Kailah Figueroa is a rhetorical engineer, memory archivist, and part-time prose stylist. She earned her BA in Creative Writing from Susquehanna University and is a current Poetry MFA candidate at Rutgers-Newark. Her writing has appeared in Homology Lit, Lolwe, Prose Online, Passengers, and others. In 2021, she was a recipient of the Fulbright Summer Institute Fellowship at the University of Bristol for Arts, Activism, and Social Justice. You can find more of her work in her newsletter, The Saddest Girl in _________, on her Website, and on Instagram.
after my Bipolar Diagnosis I make several phone calls & everyone says that makes sense
I want to apologize for my lateness (I know this is my house
& my party) but I was caught in the weathering of my neuro-connections.
the walls were cracked from the earthquakes & the windows were blown out
from the thunderstorms. but, I’ve been on these field studies with my contractor
& with an aerial view of my past, we can figure out this whole troposphere-thing
so I’m revisiting the old party guest lists & now, I can see what was going on.
I’m afraid it’ll only worsen before the bettering. but, thank you for coming.
my house has no roof & the sky is darkening, but I just wanted to make this
a good time—goodness, the wind tangled the streamers, the hail popped
all of the latex balloons & now my exhale fills the room with my other issues.
I’m weathering, again. I’m sorry the basement is flooding but I’m trying
to contain it with prescription attempts. last year, I tried to blow it all up
& found myself in the hospital. my contractor said I’ll lose both the defense
& prosecution if I build a detonator with no safety plan. he also says I’ll have
this house forever (& it will never be left astray like other recessive traits) but,
thank you for coming. thank you for offering to help repaint the walls & fix the roof.
my body is a housing crisis & this place is such a mess. I can’t move away
but I can renovate. so, I’m fixing the ceiling, redecorating the walls with
more streamers & confetti & balloons to show future party guests
how I make so much beauty in such a difficult space.
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