New People

My story is not my own

it is ours, sung from the mouth

of first nations, through generations

it somehow survived.

Cutting out their tongues

and filling my ears with lies

could not stop me from hearing it—

because this narrative exists

in the DNA that wraps itself

around my spine, and

no matter what you do

you cannot extinguish

what always is.

You can hear it in the Earth itself

as plant forms from previous worlds

spring up as new seeds, as dim

stars suddenly shine bright

lighting a secret path where

endangered species slouch

from barren forests

thought to have been

eliminated.

Can you hear it?

From a tiny island

in the middle of a great sea

bound by the continental shores

of white supremacy, a dark

primordial beat plays

in the hearts of those

who remember.

Past midnight

never knew

such silence.

The Disappearance Of The Inner Child

At 1AM I heard birds sing

and I knew you were gone.

You’d been courting the astral plane

and ultimately decided to remain.

You yearned for innocuous spaces

but could only find them

behind a series of

never-ending screens.

You leaving is not as painful

as not understanding

where you went.

The Awakening 

That moment when you realize you have no female muses, and that your favorite books and films and songs and paintings were all created by men, and you feel guilty for being sad, for being angry, and you always tread lightly to avoid toes. You say no when you want to say yes, you keep your opinions to yourself and compare your success to that of other women, making sure to never take up space, you wait for approval to claim ownership of your very existence, eternally wounded by the word “crazy,” your survival is hinged upon control.

Then you collapse into a time where you begin to color outside the lines, staining white sheets with blood, you devote your time entirely to this art. You embrace the fickleness of the weather, aligning your thoughts with the rhythm of nature, and your sight fails you, so you feel your way through the dark, where you listen to your heart and tear down the fortress you’ve built around you, because the war against your body is now over, and in honor of this, you give yourself as a gift to the sea and wash upon a new shore, a message in a bottle, you say, “there are more.”

Karissa Lang is a writer from a tiny town in Texas who now calls Brooklyn, New York home. In her work she wrestles with the mother wound, ancestral grief, and nature. She also loves horror movies and maintains a cabinet full of herbal potions, and lives by two mantras: praxis makes perfect, and life is short, long live the work.