Lalaina

Joined October 2022

0 stories

Bio

She/Her. Writing Center Coordinator & Professor. Novelist. 29. Proud Latina.

I'm obsessed with my cat and fantasy fiction.

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Stories (45/0)

Borders
The arbitrary border between Mexico and Texas has led to the separation between the culture I was born into and the culture my ancestors struggled to cultivate. While media doesn’t differentiate between Mexicans and Mexican Americans, I have felt the sting all too often. I am too brown to be among white people and not brown enough to be among my fellow Mexicans. I can’t handle spicy food, guacamole tastes like vomit, and my Spanish, no matter how much I work on it, will always sound different from someone born in Mexico.
By Lalaina11 months ago in Confessions
How Boy Bands Saved My Life
I don’t remember much about my childhood anymore. I think I was happy, mostly. Except even then I sobbed whenever I made a mistake, a foreshadowing of the anxiety disorder I would one day develop, so deeply consuming that it would haunt me in everything I went. Around puberty, I started to crumble. There were many reasons, not the least being simple biology. My parents fought frequently and I needed something to drown them out, to help me escape for a moment. I needed to be able to find peace in the chaos of my house. I needed to find freedom.
By Lalaina11 months ago in Confessions
Confessions of the Wind
Based on an unfortunate news story I found when googling my name. Trigger Warning: Infanticide Wind didn’t remember when it was born. It just was, like the sun or the forest. It learned to mind its own business, to simply watch. It blew a little harder when it had a temper and sighed when it watched others grow old. Wind had no face and could only be found when moving branches or blowing leaves.
By Lalaina11 months ago in Fiction
My Sister Kills Men
knives litter the floor unfinished whittling, trussed up turkeys, wounds on her knuckles, bruised up knees, quince dress in the closet, red like the blood of future men who will try to sever her from her body, of men who will tell her she doesn’t belong, of men who will spew venom while she tries to forge her own destiny, composing it of moments she is wronged, moments of sinew poking through flesh, bones screeching in her fists, enormous sores seeking breath,
By Lalaina11 months ago in Poets
The Non-Suicidal Depressive
The non-suicidal depressive doesn’t want to die, they wish they never existed in the first place.
By Lalaina11 months ago in Poets
Who Am I?
For my big sister, Jessica. I love you dearly. My father’s name is on a woman in Mexico and on another in Louisiana, but never on my mother and never on me. It is a name that fades on the court papers that prove he was an encantado who had enough of the land and returned to the water.
By Lalaina11 months ago in Poets
Workshop
You write about a hungover unicorn vomiting on the side of the road. People laugh. The workshops continue. You write more. Write about the complexities between duty and autonomy. Write about the Chosen One. Write about religion. Write about the constructs of virtue and purity. Write about the grunginess of New York City (because all urban fantasies are in New York City). Write about guns. Write about family. Write about alcoholism. Write about the border, both the real one and the fictional one. Write about being Mexican and not Mexican enough. And about Kendra, the nonbinary unicorn.
By Lalaina11 months ago in Poets
My Little Sister Wants to Join the Military
A poem for my little sister Chelsey, who enlisted this year. I watch my sister hold a machete when she’s five years old, blade dull, but still able to efficiently massacre the grass.
By Lalaina11 months ago in Poets
My Mother as the Legs of a Mermaid
There are volcanoes on my mother’s legs Years of exploration normalize them One ruptures She tries to outrun them like they did in Pompeii
By Lalaina11 months ago in Poets