Untitled #3 by Alexis Mitchell
I remember how much I had wanted it. desperately. so badly to the point where I was willing to compromise every limb if it meant I could have you whole. the days since our departure trembled in slow motion. like a fault in our stars. like rifts in the soil. in the moment, everything hurt. this heaving chest pulsed in a pattern of fragmented breaths. all rooted in the gravity of goodbyes—the unexpected kinds of departure you could have never foreseen. yet here I was with ashes of the empty proposals laying at my feet. and I would have done anything—anything to make the pieces fit. to justify why they had to. to find reason in incompletion. but I knew I couldn’t force this. I couldn’t force anything. I was stubborn and refused the notion of surrendering—until it was all I had left. because we had become just two divergent plates pulling apart the earth. It felt like trying to mix oil and water. and I was exhausted trying to make the course of the earth spin for us again. and that was when the realization struck—we don’t make sense.
“This was trashed because I was just venting in my notes app. I had just gotten out of a relationship, and while initially, I didn’t understand why things ended, I eventually came to terms with its conclusion. A lot of what I write in my notes app is usually prose pieces where I just let out all the thoughts floating in my mind—a stream of consciousness—but I never edit nor plan on submitting them to be published. I like to call all the things existing in my notes ‘word vomit’.”
Alexis Mitchell (she/her) is an English teacher, author, and poet from New York. She began her writing journey at eight years old—from diaries with a lock and key to journals or random scribbles, writing has remained at the core of her existence. As of 2022, she has published 4 poetry collections: I Write, Therefore I Am, I Write Therefore I Am: Exposed, Hope Chest, and The Attic. Aside from teaching and writing, Alexis Mitchell can be found with her nose in a book or spending time with friends and family. To connect with the author, Alexis Mitchell can be found on Instagram @_lexmwrites.