Sara Aranda has a B.A. in Creative Writing and is a freelance writer and avid trail runner, climber, and gear tester. She has written for Alpinist Magazine, The Climbing Zine, Boulder Weekly, and others. Sara is currently based out of Colorado.
But I can only speak the languages of assimilation
of a lost knowing
of ways in which to peel
ear by ear
wool by wool
the bloodiest parts of the earth. … More Moonbox Notes #14: Abril 2023
It allures me to recall again and again. And all I want is to surround myself with its sounds. This is the shape of you, dressed in your voice. … More Moonbox Notes #13: Marzo 2023
…the memory became a limb of fate, an oracle of time possibly repeating itself. Patrick and I were at the start of a long road trip, on some highway in southern Idaho. We left the pullout on the side of the road and stopped at the first restaurant we came upon, a small diner. I think I ordered pancakes. I think we held hands across the table. It was also nearly Patrick’s 30th birthday. Happy birthday, no one lives forever anyway. … More Moonbox Notes #12: Febrero 2023
But the contract is the contract, and it was a bad contract. I have learned my lesson! And I have come a long way since 2021 in my career experience. So let this be a cautionary tale, I suppose. It’s tough to get paid your worth as a writer or a creative. And determining what that worth is might be even harder. It’s also strange to be a part of an anthology alongside big industry names… … More Moonbox Notes #11: January 2023
I will leave these thoughts as they are and place in them no weight. I will approach the stage but live my life along the way. I’ve made no decisions yet. What I look forward to the most is my growing relationship with joy in my writing and in my day-to-day. So let’s hang on to that, right? Will you be a sister to me, with me, for me? A mother, a father, a brother, a friend? … More Moonbox Notes #10: Diciembre 2022
I suppose the reality-check is thus: I am more than the drama or the pain and I am even more than a truthseeker or a supporter of justice. I am also mundane. Giddy. At times complacent. Full of fantasies. I fail at simple, unentertaining things. The first thing I do in the morning is boil water. … More In Brief, 2022: The Pangs of Our Hope
How it must be something so intimate and deep
It must mean that it was once tethered
Was once a part
Yet repeated, related
So innate and dearly tied
It must have been hungry
It must have been fed
Was once a whole
Sewn in parts repeating, relative… … More Moonbox Notes #9: November 2022
This animation of the void, if you will, opened endless doorways for interpretation and use in an almost meta-like manner. I imagined an abyss, or a slippery slope of want vs need, where the most tender and provocative spaces exist for a person. In the poem, this is where the quiet hauntings might be born or reside or speak from. … More Moonbox Notes #8: Octubre 2022
Many people ask, though, “What if you don’t like Durango? What if you want to come back to Boulder?” And while I entertain the possibility of wanting to return, my heart is telling me that leaving Boulder is only going to be a healing thing. It is the best decision for us at this point in our lives. … More Moonbox Notes #7: Septiembre 2022
The fish jump and their little tails
bend through thin air,
the couple flick their wrists
and the blueness is swept … More Moonbox Notes #6: August 2022
I’ve been thinking a lot about alpine spaces lately, not just because I visit them, but also because of all the rounds of edits I’ve been doing for an upcoming essay in Alpinist Magazine. I’m proud, but I’m also nervous. More so than my last essay for them. I just know that I’m more than a narrative on paper. And I feel that my prose poetry is more in line with how I see and interpret the world than any formal essay could capture. Nonetheless, I hope my voice comes through. And I hope it means something. … More Moonbox Notes #5: June/July 2022
It’s been 7 weeks. A span of time that is impossible to convey without some form of exaggeration. It’s been like dreaming. Mountains rise and fall away. The tightness changes into pain into tightness into dull shapes at the heel or arch or up the calf in cables. There are moments I forget everything. Sleep a black sleep. Then there are flashing scenes: tea bag, tent pitch, the slow tug of a climbing shoe around the heel, a spoon on the tongue, hairbrush, riverbank, paintings of indigenous feminism in a museum. … More Moonbox Notes #4: May 2022
The festival itself encompasses aspects of this as well, the play of meeting new people, the play of finding yourself sipping rum and coke as you watch people spin fire, the play of helping others, the play of witnessing visual art in a public space, the play of learning hard truths — play, as in, the novelty, sure, but also the reciprocity, the indulgence, the curiosity, the embodiment, the unpredictability. … More Moonbox Notes #3: April 2022
Even the Gray Wolf with a dark, mottled coat that stares at me from the wall-calendar photo is a part of this meta-equation. The forested background is blurred, the foreground is soft in grass and wind, the only sharpness being the wolf: a premise, if you will, one that contemplates the viewer. Not unlike a physical bridge, where what happens before and after, or maybe even during the crossing, is specific to the user; the prompt is only ever a bridge. … More Moonbox Notes #2: March 2022
The whiteboard has words like cupless and scree scribbled on it, a part of a list. It has reminders to work on edits for current projects, rediscover and submit writing that has lived on my hard drive for over a decade, have my IUD removed from my uterus, schedule a mammogram for August. For now, at least, I can leave the need to think about removing my ovaries hanging abstractly in the air. … More Moonbox Notes #1: February 2022
perhaps this is what happens every time I press a key on the piano. A string pulls sound toward itself. I press a finger to pull sound into me. I keep the memory of tones, of grandparents, of parents, of time itself. I keep and I keep and I keep. Perhaps keeping is what ages us, compels us to evade or ignore what we can no longer pull. … More In Brief, 2021: What the Brain Does
My dreams were full of poetry and strange wisdom this year. Lines would appear from the landscape, like “the water that baskets me full,” or “chasing questions in a manner of patience is the same as chasing the journey.” My dreams also foretold death. … More In Brief, 2020: Child Again
“What are you?” asks the chickadee. “Your humble relative,” replies the Chief. “What are you?” asks the chickadee. “Your savior!” replies the colonist. “What are you?” asks the chickadee. “Lost,” replies the wanderer whose inherent meandering means not planning ahead. “What are you?” asks the chickadee. “This moment,” replies the philosopher, monk, or new-age spiritualist … More The Chickadee (& Humanity)
He can cry to me in a way that the desert can’t. When he buries his head like he wishes to do with his heart, whispering, “I miss them so much,” the yucca and the cacti stretch sunward, silent. If you are to walk into the desert far enough, a jackrabbit will dart from a bush or a pile of decomposing Joshua Trees… … More In Brief, 2019: The Jackrabbit Will Run
Waves of distraction. Eye contact avoidance? Why does consciousness require/benefit from ritual? Does nature (beyond us) engage in ritual?
“I just want people to remember that we are nature…to contemplate: when do we become the tea?” … More From the Journal: Matters of Being
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