Infections of the Soul
By: Lisa Ordonez
i. You Think We’re Sick?
Another sun melts away,
It gets harder and harder to make that magic. Ghosts with bodies, souls detached
A child begs for that spice of life again, the adrenaline, the heartbreak and the heartache, anything just to feel something.
We need to feel something, and it’s the first time we’re not being told how.
We burn so intensely; we don't know what to do with it. Burning out for human connection, human touch, to be loved, to feel loved, and to most of all, love.
Desperation strikes, and we collapse on weekends with glittering smoke
We are not proud, we are liars and beggars, cheaters and thieves, boys and girls together.
Hung on loose threads, we are made to do destructive things, because we feel entitled to have them, pushed to the edge of a nightmare.
There’s a variety of life, the heart-pounding, heart-wrenching moments we’ve been deprived of, for what we think is far too long.
When you think teenage-thirst couldn’t be more unquenchable,
we are hit down in an endless roll tape of time, starved of feeling the moments we believe we should be having; we should be feeling.
It has us on our knees.
And if it's degrading, if it's insulting, if it hurts our worth and our ego— it doesn’t matter anymore, because the point is we need it, and we need it now.
More than ever.
It's an itch becoming a burning rash, it follows us all around, it flames in the darkness of night when we're alone, and when we’re hollow.
We’re haunted by the truth of our emptiness,
Because when we’re lonely we always start missing something, like missing an experience we never had, or a feeling we once knew, but now have lost.
We’re missing the life we never got to live.
ii. Fear is a Plague
You know what makes you flame
And your heart rush, and your soul sing, and your eyes flash in a blink. Sometimes it’s something throbbing, driven by an ugly, tantalizing fear.
It stings to realize we are all afraid. There is fear of missing out, the fear of not getting that experience, that love, that raw human experience, that raw human flavor and touch.
Fear that others are feeling things you’ve never felt, and probably will never feel. Fear that people are getting things you want to get, but will never have.
Fear that they’ve found it and you haven’t, and you never will.
Fear that they’re giving more love than you are, that they’re receiving more love than you are. Fear that they have it but you lost it, that they’ve gained and you didn’t. That they’ve won, and you’ve lost.
Fear they’ve felt more alive than you’ve ever felt, and that you’ll die never feeling it. Fear that they’re getting more than you are, that they’re getting more out of life than you are, more life out of life than you are, and the worst is, you won’t know why.
You stare at their victories and your failure with the fear you’ll never taste ideal success the same way they have.
It’s the fear other humans are being more human than you’ve ever had the guts to try to be. You haven’t tried to get, to give, to have. And you don’t want to taste defeat.
But the day will come when you’re stuck choosing fear over faith,
fear over joy,
fear over what you love.
That day is when your life ends.
iii. Do Not Want
In the twilight of roses and ink,
hearts throb for something lost.
They’re crushed, believing it won’t find its way back home.
Such rarity shouldn’t exist.
For desire is a heat, an itch, a rash that we must escape. Why do we try to hold all the stars in one hand?
Flames sink into the black sky.
They’re convinced lifeblood shakes with energy of the unloved.
Ache for everything, and it’s never enough. Bleed the silver magic out to the sea
I wish it was you who’d come and find me, sitting all alone in the dark.
I’m waiting all alone in the dark.
If they know what they need, they fight for who needs it more. So I swear on my blood and soul, I will never be alone again.
Writer's Statement: Not enough light is shed upon the constantly turbulent state of adolescence. I realized this is the constant state of the human condition. Moments I tried to capture in my work are simply symptoms of being human. Knowing this, we must remember there is nothing wrong with being human, especially in this ongoing pandemic.