Editor’s Letter
Death comes to us when least expected. A cosmic rite to access all realms unimaginable, unknown. It’s the promise that everything must end. And with that promise, we hope you find solace.
Solace in the fact that empires are meant to die. Time evolves everything, nothing is stagnant by nature of impossibility.
Following the period of the black death was an innerspacial redefinition of life and the way we live it. Society rearranged filling in the gaps of loss and the cavernous depths of injustice with a world re-envisioned.
It’s our hope that Opal Age, in times of tumult and extraordinary pain, may act as refuge from our past expectations. Expectations of never ending hopelessness, justice unserved, futures not worth living in. Opal Age is our place to co-create our future, dive into the uncomfortable realities destined by nature of queerness. Harnessing the strength we all easily access through our nuanced existence. We understand transformation intimately, furiously, and gracefully.
We know that borders were meant to be crossed, boundaries were meant to be pushed, and systems of opression have no choice but to die out like a dimming candle. Not without a fight, but with inevitability that the wick of time will smother us all. We know that the rigidity of nations has no correlation to humanities infinite fluidity, and that nature will flourish long after we die only becoming more luscious as our bodies degrade to sand and sea.
We come into this new era upon us with a profound awareness of loss, an awareness that cannot be minimized. Just like in the wake of the Black Death, society must rearrange. After all, the Renaissance - rebirth - was not born in oblivion, but with the fertility of death and dreams of a world beyond futility. A world in which we are valuable, heard, bound by none.
We find ourselves in a crossroads in which all cycles must end.
We will see empires fall in our lives as we patiently watch their lights flicker out, their illusions become clearer, injustices undeniable.
It is during our Opal Age that we dream borderlessly with the freedom of birds. In which we move, love, and feel freely in the reality that is meant to find us, because find us it will. What you seek seeks you in kind, and the rest falls away like flesh from bones, leaves from trees.
As empires fall, as they always will, we listen like all our futures depend on it to the voices of those in empires’ relentless grasp for the life we crave which empire has no right to. We stand unmoving in solidarity with the people of Palestine in their pleas for life in the crossfire of empire collapsing in on itself.
It is our hope by including the works of Palestinian poets in diaspora that the undeniable humanity of their people can be heard. Art, our words, are one of the most powerful tools to liberation. An alchemical force never to be taken from our consciouness. For art is where our souls utter truths with undeniable severity, a demand and promise that life will continue long after empires fall. It is our hope that words spread like wildfire and the people of Palestine will be free, that genocide will never be able to peak its rotten head into our worlds most liberated, wonderous collective future.
Death bares witness to the liminality of our time. She acknowledges the inevitability of ending to all things which began. We hold you in this emptiness so that you may feel the life that coarses through the veins of pandemonium around us. We reveal the sacred truth that in death therein holds all the beauty that is life. Here is your space to liberate your spirit from mortal coil to something more, something once unfathomable, something ours.
Death is upon us, if you seek to bare witness.
We hope this space is a cathartic release of our relentless pain. A chrysalis for tomorrow. A solemn acknowledgment of our yesterdays. A crossroads where we pave new destinys. An Age that is Ours.
In solidarity, awe, and reverence,
-claude joven
Signed the editors of Opal Age:
Katie Harrison & Peter Rogers
In the live version of Folsom Prison Blues, the audience cheers after Cash sings: “I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.”
This was the worst reason for murder that Johnny Cash could come up with; murder without justification. This fictional murderer is left to rot in Folsom Prison for eternity, haunted by the whistlin’ train that could take his blues away – if only he were free. For no reason at all, there’s something about this song that feels exactly like a warm audio security blanket. It never gets old.
Anxious (probably dehydrated) and wandering around Rome, my phone died as I searched for Folsom Prison Blues on Spotify. It was a beautiful and perfect day, and something inconsequential was bothering me.
I was near a corner with large steps overlooking a square by the road; adjacent to the road there’s the Tiber river. In the middle of all this, there’s a man with a guitar finishing a song I didn’t recognize.
I sat down for a moment. I’d seen everything I needed to see that day, and my legs felt like they were going to fall off. This would be the last thing.
He played around a bit with the tuning of his guitar. He’s got some kind of goofy microphone setup that hovers right beneath his mouth.
