INTRO:
Heartbreak, it's one of those topics that we either don't expand on enough or have written very many pieces on the subject. No matter what it happens to be for you, it's important to write about. We can experience heartbreak in many forms but the type of heartbreak in this issue is the romantic kind. The reason I chose "heartbreak" as the theme for rose quartz journal's first issue was definitely for the angst. If you hate angsty poetry then this issue will definitely not be for you. For those who have never experienced romantic heartbreak but you love angsty poetry then you might wonder what it's like first hand. Once you take a dive into this issue you'll be blown away by the talent but also by the words. Jenna Velez will kick off the issue and then the issue will end with Emma- Louise Adams. All of these wlw writers deserve some internet claps for their contributions. So please give each & every one of them just that. I'm proud of the love & support the journal has received. I do hope that it'll grow even more so by the end of the year. Also if you happen to be interested in submitting to rose quartz journal ever please visit the social media below. twitter: roseqjournal
- vanessa maki , founder/editor
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
SAGE - Jenna Velez FREEDOM WOMAN - Jenna Velez Theresa - Marilee Goad Hearsay Rule - Gervanna Stephens Still - Gervanna Stephens Forgotten Mixtape - Chloe Smith untitled,i - Caroline Grand-Clement untitled,ii - Caroline Grand-Clement Cut Flowers - Juliette van der Molen FIVE STAGES OF GUILT - Emma-Louise Adams follow the contributors
SAGE Jenna Velez
I prayed to the churning lava lamp behind Eyes squeezed shut / Appear to me Like burning sage Make me remember there’s a god Let me taste the suffering Of your lips like strawberries That were scared to ripen under Our parents’ gaze
I memorialized the sanctuary cities That raised us better Than any church ever could Because none would let us in You loved me better Than any scar I gave myself In your absence Make me forget these tender commandments
I confessed to infinite cigarettes The crimes of passion we committed In closets too small for our feminine frames Overbites clashing in teenage avidity Can I hop on a plane and give you my life? For the love of nostalgia Would that be alright? Because I still need you to / Purify me Like burning sage
FREEDOM WOMAN Jenna Velez
She smiled at the sound of thunderstorms It reminded her of what I could do Freedom woman / She said I tasted like wild sky Rolling thunder between my two fingers Until there was a harmonious applause Of humid heartbeats in mid July
I cried at the sound of her voice There were no thunderstorms where she was going 1,112 miles from Philadelphia Freedom woman / She whispered I lived inside her jetlagged dreams Until I moved into unpacked boxes In the forgotten corners of her mind
Three years later I’ve grown more From the wounds / Time unhealing Freedom woman / She used to wonder how I danced as if there was no disease in the world Spinning like her old bicycle wheels How could I tell her we were diseased all the while? I am no freedom woman When love and death come with Chains for us all
Theresa Marilee Goad
Poring over your Instagram with a bottle of merlot and wine-stained lips does my heart no good: there you are, celebrating a holiday with your new girlfriend, someone different from last year’s, and the year before, and the year before, as is your wont, but I want you to cease your silent war against me, for a sin you still have not named but continue to impale me with its curved edges, I want the tears to desist when I espy your parents, happy and glowing in the crepuscular twinkling of New York City’s twilit glow, when I remember with what fondness we once all greeted each other, how your mother sent me letters though she was not mine but was mine, how I still remember the faint, warm scent of your home, your clothes, how I cherished the gifts you gave me for the thought but also the smell, the traces of you curling around their wrappings, how, despite all these years, and the pain, the deep and abiding pain with which you have always inflicted me, I remain so deeply in love, will love you as I have loved no one, can love no one, but you. And will mourn the fact that you will never share this adolescent longing, my unrequited love an extinguished candle, waxy and exploded, stuffed in the attic of my dreams where it burns bright and distant once in a blue moon, reminding me, teasing me, how I never rush to awake from a mirage in which you are featured, how once in a blue moon, my nostalgic, inebriated fingers will tap a blue- lit message that you have only ever ignored and makes me wonder what thoughts, what feelings I must elicit, how my bashful longing is met with such gross distaste, anger, woe. I vow again to think of you less, to dream of you less. Every year I do. But still, every once in awhile, I sit in my kitchen, wine glass in hand, scrolling through your newsfeed, wondering, longing, wishing, waiting for a friendship, young romance, whose ashes you scattered over the fields of your artsy college campus a very long, long time ago, willing you to think, just once, that you miss it, too.
Hearsay Rule Gervanna Stephens
She says, I don’t have heart or feeling or spine, she says, and I weather.
Still Gervanna Stephens
I guzzled her down thirst on a hot day, she was a hot date scheduled to ruin my life, and I, too, know the art of giving, till I am fragment and shards only beautiful in the light, and you take till I am dull and more dangerous than this hurt, till I am body suit, and not living, rattling like attraction that is fleeting like a gear missing its mark, stalling I am heart on my sleeve, still ready to give, still ready to love how you can’t, still ready to be the rejection you prattle about, still ready, still thirsty, still reflection, still you are beautiful, still you don’t want me, still this body knows nothing but let me, still love you.
Forgotten Mixtape Chloe Smith
I hear your voice rise from the depths of that tape, My chest tightens, aches I don't know why I played it. I don't know why you made it. You were just the kind of person Who cared enough to make a mixtape In the time of streaming. You were just the kind of person who cared enough to make a “mistake" In the time of loyalty. Honesty You didn't even tell me. I had to find out from her, crying, the words shaking with emotion, Her eyes wet with pity. You told her you loved her. Which is more than you afforded me. Your voice was cold, calm It won't happen again,
You didn't even cry. I did. Enough to dry me out, to drown me. The last time I saw you was that day, blurred and unaffected As I slammed the door on my way out. You didn't breathe a word about me. Just strung the both of us along, like we were nothing... Your voice is tinny, robotic -
As you tell me you really care about me
Before the next song plays. I press down hard on the eject button, Hold the thin plastic in my shaking hands, Think about snapping its flimsy shell into splinters, but instead Start to yank, pull, tear,
The innards spilling into my hands, Filling my lap The extraction done, I finally throw it all away My chest heaves as I take one last look. Just a broken carcass, its charred organs I close the lid and wipe my eyes. Just remnants of your cheap words, and the first few shreds of my poor heart.
untitled, i Caroline Grand-Clement
i start crying while masturbating which is how i know that things are bad again. pleasure is only a synonym for forgetting. a remembrall on my bedside table tittering on the edge. i hope it falls & breaks. glass comes in handy when trying to cut away the curtains of memory.
untitled, ii Caroline Grand-Clement
SUMMER (call you jaw pried open call you earthquake call you wildfire that spares no dandelion) clumsy hands that don’t fit together picking flowers & wishing for something better something wiser than desolation (call you uncertain tornado call you natural disaster every time we kissed call you falling bowling pins) AUTUMN (call you rock call you moss call you collateral damage) cuddling on a couch that can’t keep secrets from ourselves seeking warmth in emerald scented illusions (call you anchor to keep me afloat call you aborted mission call you bad timing)
WINTER (call you hidden face of the moon call you planet with too many rings call you fist on cheek with knuckles bleeding)
drunk on doom & moons that never shine together fire hydrant glowing too bright against a pool of delusions
(call you river through my veins call you ocean too wide to cross call you crater carved under my eyes)
SPRING (call you grass blade call you soft breeze call you something that doesn’t hurt) something too new too fast too colorful & we lose ourselves in music that we never knew it is tender it is risk (call you rainbow call you coconut cake crumbling through the cracks call you whispered nights with nothing but skin)
Cut Flowers Juliette van der Molen
her hands, long-fingered petals, delicate vibrancy meshed into all my empty spaces until i grew into her a photosynthesis fusion.
brushed anther to sepal a carpal meshed full of secrets and an innermost whorl whisper sending a blush down deep through parted pistil engorged with unspoken i love yous.
the glass breaks in our hothouse
and we grow free, stretching to an exploded sunlit sky— until we are eclipsed plucked from soil.
her goodbye— a sharp snick of garden shears, pain dulled by shock only to bleed slow from my stem later.
now we are petals strewn along brutal currents, caught in branches and drowned in seas.
my mouth opens to call you but only swallows salt, sinking anchor deep in tides that hide me.
FIVE STAGES OF GUILT Emma-Louise Adams
DENIAL: oh, this can’t be true / it can’t be happening / good things don’t happen to broken girls like me / there is no way I committed the greatest sin of all and came out burning in only the most glorious of manners / it will hit me later, the enormity of my transgression / for of all this joy I am surely undeserving, undeserving / undeserving
ANGER: how could I do this to myself / how could I condemn my heart even knowing the certain consequences / love is an injustice, is inherently unfair / how dare I reach for happiness in a world that knows only tears and suffering / how fucking entitled does a girl have to be
BARGAINING: if I am going to hell I am going there pleading because this is too good to end / I’d do anything I swear I’d suffer again and again I’d agonise endlessly just give me one more minute to feel this glory / after that you can do anything you want to me just please / who am I saying please to? / I have to keep saying it anyway
DEPRESSION: did a wonderful thing and despite it all I’m a horrible person / or maybe because of it / the sun is rising and falling in my ribs and it could be elation but it feels like punishment / I am rising and falling in a transparent ocean and it might swallow me up or spit me out / either way it has the power to kill me / and I so dearly want to let it
ACCEPTANCE: oh / please / be out there somewhere / and oh / please / be out there soon
follow the contributors:
Jenna Velez - @northernbruja Marilee Goad - @_gracilis Gervanna Stephens - @gravitystephens Caroline Grand-Celment - @octopodeshearts Juliette van der Molen - @j_vandermolen Chloe Smith - @ch1oewrites Emma-Louise Adams - @elaecrire