The Indigestibles.

 The following conversation is sensitive and personal, but raw and unfiltered. I thought it was worth sharing; some part of me deemed it beautiful. This is how loneliness becomes a demon. 

…..

Digestible. 

I hate that word; it perfectly conveys how I have to lessen myself in order to make myself bite-sized for others to handle. Even in a failed relationship that stubbornly lasted five years out of sheer fear of loneliness. Too emotional, too high-strung, overly reactive. Reacting all the wrong ways, always, constantly. It defeats the purpose of even reacting. I don’t want to react anymore. Any way that I react is the wrong way. The evil way; the problem, the evil one, the misunderstood one. I’m highly sensitive, so I don’t function that way; I bite back when someone glares at me with violence. I bite before the violence happens because I am wired to protect myself, I am accustomed to hurt; I know how to deal with pain in the way an animal does. Irrational, defensive, on guard. 

My friend recently underwent a horrific breakup with a hardly human boy. He is a tumor: a malignant disease. Kindly, he should cease to exist. I am sure he will make himself dispensable and forgettable in the future to anyone he comes across; this is his fate. To become nothing, nobody, and all at once what everyone fears: valueless. 

I want to share some of the words of this conversation I had with this friend. We both suffer from loneliness; it mutates into fear, desire for possession, and greed. 

If you understand us, congratulations and my condolences: you are one of us.

The indigestibles. 

The Drunken Greeting & Sympathetic Wanderer 

“I’m proud of you. I understand you; I've been through it before - with the waves, the neglect. It hurts. As people, all we want is connection, a deep bond, love; it's what we're supposed to strive for; it makes us happier and complete. Supposedly.. I don't know; you put your heart into that relationship, and that in itself is never a waste; to love is never a waste. You grew; you became more beautiful and stronger in the process. And no one else will ever be able to do that to you again. he will get his own pain and karma one way or another; what he did was inhumane and despicable. I don't know where I'm going with this, but. Erase him. He's nothing now. he doesn't deserve a second of your thoughts or feelings. He doesn't exist anymore. He isn't worth your energy.”

  “Are you lonely, V? You know, you have friends but are you lonely? Why do you need a person?”

V: “It feels so weird because there are - So many people around me; it’s almost overwhelming, but I feel so fucking lonely all the time. Every time I’m alone, I cry. I cry so much, or I used to a lot more. It’s been a smidge better, but it’s so hard because I know there are people there, but there’s not. The one person.”

“It makes us toxic and obsessive. It's what causes it. Wanting someone to soothe the loneliness and fill it up, to love you unconditionally. That's the reason we paint ourselves as the "problem"; it's because of the loneliness, V, that's it. We're lonely; that's why we want a person to want us and pick us and choose us and love us. It's not because we're evil and manipulative and awful; we're just lonely as shit and scared as shit.”

V: “We’re both just souls with too much love to give, and that causes strong emotions and even worse people who take advantage of those emotions to paint you in a horrible light.”

“Did you love him? Truly? Or are you mourning that you feel like you don't have a person anymore? Or a mix of both?”

V: “I think I miss having a person that wouldn’t give up on me.

  And I do think I loved him. Maybe at one point.

   But I don’t think He was special.”

“Listen, V. Spending money ≠ love; sometimes it's just an investment. Wasting money but keeping you a secret. Don't let anyone ever do it again, please, if they intend to be in a relationship with you. That’s what prostitution is, except using love as a currency. Buying you shit and keeping you a secret, but making you love him more while he’s actively waiting and searching for other love interests.” 

To Heal Means To Love Oneself and Choose Mercy

“You are not a problem that needs to be "put up with"; you just need to finally feel safe and understood and reassured properly. At the same time, I think we need to heal how we express our pain and jealousy and need and manage our emotions better. Not so we can "make ourselves more digestible," but so we don't hurt others and ourselves anymore in the long run. So we become better people and can show our love the way we truly wanted it to be seen in the first place. I think we just need to be more gentle with how we communicate our pain. What do you think? But it's not something wrong with me or you. Yes, we could've reacted better, but they hurt us, and we will, in the future, find people who won't want to hurt us ever and will stay to listen.” 

What It Means To Be Cuban-American, Colored, & Mixed

                                                                    

*There will be discussion on the following topics: The Soviet Union, racism, colorism, immigration struggles, employment discrimination, threats, and racial bias. The names used are fictional in order to protect the identities of the individuals mentioned. 

 By: Drusilla Ugolini

I'm Scared of Marriage.

 

Scene I. 

Fiona Apple - Limp

The ringing in her ears grew louder, tighter, as if a string was wrapped around her neck and threatening to behead her as the sound filled the room. 

Clammy hands, voltage speed, heart rate; skipping beats and pacing around in the tiny compact room that is her ribs. 

She couldn’t breathe anymore.