He’s wearing exactly the kind of hat you’d expect. The tuning is correct, the microphone is correct – and miraculously he asks the correct question:
“Y’all like Johnny Cash? This is Folsom Prison Blues.”
Always Be a Good Boy
by Katie Harrison
she/her
David of Michelangelo
by Jules
they/he
i am mutilated like a hacked block of marble,
my supposed undoing performed with the utmost care,
love, awareness, and attention to each painful detail.
i used to curse my three-dimensionality—
like a poorly placed column,
my body was forced by nature to exist and
by man to support my assigned weight.
my superfluous material chiseled away,
i now exist as a testament to genderless divinity
and taking up space becomes less of a punishment
as i realize what my presence can bring to the world.
Sick
by Rachel Barduhn
she/her
I am bitter /Easily swallowed by my insecurities / Until I was digested in its green stomach. / Praying upwards to a feral god / Until my knees are bruised by the aged floorboards. / I gaze below through the cracks- / Watching the colour in your cheeks blossom. Tickled pink by her violet eyes / Yet I originally saw the violence brewing within. / I am almost certain she imagines your body tied up in flames /as her cult prances around your ashes until they all rain down. / The stories you’ve told me are riddled in a Mary-Sueesque prose– /where nothing happens to progress the plot forward. / Just chapters upon chapters being force fed a stew of flowery language / until all it learns is how to speak without truly comprehending itself / because sounding pretty to the ear matters more than being coherent. / Am I right? / Truth be told. I am sickened by the sight of this fabricated love story / One where you are left for dead /And the other can wish it all away. / I cope by pretending it’ll end in disaster. /I’ve always been a Brother’s Grim girl. / When it came down to the affairs of the heart.
Mother Cunt
by Caitlin Victoria
she/her
I lost her when she told me I was lying and the man didn’t touch me at seven. The goodbye felt final when she made me apologize. I couldn't find her again for a long time, although I searched.
I found her when she stood on the doorstep, and with sign language she would say I love you every morning as I went off to school.
I lost her when she spat that I was the reason for the divorce.
I found her as she whispered "I'm sorry" and her hair was falling out as gently as her words.
My back was turned, she was looking towards the sky and I stood still and caught those words.
I'll find her in the women I fuck.
And sometimes I'll fucking run when I do.
I last lost her when she was bald and cancer riddled. And I found her when I chose a book for someone I love.
I'll find her when I'm old and things ache and I feel the memory of the slight brush of her hand against mine
I love her and I loved her and I was horrified by her and in awe of her and everything she was I never want to be and everything she is I am.
She was my first heartbreak and the greatest love I'll ever know and I'll find her in the mirror every day and somedays I'll crash my fist against it and some days I will lean in and kiss the cold ever so gently.
Be Here
by Jules
they/he
grief is the weight of absence,
looking to your left and realizing
there’s something missing.
this is harder than it should be,
than it used to be, than it ever has been.
grief is what fills the absence,
both with past memories
and ones that will never happen.
someone else should be here for this.
someone is not in their assigned seat.
someone would have said something by now.
this was not meant to be done alone,
braved alone, lived alone.
but
here i am
and there
you are.
Transmutation
by Peter Rogers
he/they
Danse Macabre
by Jules
they/he
“when the archaeologists dig you up
they’ll look at your crumbling pelvis
and notice you were a woman.”
maybe we will have evolved by that point
to not concern ourselves with the genders
of skeletons, decayed or animated.
i hope, beyond my bone structure, they notice
fossilized seeds cast from the flowers
placed gently on my chest
by the ones who loved me,
remnants of grains and fresh fruit
that kept my body upright so long
laying dormant in my ancient digestive tract,
carbon in my marrow like rings of a tree
showing when i lived
and therefore what i lived through.
whether i am more akin to
the tollund man or the tocharian female,
i trust these capable scientists
to provide evidence to support the hypothesis
that this person,
now dust,
lived a full and uncompromising life.
Pondering Existence
by Sally Padilla
she/her
The sun will die and take everything we know with it.
What legacy will it leave behind
with no consciousness to remember
the brutal heat,
burns,
and blisters?
With no one to remember its gentle soothing golden hour light.
Its life giving purpose?
