NOSEBLEED

Do you think I’ll ever learn
to make my heart beat in time?

The ceiling fan doesn’t answer,
just spins like it has somewhere to be.

Last night the air came in
carrying a secret,
brought her scent with it

warm skin
and something like daisies,
if daisies were people
who used to love you.

Isn’t it strange,
the way the past doesn’t die,
just rebrands, shows up clearer
than the face of the man
at the DMV who said
I look quietly upset.

Memory is a watercolor,
sure. But not just smudged,
it bleeds into the shape
of something you’d cry into
a napkin about, at lunch.

I rolled over onto your carpet
like a body being bagged.
I memorized your ceiling
and thought about all the cells

I’ve left in other people’s rooms,
as if my DNA is out there
testifying against me.

Now that you want someone else,
my lungs work again.
No more CPR from the ghost
of your approval.

Nothing to wait for or admit.
Except maybe
that I was the janitor
of your absence.
And I did sweep,
I did mop.

I laid my guts out
on the shelf at Walgreens
between vitamin D and cough drops.

Glowing, ridiculous.
Second place in my own story,
participation trophy for desire.

That fear—remember it?
The soft one,
the whisper-fear
that keeps you in the waiting room
instead of the dream itself?

Yeah, I had it.
I still have it.

It ruined the dream
which only comes back
when I sleep
like a childhood friend
who still calls me
by my full name.

Just yesterday
I passed the street
where we met.

It felt like walking
into a version of myself
who hadn’t yet
cracked open.

I wanted to go back,
to meet you again
as a stranger.

To admire your nose
like a small sculpture
I can’t afford.

To let you buy me a drink
and pretend this was easy.
But it isn’t, and never was.

There are days
I feel like Terri Schiavo
for the emotionally literate.
No plug, no God,
just a crowd of onlookers
debating if I’m still in there.

The exhaustion
of being alive
in this soft
constant way.

I wish I didn’t remember
the nosebleed
at the rest stop,
the ice-cream on ice-cream
in New Jersey
like flavor could save us.

You know,
the sweetest part
was always how we talked.

The way we folded
into silence like it was
another kind of kiss.

You could’ve told me
you wanted out.
You could’ve said,
I’m packing the good knives
and this version of myself.

I would’ve understood,
I think.
I just wanted a sentence.

Now
I can’t inhale
without thinking
of fresh blood.

DESTINIES

Can we watch La La Land again—
you on your couch, me on mine,
a shared tab open across the fracture
of our new addresses?

I’ll send the link.
Netflix Party makes it sound festive,
like a birthday or a wake.
We’ll press play at the same time,
sync our screens
so Ryan Gosling learns to dance again
while Emma Stone forgets
she ever dreamed of Paris.

From here, my place feels too white,
like a gallery with none
of our framed chaos. You remember
Maliboo Beach? I still call it that

after I took the spirit box to the shore—
cheap plastic ghost-hunting gear,
but it caught something that sounded
like our laughter. I thought
it was the ocean mimicking us.

I remember Halloween,
the one where we dressed as the Warrens,
me handing out candy and watching
you hold it all together
the way some people hold sand.

I sent you that clip the other day.
No signal, or maybe
the universe intercepted it.

Still, I imagine the film
we’d shoot now:
you, rearranging your bookshelf
so the titles make sense again.

I’m still learning how to soften
without turning off the lights.
What’s left to filter through?

Maybe nothing, or maybe just
that we rewind not to return,
but to remind.

Have you spoken to your father?
Does he still find me charming?

Do you?

Marie Anne Arreola is a true child of the internet, best known for her role as editor-in-chief of the bilingual catalog VOCES, where she has led over 30 interviews with international creatives—ranging from influencers and writers to artists and content creators.

Marie’s bilingual writing has appeared across Europe, North America, and Oceania, in publications such as Torrey House Press, Meniscus Literary Journal, San Diego Poetry Annual, WILDSOUND International Poetry Festival (Toronto, New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles), and elsewhere. She is a two-time finalist for the Francisco Ruiz Udiel Latin American Poetry Prize (V and VI editions) from Valparaíso Ediciones, and a recipient of the 2024 Young Poets Scholarship awarded by the Gutiérrez Lozano Foundation.