26 Quotes by Jalina Mhyana

Each malevolence has a cousin that heals it. I fancy Hurtsickle and Heartsease as herbal enemies –weeds growing in reach of one another; the bite and the balm in balance.

My husband and I have always been good at creative visualization. Before we quit drugs and got married he’d place tabs of acid on his eyes to see things that weren't there. I'd lay blank sheets of photographic paper on the cornea of developing solution to conjure images. We'd always coaxed dreams from paper, and believed them.

He’s always been attracted to broken things. He was the kind of boy who talked the bad girls through their problems, who defended them and didn’t take advantage. He was sensitive to his stuffed animals’ feelings, rotating their position on his bed so that a new plush animal would occupy pride of place at his pillowside every night. Soon I became first and foremost on that pillow; princess of the island of misfit toys.

I was his “little girl with the William Burroughs mind,” his “secret fairy,” “female Frank Zappa” and “window onto a magical world.” He said I fell to earth, leaving wing-marks on the ceilings of our dreams.

I can’t pray or weigh my words right; doomsday is here my friend, but you’re immune. We sufferfor you. I’m weaving crowns of sonnets, dreads;a souvenir so you’ll never forget your friends.

We played with the moon all night, painting faces on its blank cheek, shining its spotlight into sleeping people’s windows. But mostly we just ate the moon, stuck tongues to its surface and felt it dissolve, left chunks of its minty scalp on neighbors’ doorsteps.

We could scan each car for terrorists and lovers she could lean into my camouflage her head resting on woven trees. When they come for her body she could run deep into my uniform into the forest of me where they could never find her.

With each kiss in the cold house 
we swallow clouds of breath – exhaled spirit, speech bubbles
 we’d rather lick away 
than fill with words. We run naked from room to room, 
keeping the walls warm.
 Our bodies blur through the halls 
of your house, its winter circulation.

I can’t remember what I’ve done with my lingerie. I look in the containers under my bed, as if my sexual self has been relegated to the wrong side of the mattress. I imagine my husband’s sexuality down there too, our shadow selves making love deep in our unconscious as we cuddle above the mattress as brother and sister.