Oakdale Ink

April 2025: Growth/Rebirth

“I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.”

— Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“trailer park trash”  by Aspen Alofe

I BLED IN A TRAILER PARK AND BECAME FLOWERS

i. Down down, down the I-129 we go, driving down this old town’s farm roads. This busted down sedan of yours never was any good. Seats infused with cigarette smoke, crushed cherry lollipops and gummy green apple residue ground us in place. Cold feet propped up on the dashboard and an arm hangs limp out the rolled-down window, cuffed sleeves capturing the air that blows inside: crisp and dewy and drifting its way up to a flat chest. The road stretches vast and lonely, endless blades of sun-bleached grass we once flitted through like those stubborn houseflies, going everywhere we didn’t know and tumbling into the ground only to rise back up and do the same. Your plaid, red button down sweeps the wind. My hands cross over the console to tug, somehow expectant for something we don’t want to put an answer to. Your face is flushed the colour of those ripe, half-bitten strawberries left untouched on the counter because you had always been first, never liked taking seconds. I was always the one to eat up these discardings.

ii. There is something holy about melting. There is a holiness in the way flesh drips down like candle wax, and blood gushes out of a stab wound found in the small of a lean, freckled back. There is something sacred about the way we loved when we were sixteen. There is a sacredness in the way you held the lighter in your left and the small pocket-knife in your right. I laid bare and docile before you in the cramped trashy bedroom of a trailer park boy. You promised to mark me up and piece me back together. You promised to hurt me the way you do because we understood each other like nobody else could. In the dim light blood spills, trickling down and puddling underneath our bodies. Beside me you knelt, knees digging into the cushion. Hands feather over my neck and my chest empties. Debauched eyes in a haze hold me captive as if I am the only angel worth watching and I drink, drink, drink it in. I turn into a body filled with riveting light, liquified gold. We swore we’d never change.

iii. Man-made satellites orbit earth, crafted by hands heavy with knowledge, steel-making and inventing a second language. Earth is a satellite too, you whisper into my ear one night underneath the stars. Anything that orbits another celestial body is. I must then be the satellite orbiting around you: the star, or planet, or moon. What might my life be without you? An endless search for your presence to take place again.

iv. The horns of salvation blare—louder than the engine, louder than the buzzing flies, so loud and piercing that I am unable to think of anything else. Hearing it, I would think the horns were calling me to God. Now I know it was my calling to you. The horns blare and I picture you standing in that field, hair straw-like and eyes like God’s last mistake. This is what it means to worship, isn’t it? To devote my life to you wholly before the angels take you?

v. Chopping wood is no easy task, hacking into the trunk with the force of spite. I am close, always lingering. Sweat beads down your chin and drips to a small puddle in which the earth swallows up. One night, a boy leaves a trailer park to enter a busted down sedan, seats stickied with green apple residue and crushed cherry lollipops. An engine cracks on and lights draw back into the darkness, like an angel fading away. This boy didn’t have anything holding him back, not even the pull that came from the satellite orbiting around him. Now his sweat beads and tears that once dripped into the earth blossomed into some beautiful mess. There are flowers growing where I buried a past self, one who grieved the loss sorrowfully expecting you to come back. The trailer park boy never did. He was always first, now first to leave.

“Up and Out”

Stage dark

Quiet giggles

Heavy makeup

Deep breaths

Butterflies

Big sighs

In the moment

Not myself

Miss it all

Need it now

Now so small

Want it back

Take a chance

Rustling scripts

Behind the door

Remember applause

Know it by heart

Neat sharp claws