on going down this road alone
poetic reflections on individualism
12/12/2025
My trauma is not special,
it’s threaded into the very fabric of our society.
We’re told we must
go alone
go against our biology, tradition, trajectory,
but i look up at the grackles, their flight in sync,
their collective decision to land atop the highest tree,
together, as it’s meant to be.
herds, bands, murders, flocks, schools, pods
our primate brothers and sisters pray for us
and our dystopian nightmare of
a system
erected to keep us apart and reliant
on it and not
eachother
to keep us so busy that gathering has become a special occasion,
and not the common lifeblood it’s always been.
Sometimes I question, am i asking too much?
Am I just not strong or independent enough?
Maybe I should learn to do it all on my own.
But no, I refuse to normalize this way of life,
when in my heart of hearts,
my deeper places of knowing,
that ring out when I witness the grackles thriving together,
I know we’re not meant to live like this.
and I don’t know the way forward, I can only feel it.
I cannot fix it, I can only move through and hope
that together we will find a way out.
On time
04/2024
A seamless shift
of destruction and creation.
A room with no ceiling and all the same contents,
in constant transformation.
A nonlinear thing,
an endless spiral,
The dance of life and death.
Great Mother --
as invisible and plain to see as anything.
The path before you.
The breeze
as seen in leaves,
the moon
as felt in tides.
Each moment split down the center perfectly,
funneling into both past and future,
the now being their eternal embrace.
The remnants are real even if what was is no longer:
family photos, old texts, wedding dresses, tombstones.
Messages whispered over and over:
the fool, ace of cups, the tower
predispositions within a violent system.
stories retold until exhaustion.
what if it’s all the same dream?
all the same moment?
Its all changing seasons
and passing cars
within space.
Arbitrary measurements to track your data,
when the stars can tell you everything you need to know.
walking subconsciously in the same deep snowy prints as before,
It all feels eerily familiar,
Like we’ve been here before.
My heart knows,
with or without me,
I’ll be here,
With the sun melting the clouds again
Dew drying,
spiders spinning between blades of grass,
Mama Oak still and silent,
Centuries more,
her branches dinner tables and highways,
for bugs, birds, ferns, and squirrels.
My own soul, a forever witness.
Sister Love
10/2023
There’s somewhere in heaven
that echoes the sound
of me and my best friend laughing together.
Our vibrations ricocheting off each other,
growing louder,
whirling into a cacophony of cackles and shrieks
Amongst the stars.
When disaster strikes and my stomach drops,
and it feels like I’m Alice when she’s falling down that tunnel,
she always catches me midair,
mid sob,
and her steady love rocks me back to solid ground.
There’s no one else to text that gruesome and inappropriate thought,
the gossip singsong that shapes our social understandings,
and helps situate misgivings and awkward moments.
No one else holding the context of our lives in the same way.
When trauma fogs the dash and I can’t see,
she steers my way and reminds me it’ll be okay.
I painted the above piece yesterday - after squirting cheap cover-up paint over a failed attempt at something else. I wanted to paint the turkey vulture closer and more personally than they’re shown in other works in this series. Turkey vulture as a reminder of death, as our true grim reaper, those who help process our bodies and souls, the magic material of life, and assist it in its transformation.
www.serenaviolacorson.com // @ serenaviolaart IG
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