An accident
Its demise will take no prisoners or leave a single witness in its wake
No post death ritual
Fading
Into violent silence
Eternal in the speckled darkness
We too will fade
Into silence
Our purpose
An accident
Our existence
An utter absurdity
But do not despair
There is freedom
In the waking realization that destiny does not exist
There’s comfort
In our proclivity to reach out from our own internal speckled void to reach another
There’s a grating ambivalence
That for better or worse we are experiencing ourselves and each other
And there’s transcendence
In the way gnarled fingers delicately wind themselves around a song
when ego is lost to the spirit flight of music and dance
Putting intangible essence into words, ink, paint, and sound.
And what grandeur is this?
That we are creators and destroyers
Of Art
Its purpose?
To understand?
To make sense?
To derive beauty from meaningless chaos? To play God in a godless emptiness?
Yes.
Am I Still Here?
by Konstantina
she/her
I took a break from life.
I took a break from healing, i took a break from living.
Suddenly being aware of who i am and what I'm capable of doing became tiring, exhausting.
And where there was passion, courage, excitement to move forward, was now the weight of all the versions of myself that had to put one foot in front of the other and not look back.
When you have been fighting your whole life for everything you've accomplished, people think that reflecting back on that will always be fulfilling.
But my spine has been bent and twisted from all the years of pulling myself forward.
So allow me to lay down and rest, take a break from proving and providing. To me, to you, to everyone.
I need this to be a day without a meaning. A day i can forget. A day without a weight.
How many people do you think would notice if i disappeared for a moment?
Summer Clothes
by Jules
they/he
your dirty dishes are still in the sink—
that’s how quickly you left, your
glass of milk from the
half sleeve of oreos you
made your last meal
doesn’t even stink yet, it just
sits there while we clean up
the rest of your mess first.
my god, it’s like you never left, but
your room is warmer than you are
on this september afternoon.
good thing you left your fan blowing
and your summer clothes still
crumpled in your drawers. i will
hang onto mine until december
because i cannot bear to see
inside that damn garage;
i would rather get drenched
by the winter rain
and be thankful to see
my breath in the cold.
Untitled
by Chris Grimstad
they/them
I had a dream that (redacted) died and afterwards my sister painted angels taking down the devil. It was an oil painting, like the classic ones. In the painting the devil emanated light and the angels were curled around him in a ball, so that light only came from the cracks. maybe the light was the devil exploding, harmed by the touch of something so holy.
I don’t know.
Nails
by Konstantina
she/her
The first time I saw your eyes, i knew I was already lost.
You put me down, got on top of me and started kissing my skin. Your tongue ripped it like it was paper and reached to the bones. I thought you would bite them and leave a mark, but you didn't. You pressed your hands against my chest, made a fist and started knocking. You kissed every breath that desperately came out. "It's safe here, keep this place when you need to escape." you said.
I pushed your hands away, took two nails and pinned one where my heart starts and the other one where my heart ends. "This is who I am. Choose a road. You may find scary demons and loud voices. Fire and stone. Tasty water and juicy fruits. Close your eyes and start walking." You pushed the nails inside. "Oh my love" you said, "we both lost this game already. If you want to win, change the rules and press restart. I'll wait for you at the finish line." Then you jump out, grabbed the nails, pulled them out slowly and started running.
I followed your shadow until it became one with my blood. You were already gone.
Forgetting My Name
by Billie Jane
she/they
Recently, I’ve started to forget my last name.
I’m not forgetting in the way one might forget the name of their freshman-year science teacher: a realization mid-way into a thought on science or secondary education or men with forgettable energy; you can see his face, you were in his class every day for a whole term and yet, his name escapes you.
Instead, I am forgetting in the way one might forget an ex-lover’s phone number: for so long, it is such important information that it becomes a part of you, you imagine it is stamped or burned into the folds of your brain, it lives between the color of your grandparent’s hair and your childhood best friend’s favorite soda, you do not have to think to speak it for you compulsively confess the seven digits upon relevance; and then time passes, and it becomes relevant less- and less-frequently, and you go to recite it and it does not surface from where you were sure you left it, and you sit with the shock that you are not familiar with this information any longer. Later-on, you might remember it all at once, like the intern at You HQ finally found the right document after searching in the records hall of your mind for hours, weeks, days even.
This name was given to me, and I kindly thank the generations of individuals and families for holding it, for keeping it safe, and for passing it along so that it may make its way to my birth certificate. It was one of the first words I learned to spell: I would brush my teeth at night and mark the time by mentally spelling-out my name in full, swaying to the sing-song tune that nobody else could hear. There were one or two people in my life who considered sharing this name with me, carrying the load so that we, too, could gift it to the next generation.
