Poetry By Alexandria Regilio

Hypatia Alexandria CC




Bones

How we lay 
in the bones, 
says a lot about how we love. 
We love from the bones,
not the skin or the muscles,
the fingertips or heart. 

From the bones we make our 
prayers: Dear God, 
let me live upright. 
Let me find the truth 
I was born with and lost
as a child.

Our bones allow us 
to scream wild in the woods. 
To hunt poisonous flowers. 
To tip toe over whole villages 
invisible to the human eye. 
Then, run. 

From the bones, we know we heal. 
The bones will last,
if only we can endure the suffering 
rather than burning it away.
Lay first with the bones, 
then gather their strength, for eternity. 





Hometown

Driving south 
on California’s Highway 99,
a horizon line of almond trees 
is an arrow into my chest. 
I am overcome by a teenager’s
arrhythmia, 
still so desperate to understand 
the rhythm 
of my own heart, 
still so curious to understand
how this place has the power
to freeze me,
after leaving so long ago. 
It’s as if he’s still slumped over
the kitchen table, blood running
to the ground,
and I am eight, and stuck 
in the doorway of this haunted house
my parents call home. 
Was it really that bad?
Were the roses really dead from the beginning? 
The 105-degree heat brings me back
to the corner of fifteen years old
and Pelandale Avenue,
around the time I gave up
trying to grow up
and instead gave in. 
Became as flat as California ag country. 
Disappeared into the farms
to black out and have sex. 
Slunk into the malls to shoplift.
Showed up to school to cheat off some kid 
whose parents weren’t preoccupied
with bills or pills. 
We raised each other on Marlboro Reds 
and money in the ashtray for Taco Bell. 
The sun went down,
we went down with it. 
Claimed our spots in the cracks,
where they saw us slip,
and did nothing. 
Claimed our spots in the wasteland
of coming-of-age nothingness. 
None of us knew what had happened to the other,
just that we were sorry. 
Sorry it had to be this way. 
Sorry there wasn’t anything better. 
Sorry no one taught us how to care. 
Sorry they taught us not to care. 
We drove fast onto the edge of ruining our lives for good. 
One of us went missing and was never found. 
It was 1995 and this is what it was like:
All heart and lost soul. 
I had not yet met the woman who would make it out. 
The woman whose sister would not. 
The woman now driving south on California’s Highway 99, tears streaming down her cheeks,
wondering how this place did not flatten her forever,
still not able to admit how 
dark and beautiful and terrifying 
being so lost and alone
really was. 





after unexpected loss

my lover is there 
behind glass, holding two cups of coffee

and i am a mix of shadow and light
tangled in bedsheets. 

what has happened? i can only think 
it is for some greater good, some rightful reason,

some filling of black holes in hearts.
from these separate worlds we pray together, 

knowing that men live there
and women live here,

and it has always been this way.
it is supposed to be this way. 

there is immense beauty 
when the glass melts, 

turns into slick floor 
that shimmers with our footprints.

in this dance we’ve dreamed up 
and found ourselves living one night under a full moon

with the windows cracked 
and the wind speaking to us in tongues.

as our own tongues trace the memories of taste,
the sour and bitter moments,

we roll them over and over
and make them sweet again.

we know we come to love flawed.
we know we come to love through imperfect living.

so why do we so often 
hide the things that make us 

the most loveable? why do we turn those
things into parts of ourselves that we hate? 

or worse, need to heal?
not just messy floors, but messy hearts and minds,

in this hiding, we have lost our way.
after a strange week of unexpected loss

i am grateful for this shadow and light in human form,
who does not hold me like i’m behind glass

but like i am holiness,
so much blood and all. 

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Alexandria Regilio is a poet, herbalist and soon-to-be novelist. She writes about rewilding her feminine urges through the lenses of nature, motherhood and reconnecting with her Native American roots. She has work forthcoming in Witches Magazine and lives in Oakland, California with her two children and two parakeets. Follow her on Instagram @good_goddess_urge.
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