She fell to her knees, cornered in the bedroom, her back against the wall. She pressed her hands over her ears, clutching them and begging them to close up, to protect her from the vulturous sound. Picking at her brain, making her come undone, dreading for the remainder of her mind to be torn up by the screaming. 

Yes, that was the ringing.

Screaming.

“You pathetic, useless whore.”

Her beloved spat practically acid at her. The words burned through her wounds, the wounds on her arms and legs and in her swollen heart. She was so accustomed to his filthy mouth, it hadn’t always been filthy. Not initially, no. But now, with each condescending word that fell out of his big mouth she saw it as dirty, she didn’t kiss him anymore. She hasn't in two years now. 

He stood above her with a lit cigarette in his hand, there was a pause to the screaming.

The cigarette, the caretaker, the soother. It quelled his rage momentarily, she knew this as she watched his eyebrows unfurrow and his eyes become absent from the moment. Empty. She watched as the smoke rose into the air and escaped the lit tobacco, uncurling and whispering ashy docile words, mouthing none, yet providing the perfect comfort any man could find. That her husband could find.

His gaze fixated on her after a second of calm.

“You deceitful manipulative woman. If I had known you would be like this, turn out to be so fucking disappointing like this I would have never sang you that song. Would have never…” She prepared for the impact of another blistering word, she believed them all to be true - not mendacious. Not repetitive, each word was another lash. Another wound. Another…

He crouched down to meet her gaze and gently stroked her cheek, two of his fingers catching loose strands of her hair and playing with it, adjusting it behind her ear with the same tenderness she was now unfamiliar with. It scared her. She hated when he was sweet. It wasn’t true. It wasn’t true like the wounds. 

“I would have never chosen to love you.” 

He plunges the lit cigarette into her collarbone, digging it deeper and deeper, till it becomes dim and dead. 

Breathe.

Breathe, come on, breathe you idiot.

It isn’t the first time.

It feels good…

It feels good..

It feels good.

A Date With Death.

 A DATE WITH DEATH ; The Original Draft

What begins as rebellion becomes routine — a slow romance with decay, a momentary escape from the weight of being.

By: Drusilla U.

    The delicate, weightless gasp of our souls’ exhale — fleeting, beautiful, already fading.
The rising smoke hugs your chapped lips, ripped and torn at the seams, dried blood clinging to the cracks — a stark, anxious reminder that you’re wounded.
Yet you no longer feel the wounds. They simply exist: concrete, undeniable, but distant from lived reality. So far removed from consciousness.

Perhaps we’ve all quietly agreed to condone the constant harm we put our bodies through — the small violences disguised as pleasure.
Once pure. Untouched. A perfect vessel.
We taint it slowly, quickening the pace of death because it feels good. It feels real. Something that feels this good couldn’t possibly cause that much harm, could it?

You only live once.
It’s just a rite of passage — a ritual of youth, they say.
Are you really a college student if you aren’t drinking? Smoking? Partying?

You sit alone, cradling a book, clinging to your homework like a lifeline — because it is. The only way not to let yourself or your family down.
But on nights when others laugh, post, and glow under neon lights, you feel that ache.
The quiet jealousy.
You insist you don’t want it, but you do — the illusion of freedom.

What you don’t see are the hollow eyes behind those smiles.
The way those “friends” cling to one another like leeches — enabling, numbing, erasing.
Not always, of course, but often enough.
Sometimes a drinking buddy is but a drinking buddy.

Smoking.

My throat tightens at the thought of my younger self watching me fiddle with this small, dual-colored stick that reeks of tobacco.
It fits perfectly between my fingers.
I play with it like a toy.
I tell myself I control it. It doesn’t control me.

But then I see her — that younger me — covering her dolls’ eyes at the sight of who I’ve become.

She doesn’t know yet what it took to get here.
The smoke isn’t the true horror; it’s only the symptom, the visible scar.
Look closer: the hollow eyes, the faded expression, the tangled hair, the smile that tries too hard.
My soul screams while my mind consumes my body like an incurable disease.

Smoking begins as rebellion, becomes ritual, then routine.
What starts as curiosity transforms into dependency — a lover that holds you, chokes you, promises comfort, and delivers decay.
At first, it’s just a kiss. Then a fling. Then something more intimate, intoxicating, binding.
You wake up one day and realize: you’ve entered a pact with death.
A slow, hedonistic, deceptively peaceful suicide.

You make this cycle of self-destruction feel familiar — so routine that it becomes a place you call home, even though it’s not a refuge.
That dizzy, fleeting high. The burn in your throat. The ache in your chest.
It’s not even exciting anymore — it’s familiar.
Forever chasing that first high — the one that lied, said you were invincible.
Now, it’s the only thing that feels real.
You’re caught in smoking’s grasp, a trap you can’t escape.

When I smoke, I feel the world dissolve — its edges blur, its weight forgotten. 

I’m sinking, yet floating. High on this cloud. 

There’s a hum behind my eyes; my brain loosens, as if a knot has quietly come undone. 

The streetlights flicker. The air thickens. Nothing matters anymore. 

Hum…

 Just this breath. Just this moment. 

Me and the night — unreal, but almost perfect. 

I’m on a date with Death.

You can never go back to Earth once you’ve had a taste of Mars.

He’ll ease your strain.

You’ll be waiting in vain.

I got nothing for you to gain.

I once promised myself I’d never smoke.
I remember my first kiss with a cigarette — my first taste of rebellion, my first betrayal of self.

It was night.
Mom was driving, and her friend’s purse sat on the seat beside me.
The city lights were sharp, cold, metallic.
I was fifteen — invincible, restless, ready to devour the world.

My hand slipped into the purse. Marlboro Gold.
Three would be enough.
She wouldn’t notice.

I didn’t know then that the smallest acts of rebellion can become the biggest chains.
Because smoking isn’t just an addiction to nicotine.
It’s an addiction to illusion — the illusion of control, of calm, of maturity.

It’s wanting to forget that you exist, if only for a moment.

To blur the borders between body and air.

Sometimes, we don’t smoke to feel alive.

We smoke to forget that we are.

And sometimes, we smoke to feel anything at all.

Weeping Sculpture :: Pretty When You Cry

The Weeping Sculpture

♡

09/12/25

Vignette By: Drusilla U.

I live in such a strange world.

Glass eyes in my sockets -- starry nights reflecting on black beads.
Tears are a private map, a secret one folds and tucks away; a sign of breaking.
But I scatter mine for everyone to see.
I commend myself for strength like a soldier who stood through a dark, hopeless war.

Tears are swallowed by pillows at night, breathed out like a thick cloud that chokes.
“I write like a soulful kindergartener.” The words came from her bitten lips, a simple confessional. She said it proudly, overlooking the tears that sprouted and stalled her voice.

She looked at herself in the little black screen -- eyes big, a little swollen.
No one ever felt pain when she cried; to them her tears were beautiful.
Expressive. Soulful. Admired.
She became a portrait people passed and lingered by, careful not to disturb the crying thing.

It was a spectacle: her cries, a burden or amusement, a beauty to watch.
Never human. So human and yet made strange to others.
Not for hugging -- too far to reach.
A fragile glass woman, sculpted by her own haunting grace.

The right amount of not enough.

 Moon, Ruined

You ruined the moon for me.
She is no longer beautiful --
yet still I hide beneath her dimming light.

When I see her, I can smell your shirt,
the one I wore for days until it stank.
They hid it from me,
but the memory lingers,
sweet until it turns to nausea.

I want to vomit you out.
I want to be vacant again.
But in silence I become a man who cries,
no longer stone.
Moon, wicked traitor --
does my longing amuse you?

Some nights I dream of selling my heart for fame,
just so I won’t be forgotten
the way you forgot me.

My body remembers:
a slip, blood at the ankle,
a fingernail ripped clean,
paint burning the wound.
My own nails carving my arms
the night you pushed me away.

Still, I love the moon.
She is the most beautiful thing
this world has left.

Your name is a sin I whisper,
soft and secret.
I am a filthy dog,
and you hold the leash --
tight, without knowing.

No one is enough for me,
no one will be.
Maybe you were
the right amount of not enough.

Moon.

I lost my glasses.

 07/10/25

By: Drusilla U.

Happily handicapped.

I lost my glasses and I found it pretty strange. I didn’t have a tantrum or go into a rage. I accepted it — bad things tend to happen to me. Now I can’t see a thing. Not the roads nor people’s beady black eyes piercing into me like a cooly steely knife punishing me for not meeting their standards. Blue, brown, green, doesn’t matter — at all eyes are black. They gleam with secrets, darkness, and hidden desires only their eyes showcase so explicitly.

Blue wandering eyes reach for my face, I can feel it.

But I don’t have my glasses, I can’t see the way they stare at my incompetence and lack of refinement.

Everything is a blur, as if the whole world had a foggy screen plastered over it all. The only thing I can see are my hands.

Perfectly I see my callouses, my reddened, tired, aging hands. 

I remember distinctly, though the memory is distant: how small and soft they once were. 

I like it you know?

Being blind.

I see no one’s faces, no one’s anything, only downside is I could get hit by a car but I’m free from the binds of judgement, the prison that is comparison. 

The fear that is birthed by other people's eyes.

Unable to see anymore, I live more free as if in my own little bubble, my comforting small happy land. So when I try to look at someone from afar I feel only a sense of relief when their face and body is so blotched and fuzzy I can’t make sense of any of the outlines, only colors.

The world is a colorful murky mess, unpronounceable splotches without definition. Pools of colors. Small buildings suddenly become churches, gardens take the form of lakes, my mind plays tricks on me. 

 It’s all so comforting, really.

Relieving.

Foolish, yes?

But.

These faceless figures walk past me and I no longer see them watch me with persecution. 

I was happy in this ignorant handicap.

Happily blind.

Living in a daze.