soft poem by mia valenzuela

​you don’t always want The Poem to grab you by the jaw and kiss you hard or gut you like a fish or show you the face of God or even scream I LOVE YOU in the pouring rain. in truth, you like it best when The Poem takes you to a little farm with a wildflower field. you like that it picks you up at noon on the dot in a used Toyota Prius that smells of take-out Cinnabon. the trunk is packed with a baby blue picnic blanket and plastic champagne glasses. you both drink Evian water instead of pinot grigio. you like that The Poem hums the melody of a romantic-era choral arrangement absentmindedly within earshot. for a moment its world revolves around appreciating the apple orchard. for a moment it is overcome by a silent sky-gazing daze, it has gotten lost in the middle of the summer scenery.  it politely pays you no mind, and you suppose it is forever lost in reverie, but then you catch its eye and soon a rosy smile blooms between the Granny Smith trees. it doesn’t command attention on purpose, it’s just that natural Mercury conjunct Venus magnetism. this aspect shows in the way it speaks. the conversation is always a bedtime story. commentary is proverbial. it explains things in the tone of sunday school sermons with the passion of an overzealous conspiracy theorist. The Poem compliments strangers on their superhero backpack pins and red lips, messy buns and waterfall braids, loud laughs and eloquence, like a totally tipsy girl at a house party named Taylor. (although The Poem is entirely sober.) it prefers to solely wear the same three sweaters with the occasional genuinely pretentious beret. you find it funny that The Poem tries to be vegan. it orders the salad instead of the prime rib. but it still eats the brioche. it is the monarch of social butterflies, yet it identifies as an introvert. it attends a knitting and baking club with a gang of groovy local grandmas and makes the bed with fresh rosemary and lavender scented linens every morning. during autumn and winter months, The Poem hosts informal soirées in which she personally serves every guest her father’s homemade vegetable soup in handpainted ceramic bowls; in summer it prepares cake bites for brunch. The Poem is written to be played affettuoso legato. it plays Prelude In G, Opus 32, No. 5 by Sergei Rachmaninoff on Sunday evenings before it goes to sleep in a silk eyemask, under a pink princess canopy at eight. The Poem loves you, and shows it. it is not self-aware in the least. in the best way.    

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​Mia Valenzuela is an unorthodox Disney Princess and writer from Santa Ana, southern California. She attends Orange County High School of the Arts in the Creative Writing conservatory, class of 2019, and performs musical things on a stage sometimes. Her work can be found in Inkblot, Moonchild Magazine, Nu Lit House, tenderness, and Vagabond City lit. She likes anything lavender scented, being wrapped in her Cinderella blanket, and drinking diet peach Snapple. Sun in Aquarius, Moon in Sagittarius, Taurus Rising. The internet knows her as @miagvalenz.