A Fellow Outcast

"Oddly enough, more often than not, alone was all that made sense. In the way empty made you full. Filling spaces that didn't exist for other such nonsense like happiness."  It seems forever ago that I wrote this here poem. It came to me the way all poems do. Slowly at first and then a tidal wave of emotions. Alone was my home. Emphasis on was. It's not anymore. Not really. And I'm not quite sure what to do with that. How to handle it. I find it rather annoying. A creature of habit, I shun change even if I provoke it. 

A Fellow Outcast. I'd like to think that when the name came to me it was some epiphany. Some incredibly profound moment. But I'd be lying to myself. It came to me the way quiet revelations do. It was a whisper over my skin, an understanding in my pen. I'd reached the end of my first poetry book, Angels & Inner Demons, and an Author's Note just felt right. But how to sign off? N.Avila seemed too formal. Nikki Avila felt too unoriginal. In essence I was more than myself. Some of these poems were from a different life, a different me and so the note shouldn't be written from I. I thought it should be from someone that was everyone. An outcast. A Fellow Outcast. Because who among us has never felt like a pariah? Who had never felt the strains of a box in which they could not fit? If I could reach the outcast in everyone and remind them that they were not alone than my task would be filled. It became so simple when I thought of it that way. I was moments away from si

Every once in a long while I'll take an asthetically pleasing picture of what I deem my best feature. When that once in a long while matches up with a poem I can't help but share.  "Can you taste my pain when I kiss you? Are my lips a testament to fear? Fear that this is the last they'll know yours..." Here's to best features whether they be eyes, cheekbones, smiles or lips. 

When I make risky decisions I find someplace like this -- secluded from society with a front row seat to life -- and melodramatically go over all the possible consequences with my multiple alter egos. 

It seems every day I come across something on my feed that likes to tell me I am not the things that happened to me. Somehow, someway I am better than them. But I would disagree. And in that disagreement I found poetry.  "I am everything that's happened to me. I am all the ways I let their actions ruin me. I am the nights I spent balling my eyes out instead of sleeping. I am the screams my pillow kept for me. I am the thoughts one should never have to think. I am the coward who couldn't follow through. But I am also all the ways I survived the adversity. I am the compassion I showed others. I am the words I wrote and the darkness I shared. I am open ears and a willing shoulder. I am human. Ruined and built back up differently. Perhaps less effectively. Perhaps more."

Because earth is a temporary residence. This flesh suit is a temporary residence and I have hope that each day I'll make temporary memorable.