However, these days the relevance of this name occurs less- and less-frequently.
A name is not an easy item to forget. You carry it with you unconsciously, it lives on your government, work, social, and health documents. It is what differentiates you from that one person people mistake you for whom you’ve never met. Forgetting this valuable piece of information is made nearly-impossible by design, one cannot change it on a whim and have it reflected across all fields. It takes time, persistent irrelevance, and an internal detachment borne of absolute desertion. Forgetting one’s name happens without intention, without question.
I realized on an arbitrary day completing an arbitrary task. There was no moment of resolution nor a feeling of freedom of burden. There was a document of considerable unimportance and a line preceded by the word “signature”. There was muscle memory of script, and then there was pause. There was effort of recollection. There was uncomfortably unfamiliar notation, and then there was stillness. I put the pen down, and I sat in the realization. There was confusion and there was grief, and these still accompany me.
I’ve chosen a new name now, one that feels more like home than the one I was given. I still hold-on to the latter, I can still imagine the shape and form my lips around the sound of it, but I have to put more and more effort into remembering the order of its letters. My last name is a home I have moved-out of, and while I can’t easily recall the patterns of the kitchen tile or the order in which I kept my books on the shelves, I remember the shape of the space from where I slept; I remember the smell of the walls when I tossed garlic and onions into the nonstick pan I pulled from the low cupboard; I remember the sound of safety; I remember the feeling of home.
Cassidy Mater
she/they
Death is Temporary
by Chris Grimstad
they/them
From a young age I understood that death was temporary. When I was 6 years old I had a dream that our Sunday School teacher was being taken away. Skeletons dressed like pirates rattled into the church playroom and took him, swinging open the nursery door to carry him out. In my dream the other kids thought it was a game, but I knew I had to go after him. Then I woke up. He died a few weeks later of a heart attack. I never felt the weight of it, maybe because I didn’t know him very well, or was too young. Maybe because in an odd way I had already experienced his death.
Now I’m 17. My great grandma just died. I was very close with Funny Grandma, as we called her. We visited her at least twice a year at her little apartment in Arizona. It was decorated with clay storytellers, beads, wooden figures and paintings. She always dressed like she was going to church, in slacks and a blouse, with matching stone jewelry. I still remember her laugh, and how she would change the rules of skip bo to win every time. She understood death more than most people, being 95. I remember her saying “I keep asking the good Lord when he’s going to take me. He says, ‘Not yet, Wilma, not yet.’”
My grandpa, her son, was a funeral director for a long time. After all of those years helping others through loss, I wonder, did he know how to handle it? My dad grew up around dead people. He rode in the hearse with them and saw their autopsies. I’ve never seen a dead person or been to a funeral. Up until last month I’d never experienced death, but to me it doesn’t feel like my grandma died, just that we haven’t visited her in a while. Part of me is certain that I could drive to Sun City, out towards the red rocks and clean air and $2.39 gas, and I would see her walking in her crooked way to greet me, arms open.
The people who really seem dead are the ones who aren’t. Like my friend who I haven’t heard from in months. I have mourned her so many times. Yet somehow I can’t mourn my great grandma. I don’t see her death, only the death in my grandpa’s eyes, in my dad’s and in my aunt’s. I wish I could tell them she doesn't have to be dead. The morning she died everyone else felt it, they knew it was going to happen soon. But I insisted, if she lived so long, why would she die now?
I still think of her as alive; some part of me thinks I would be able to feel a physical shift with her passing and because I haven’t it must not be true. It makes me think of my tía’s grandma, who still doesn't know her son is dead. Is it hurting her not to know? I don’t think so. After he died I found out he was gay, and had been estranged from her for 5 years. I never met him, he never got to bring his boyfriend to family events, he was barely even mentioned.
Isn’t that death?
See, he died the moment she decided to not talk to him.
Call to Action for Gaza
Support the people of Palestine. Call your representatives. Boycott/Divest. Anything is better than nothing. Listen to PALESTINIAN people. Share information. Cease-fire now. Use your voice. Every action counts.
Suggested Further Reading
Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying by Noor Hindi
We / نحن by Ghayath Almadhoun
Insight by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat
