haven’t found the right planet yet
To sum up my social anxiety
In three words
People
Are
Scary
In all their complexity
Please don’t see through my simplicity
As I stutter
Struggling to string along simple pleasantries
Feeling my facade of normalcy slipping
Friend groups feel more like untreaded territory I’m trespassing in
Turn backs are walls pushing away from me
And who am I to intrude on seemingly perfect symmetry?
Don’t falter or slip
One wrong word erases entire histories
“I don’t hate you, I think you hate me!”
You don’t know me
But you must just hate the fact that I’m even existing
Breathing the same air you’re breathing
I’m an alien trying to pass as an earthling
It’s not working, is it!
Why don’t I just stop
Trying
Hoping
To live in a pocket of the universe a little less lonely
My body’s it’s own boundless galaxy
Somehow still I’m a waste of space
I didn’t come from a faraway planet
I was birthed out of a black hole
I carry darkness with me wherever I go
But haven’t mastered the magic of luring people in
Once you peek behind my psyche
You’ll realize why every greeting begins with an apology.
ingenue
I’m not beautiful
In the way that candlelight reflects on a windowpane
My voice isn’t fluffy white feathers
Floating in the air
My body isn’t small slender milkweed vines
Gentle curves
Soft to to the touch
Ethereal soul going down smooth and sweet like melted Skittles
A kind of accessible attractiveness
Where one fits easily into the palm of the world’s hand
The kind of beauty that makes you seem worthy
Worth seeing
hearing
touching
loving
I don’t enchant with the blush of glossy pink lips
Painted in the last rays of dawn
And rainbows reflected in a delicate glass body
I’m not beautiful because I’m fragile
I’m beautiful because I’m unbreakable
I don’t have dainty gliding feet
These size 12 and a half stompers
Make the earth convulse and upheave
I’m only as smooth as a rock
Eroded after years of being worn down by the rush of a river
I’m a mountain standing massive and magnificent
Screw accessibility
You wanna get to me?
Better start climbing
Try and move me
You’ll split the earth in half
Try and break me
I’ll break your legs!
I’m learning to take the box I never fit into
And craft a cardboard spaceship
I’m learning it’s okay to take up some space
As you grow into yourself
And I refuse to shrink for anybody
Cause for every person who loves laying in meadows
There’s somebody who loves dancing in rainstorms
But then again
When lightning strikes
It doesn’t care who’s watching.
Paolina Acuna-Gonzalez is a Latina writer, actor, and artist. She’s currently a student at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She most recently wrote and acted in the movie Summertime, which will be premiering at this coming Sundance. As a Get Lit Player for the poetry organization Get Lit- Words Ignite, she’s performed her original poetry at several schools across California including special events such as H.O.PE. Foundation’s Latina History Day, We Rise, and Women of CA at Los Angeles City Hall.
The Literary Forest Poetry Magazine 