THREE POEMS by HALLE PRENETA
Loops Kill Us
The Heroine is
the one to save the goddess
of water and beauty and joy
and love.
The one whose heart is gold
and whose tears are pure.
The one who takes risk
and solves mysteries.
The one who’s kind
and loyal
and free.
And one day, the person known as
The Blessed One
came and sucked the breath
out of The Heroine,
leaving her defenseless
against the wrath of demons
headed her way.
She knew she had to save
the goddess of water and beauty and joy
and love.
It was what she had to do.
It was all that she knew.
So she swung her sword
with her head held high,
trying to defeat the demons
in front of her eyes
but she was losing energy.
Losing strength as
The Blessed One kept
taking and taking and taking her air,
leaving The Heroine with nothing but
choked back tears
and a quiet despair.
A desperate calling from
inside her heart came
and sang the songs of those
who have long passed the realm of reality,
leaving a trail of cries and calls for help
and sprawled out emotions.
Emotions she’s never even seen before
suddenly blossoming from within her brain
as The Blessed One keeps taking
and taking
and taking
away from her.
Away from the life that she’s so deeply rooted in.
Rooted in the cycle
of needing to save the goddess of water and beauty and joy
and love.
Rooted in the cycle of her brain
high and low
high and low
high and—
Why does it always have to be this way?
Why does The Heroine keep getting trapped in cycles
and never ending loops
and forgotten phrases often left unspoken?
Why does she keep going for the goal
she can never attain?
The person she can never have?
Maybe we haven’t thought about
The Heroine just wanting to be happy.
Just wanting to free herself
from the perpetual cycles that society
has laid out for her.
From the restless nights
and sleepless days
and The Blessed One
sucking out her air
over and over and over again.
Maybe she needs a break—
A break from all the shit
she has become so used to.
A break from love
and war
and restless nights
and sleepless days
and The Blessed One
sucking out her air
until she can feel nothing except
her bones rattling inside her body.
Her rib cage moving up and down
and up and down
and up and down
and up and—
and ...
and ...
I’m The Unavoidable Obstacle in Mario Kart You Hate
Our lips kiss in my head
full of fog.
I’m tired and dizzy
and quite frankly, annoyed
that you keep
living in my head
when I need to be focused.
When I need to be paying attention
you and your laugh and your witty jokes
find a way to snake into my head
and into my heart.
In my imagination,
your lips feel soft and warm.
I crave your touch
like a child craves cookies,
always wanting more and more
until nothing is left.
Until the world has fallen away
and all that's guiding us
is the light in our souls
and the music in our hearts.
Yet my chest tightens
as the fog around me gets
higher and higher
and suddenly I can’t see
anything around me,
trapped in a mess of haze
and grey
and imagined kisses
I know will never exist
no matter how much
I will them into my conscious.
I was never like other girls
who have the confidence to kiss guys
or date at fourteen
or have sex at eighteen
or anything else
confident girls do because
I’m a flower in the way of the path
so everyone keeps stepping on it.
I’m an aluminum can
in the middle of the road
so everyone keeps driving over it.
I’m the unavoidable obstacle
in Mario Kart you keep not missing,
making you want to throw your controller
at your TV.
I’m fragile and broken
and sad.
So confidence?
Confidence was never
something I had.
So I’ll play your laugh
in my head like a laugh track
on a comedy show.
I’ll see your smile in my mind,
holding onto it like a jar of fireflies.
I’ll imagine your lips on mine,
soft and warm and ever so slightly full of alcohol
and it’ll be the you-est thing you could possibly do
and I’ll love it
just as much
as I love you.
Portrait of Me as a Bird (2021)
I wish I could pull time out of my pocket.
Plant time like a seed,
watch it grow into a beautiful flower.
Wrestle time in a match
and always win.
Contort time like clay,
shape it into exactly what I need.
I wish I had more time.
More time to get my words
exactly how I want them to,
pull them out from inside my brain,
dust them off,
and hand them to you
like china that’s sat in the buffet for years.
Fragile,
fragmented,
maybe a little broken
but always special.
I wish I could pull time out of my pocket.
Plant time like a seed,
watch it grow into a beautiful flower.
Shape it into whatever I need.
A keyboard, a plane, a guide.
Anything to get me
straight to you.
I wish I could be a bird.
Fly away to new worlds
without ever having to worry
about falling to the ground.
I could go anywhere,
do anything,
if only I had the time.
Halle Preneta (she/her) enjoys writing short romance, sci-fi, and horror stories along with poetry and gets her ideas from random life experiences and fanfiction. When she’s not writing, she’s either watching YouTube or playing Animal Crossing. Her Twitter handle is @YaTheatreNerd and you can check out more of her work here.