A Thank You Note to you - Beast Meridian

One of the reasons poetry is so scared to me is because every poem has the power to create its own language. Thank you, Vanessa Angelica Villarreal for Beast Meridian. Thank you for the language you have created that has finally granted me the peace of mind in understanding what it is that I have been feeling for so long. I never understood my own rooms of assimilation until you created the language for me to understand it. Thank you for providing me and many others with the space to heal through your work. I have always deemed myself mentally insane or ill because I never understood why these violent cycles of anxiety and depression keep happening. Thank you for reassuring me que no soy loca. Pero que soy un extensión de mis ancestros. Y que mi dolor, mis tristeza, mi depresión no es mi culpa. Que no es mi existencia. Thank you for reassuring me that I am not alone even though it often feels that way when you are first generation student. Thank you for letting me know that I do not always need to instinctively go into survival mode when things get hard. Thank yo for reminding me that have support. That I belong to a community of first generation low income students who often feel in similar ways. Thank you for reassuring me that it is okay to lean on that support every once in a while. Even though I am so grateful for Beast Meridian as a whole I am most thankful for the poem Oak Falls. The narrative of the immigrant family moving into the suburban home is one that I experience first hand growing up. I ac knowledge and appreciate your ability to nuance the poem just enough to stay true to your own experience but also i can see you took the time to voice kids like me who felt just as broken by this "todo nuevecito" lie. I finally understood that I should not invalidate the feelings of my youth. That yes I was grateful to have a home but also acknowledge that home and its haunting. The way it tore apart my parents (even further then trauma of migrating here). The way tulips would not bloom in the garden me and my father soiled there was something wrong in our families soil. The way that home served as a site of memory for me that still is not pleasant for me to revisit. It is darkened by graves of depression and aggression. Very recently have I been able to revisit my home in my memories and physically. I have begun to try to weed out the soil that my family has chosen to ignore for too long. Even though I carry a lot fo teh weight for my parents and sibling in this time of healing, reading your poem made em realize that I am willing to take on that burden. Thank you for helping me plant a new tree in my families garden Villarreal, it is finally growing.