• Swollen Land
• Fingers crack beneath the soles of my feet
• Delicate bliss seeps out from the tips.

• The cactus taunts me.

• There will be no running.

• My lips will splinter and bleed,

• But I will no longer be thirsty.
• Disillusionment has made its peak on
• The horizon of my eyelashes.

• //

• Mother will sear the chicken like
• The swivels of the desert are seared
• On my skin.

• Rice will be fried to a sizzling gold
• Mimicking the flecks that were
• Once

• Embedded in an innocence
• That held

• My irises together.
• //

• I will wait.

• I will wait.

• The sand will stir in my lungs
• Preoccupying my needless desires.

• Tell them I am on hold.


• There will be cactus for us to bite.

• After She’s Gone
• Don’t forget to rub pesto on the rocks
• And dried out riverbanks

• Because then,

• We can pretend
• That it is moss

• Spit in the crusty
• Muddy holes

• To make ponds

• Nod your head when someone asks you:
• “Were you here when there were frogs?”
• As if you remember

• Peel the tangerines
• Gingerly

• A delicate slow
• That is that of a
• Child’s

• Chew the white
• Earthy veins
• Even slower

• For this is what our mother
• Tasted like

• Santa Luna
• You were found lying
• In the mud of

• The riverbed

• The water rushed
• Over your pale
• Body and exposed
• Two gleaming
• Opals

• In the shape of
• Your shoulders

• And we called you
• Moon.

Sofia Catalina

Sofia Catalina is an aspiring musician, artist, and writer. When she’s not working at the Fleet Science Center, she’s drawing aliens or playing the ukulele. She hopes to take her readers elsewhere by giving them abstract scenes with vivid imagery. Because of this, her poems may at times seem like nonsense, but she assures you that there is a hidden meaning behind the strangeness of it all.