I was looking
for love in all the
wrong directions.
From her, from him,
from the world,
from my work,
from the very air…
and I was looking
so far off
for what I thought
was promised,
that my unfocused eyes
missed the mother,
missed the teachers,
missed the friends,
missed the mirror
that was right there.
I thought the love
I wanted could only be
found in distant lands,
but the love I needed
was already in my own hands.
Thinking of songs and stories
and all the came-before-mes,
I realize
that as glorious as those stories be,
all were missing something key…
me…
So whenever I feel lonely,
or sad that my love story
hasn’t been written yet,
I’ll remember it’s being written now
between me
and someone I haven’t met.
He said I would
never find love
because I cared too much
about my career,
as if writing words
and making films
and changing hearts
was a pursuit to be feared.
It hurt at first,
but the more distant
from those words I grow
the more I’m confident
and absolutely know,
that my passion for stories
is the greatest part of my being
and if that’s something the person
I fall in love with can’t see
then they certainly
don’t deserve any part of me.
It should have been bliss.
I remember afterwards thinking Romeo & Juliet didn’t die for this.
It left me wishing I were the star
of Never Been Kissed.
Anything to keep from
remembering those lips.
Look at a nebula
and consider its magnificence.
It is no single star,
nor a binary,
it is a cosmic cloud
of interstellar intricacies
and galactic glory
made of billions of
particles of stories.
You, dear queer child,
are like the nebula.
Complex and glowing,
beautifully showing
the universe that you
are marvelously multidimensional
and made from
science, magic, and love.
Guess who’s dropping a new poetry collection this week? 👀
Yep, it me.
As some of you might recall a few months back, I decided to start a new series called elluminations, which I originally planned to release quarterly through Patreon, while the first volume was made available for free.
Well friends, there’s been a change of plans, and this post is Part 1 of 2 explaining why. (Keep an eye out around mid October for the exciting surprise that is Part 2. 😉)
Sooooon…
Part one of said change of plans is that I have decided to make elluminations vol. 1 available for free as well, and I will be releasing the whole collection over the next two weeks via this blog, Medium, and my Instagram page. This new collection is a bit shorter than vol. 0, and is called Love Lessons. The poems included in it are about personal experiences and struggles I’ve had in both finding love, and learning to love myself more. If you read the Love section in Unraveling Light, these poems serve as a nice companion to that.
The first poem in this collection, Seasons, will be released this evening here on Elayna Musings first, and then you can find it elsewhere on the internet tonight!
Huzzah for poetry!
However! As excited as I am to announce this new set of poems, I do have one last part to this update, and that is that after a lot of deliberation over the summer, I’ve decided to phase out my Patreon page. Getting people to subscribe there has been a challenge, and while the people at Patreon are seriously creating something amazing for artists like myself, it just doesn’t seem to be the right fit for me. I’ll be posting an announcement over on there to let patrons know that as of October, that page will be inactive.
October is going to be a big month though, for while I am phasing out Patreon, I do have something new coming for y’all to take it’s place. Till then, I’ll be sharing the new elluminations poems, and finishing up the sending out of the Kickstarter perks for Unraveling Light. (Which if you haven’t ordered one yet, you get get your copy here, here, or here!) Thanks as always friends. Looking forward to sharing more stories with you soon! 😊
The word evokes in most
Nickelodeon or N*Sync or any of the other trappings
of our childhoods.
But for me, nostalgia has always
emerged in ways that
to the world might seem strange.
Backstage darkness,
the smell of lumber,
the hum of light fixtures.
12 scoop ice cream sundaes
from Friendly’s after
every special occasion,
and lying in the freshly
mown grass of the football field.
Candle wax between my
fingers while lying on the driveway.
Nights looking for meteors,
and cool, rainy mornings
in the shadows of stone history
when we were hoping for a sunrise.
Nostalgia tastes like
Charlie’s greasiest pizza,
smells like sweet incense,
feels like warm pavement,
and looks like starry skies.
Every so often, I write a blog post that calls back to the title that is displayed on my blog. Capturing Life’s Chapters, it reads. When I started this blog, it didn’t have much sense of direction. All I knew was that I had just changed my name, and needed a fresh start on the internet. A place to share what I’m going through, what my dreams are, and to reflect on where I’ve been.
Today is one of those posts, because today friends, is in a way, the first day of the rest of my life.
Unraveling Light is officially for sale, and I am a published author.
Me at my first book baby.
The day in all did not come with much pomp or circumstance. I haven’t even left the house, because I’ve just been mostly going back and forth between cleaning my room and posting about the release all across the internet. It’s been a lot of staring at my screen, and feeling like I’m shouting out into a void. But the congratulations from friends and people that did find their way to me where all so heartfelt and genuine, that you’d think from the look on my face that I landed on the NYT list. My first book came in with a whisper, but it was a whisper full of love and kindness and excitement, and I will forever be grateful that my journey into publishing began this way. With unexpected surprises, with unbridled enthusiasm, and even in some cases, making people realize they could love poetry when they never had before.
Happy book birthday, Elayna! Thrilled that Unraveling Light is now in the world. https://t.co/I3pnkissLg
I’m so beside myself with joy that I really and truly do not know what else to say. My heart is just so very, very full.
I know that ahead lies uncharted territory. I have a whole new world to navigate before me. New stories, new adventures, and new perils as well. I know it won’t be easy, but I feel a kind of ready that I have never felt before. Just a thousand thank yous to every person who helped get me to today, and here’s to whatever wonders await for tomorrow and beyond.
I should probably get some rest after such an emotional day, but y’all know me. 😉 I have something brewing, and as my favorite GIF to use for writing days always says…
I am nearly 5,256,000,000 miles from who I was when you last walked on this Earth with me.
I am nearly 5,256,000,000 miles into the jorney of learning to live without you both.
But unlike orbits about the sun, some things cannot be quantified.
I cannot know how many times I’ve cried or how many times I’ve asked God why or how many times I’ve smiled or how many times living has felt worth while.
There are things we cannot know and there are things we can, but one thing that’s been a certainty, is that when a pen’s in my hand, I am whole.
I know that in my blood flows an infinity of ideas, emotions, and ink.
Though my parents are gone, the legacy they have given me is a heart that can’t stop bleeding, but the ink that has from it flowed has helped me understand and know that my reason here is to write words and tell stories.
I wish they were still here, but their absence molded me into who I am. I am a well of ink and hope giving the world all I can…
There will come a day when I’ve lived more of my life without them than with them, and the thought of it rips and breaks inside of me like an angry, ocean tide.
I imagine the forever worth of my days that they won’t get to see, each moment missed like another grain of sand on a lonely, open beach.
My children will be precious shells they’ll never get to hold. My stories will be sandcastles they’ll never see me mold. Memories of them are a horizon line—untouchable, distant gold.
Laying in the soft night sands, I stare onward into the sky, making constellations of things that will never be, a future where they hadn’t died.
Their love and the loss runs through my veins like salt runs through the sea, but at least their spirits are now like the water, ever flowing, ever free…
