Alison Petrash-Hall

If you’re here, you saw something I did, probably on the internet. Should I say “you’re welcome” or “I’m sorry”?

I live in Louisville, Kentucky. I have a wife, two dogs who are my children, and two cats who are my respected colleagues that live in their own makeshift apartment on the second floor of my house. I’ve been writing stories meaningfully since about 12 years old, when an English teacher I was infatuated with told me I had potential. I know she told everyone that, but I took it seriously.

This is my first published work, at 13, submitted to a middle school book of poetry by another English teacher. You may laugh.

Rain Drop Life

So many tears falling from a splendid sky

Emotions run by the bucketfull

Emotions that are not limited by our

Ridiculous human laws

As the many tears run down my face I try to

Adapt myself to this new world

A world I did not choose to live in

Rain is as necessary for life as the jobs we

Are given at birth

But the rain is not told how to do its job

Its path is set from the moment of its

Existence

Its true purpose is not something to put on

Paper and file

I envy the rain

Every raindrop is an enigma

Each with its own little world sealed away

Within the watery exterior

Nothing was as it seemed because anything

Could happen within

Adorable, yes? Wait, what do you mean, “Were you a depressed as a child?”

It’s cute. I really thought I cooked with those last two verses. But even then I see an anticapitalist bent and creative hunger that would inevitably lead me to where I am now. And I like to think I’ve lost almost none of my sincerity.

Retrospection into the people I’ve been throughout my life is something I find myself doing often. I’ve been on an upward trajectory mental-health-wise for quite a long time, and I’ve made so much progress that when I look back at myself at 25, or 21, or 16, I realize I’ve forgotten who these people were and what it felt like to be them.

Contributing to this is my ADHD, which makes it difficult for me to readily access memories. I’m grateful to my younger selves for leaving these artistic waypoints to help me find them again and stitch together something like a narrative. I draw on them for inspiration often. Sometimes I think I am writing back to them.

Here and on social media, I will share my recent work. But occasionally I’ll get nostalgic and draw out something archival. I hope you enjoy all of it. Thank you for being here.