed and the opened,
To validate my experiences,
But most of all to remember that I exist.

Chicanito at 8 Years old with a flowery journal don’t be ashamed.
The words you wrote, spoke truth to your exploited and abused sexual discourse.
Spoke to your fragile body but wise mind.

Chicanito at 11 years old with a purple-built-in-light journal don’t be ashamed.
The words you wrote, spoke truth to your deathly vision and twisted sexual discourse.
Spoke to your broken heart but queer becoming.

Chicanito at 15 years old with virus-infected journal don’t be ashamed.
The words you wrote, spoke truth to your fatherly and traumatic sexual discourse.
Spoke to your fragmented life but assurance that you exist[ed].

Chicano at 20 years old with a dusty-mac journal don’t be ashamed.
The words you wrote, spoke truth to your decolonizing sexual discourse.
Spoke to your insecurities of writing but your willingness to never stop.