Terra Makes a Mix
︎︎︎ Bebe Zeva
︎ Nov 26, 2025
Terra Mixmaker, past self, sat erect and hostage in her spacious bedroom organelle.
She was going through the motions.
The burning of incense,
the arrangement of playlists,
the shifting from astonishment to dull gradual awareness of time spent fruitlessly.
She was in the flirtation with psychosis,
the placing of plucked leaves around a stem who had already shed them,
the stem saying "they are dead to me," the leaves saying nothing.
She was in the jockeying of memes,
the scooping of puzzle pieces into the shape of a horse without fitting them together,
the thinking, clever and lazy, that "it’s a horse,"
but it’s not the horse, it’s not the harder one.
She was in the swinging,
the rocking fetally, the listening to of siren songs,
the pouring of them into a mixer, the concoctions sounding strange,
ground too fine, lacking gain.
She was in the mud not congealing into a golem,
the making of lifeless mashups.
She was in the realizing that innervation cannot be forced,
then the forgetting again,
the returning to enchantment with leaves
and repeated attempts to graft them onto a stem.
She was in the starting of fires, the scrying of spiraling smoke julias,
the having of a hunch that a seed means nothing
without the conspiracy of the soil it’s planted in.
She was in the wrestling, in the running,
in pineal hyperboloids turning on her,
in the examination of their shafts, inner hollows and rotors…
their rotors, the breathless fascination, the wondering "who turns them?"
She was in the noticing of the pattern, the doing of nothing about it.
She was in the wanting to and the losing of steam,
the vanishment of toroids, the grieving of energy spent deciding not to.
These were the knightless pursuits of a maiden too scared to hop around her own cage,
reluctant to enjoy it too much,
knowing she would need to escape it later.
She was in the making of history,
in the having no evidence of this,
in the trusting that one day she would.
She was going through the motions.
The burning of incense,
the arrangement of playlists,
the shifting from astonishment to dull gradual awareness of time spent fruitlessly.
She was in the flirtation with psychosis,
the placing of plucked leaves around a stem who had already shed them,
the stem saying "they are dead to me," the leaves saying nothing.
She was in the jockeying of memes,
the scooping of puzzle pieces into the shape of a horse without fitting them together,
the thinking, clever and lazy, that "it’s a horse,"
but it’s not the horse, it’s not the harder one.
She was in the swinging,
the rocking fetally, the listening to of siren songs,
the pouring of them into a mixer, the concoctions sounding strange,
ground too fine, lacking gain.
She was in the mud not congealing into a golem,
the making of lifeless mashups.
She was in the realizing that innervation cannot be forced,
then the forgetting again,
the returning to enchantment with leaves
and repeated attempts to graft them onto a stem.
She was in the starting of fires, the scrying of spiraling smoke julias,
the having of a hunch that a seed means nothing
without the conspiracy of the soil it’s planted in.
She was in the wrestling, in the running,
in pineal hyperboloids turning on her,
in the examination of their shafts, inner hollows and rotors…
their rotors, the breathless fascination, the wondering "who turns them?"
She was in the noticing of the pattern, the doing of nothing about it.
She was in the wanting to and the losing of steam,
the vanishment of toroids, the grieving of energy spent deciding not to.
These were the knightless pursuits of a maiden too scared to hop around her own cage,
reluctant to enjoy it too much,
knowing she would need to escape it later.
She was in the making of history,
in the having no evidence of this,
in the trusting that one day she would.