Once upon a time, there lived two little leaves. The first leaf was perfect - beautiful, green, thriving. The second leaf was far from perfect - decrepit, spotted, struggling. Yet their feelings were seemingly antithetical. The first little leaf felt a strange, subtle, lingering sort of angst and disgust knowing that the tree to which it belonged was not nearly as perfect. So many other leaves, so much imperfection. Such ugliness. Such an unfortunate mess for the tree as a whole to not be so beautiful, green, and thriving. The second little leaf felt a similar feeling for a very long time, but then realized that there was no leaf, there was only the tree. And while that tree might be flawed and ugly in some ways, as a whole, overall, it was magnificent and consummate - and all its imperfections made it ironically more perfect. Time passed, and the first little leaf had a similar insight - and a lasting, full sense of bliss and content. This leaf noticed a spot on its otherwise perfect form - such a tragic blemish. But soon the leaf reminded itself that there indeed was just the tree, and many other leaves, many leaves with far more blemishes, many leaves with far fewer, but overall, all in all, the tree was the tree, and that meant the purest form of beauty and wholeness one could possibly imagine. The leaf was all the leaves - all the brilliant and dull ones, all the green and brown ones, all the whole and tattered ones - everything. How silly it is, thought both little leaves, to get caught-up in such little feelings of imperfection and lack when all that really existed was the utter opposite.

Can I forfeit

My downward spiral

And embrace

Uncharted territory

Or will my trepidation

Shackle me

To my past

Why

Am I so afraid

Of not being afraid

Where

Do I stand

While the future

Swirls

All around me

And the past

Alternately

Stabs me in the back

And won’t let go

It’s my own life

I live

Yet

Making

My own choices

I feel

As if

I’m stealing

From others

Why

Is this my mentality?

I’ve broken

So many times

I can’t see

The whole

Of who I am

Anymore

I used to pray

Someone

Would find me

Now

All I want

Is to find myself

Shells. It has been days since everything changed. I don’t know what day it is now, and I don’t care. I think I was at work when I heard, but I have no recollection. Did I leave with you? Can I? Time and hope were just a mirage in a feigned utopia that no longer exists. Life with you in it is gone and so is everything else. The universe has collapsed unto itself and what is left behind is nothing but dust and vacancy. A big gaping hole gasping like a fish on dry land. And I can’t catch my breath. I feel guilty when I think about the devastation I feel. This isn’t about me, but that’s who you were. You changed everyone you crossed paths with for the better. We didn’t know what was missing until we met you. The shine of you cast light upon all that was good but also all of our ugly, hidden, dirty, shameful, broken, lonely, and the loss within us, and you loved us like we’d never been loved before. A rebirth. And we will never know that love again. You gave what was once meaningless—meaning. How could someone who carried so much pain deliver so much joy? Your heart opened wide for us and we suddenly knew what it felt to be safe, seen, and accepted. The essence of you swaddled all of us no matter where we were. No matter where you were. I met you when I was at my lowest. You knew how to navigate the rubble I was under, you were there too. Our connection was so deep, a true soul connection. Your words both said and written spoke to me as though we had always been together since the beginning of time. Just thinking about the depth of you moves me. We both struggled, but our souls together could sustain it. And now you are gone. I should have called you more. Texted, written. Reached out more. I cannot process this pain. I know there are stages to grief and so I tell myself, this too shall become tolerable. A new norm. But I know better. You were a once in a lifetime human. And for that, I try to convince myself to focus on the blessing of that. And that’s true, I know that most will never have the fortune to meet a soul like you. But your human death is different. And I don’t think I’m going to survive it. I am ruined, I give up. I love you so much. Your energy is next to me but I don’t think it’s enough. Something changed when you left your body, and I don’t want to acclimate to humanity without you. I feel guilty for being selfish about this. But I know you would understand. And that’s all that matters. How did you make everything okay with just a word or two especially when I know you too were hanging on by a thread. Even when we didn’t talk for months, you existing made life manageable. You were and are an angel. A light. Energy that cannot die. You are a part of me, of all of us, and I feel your presence. I know that you are okay now. I know that peace and love everlasting has washed over you and you are everything you ever were without the pain of flesh. You have been and will always be the purest and rawest and realest of all that is beautiful. But for us here, we are stopped in our tracks. Putting one foot in front of the other because that’s what we do, but where are we going now? What is the point. “It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That’s how the world is going to end.” William Faulkner.

There is a place in the mountains of Southwestern Virginia, in the middle of Appalachia, that was known as a hub of vibrant culture and music. It's hard not to feel... muted, now, there; it's like the mountains themselves, the Valley itself, can feel the loss of things that once were. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Do you know trains? I do. I know how they stop me on my way across town, to a group where children wait for me with the supplies to make their glitter jars to go with our discussion of space, stars, asteroids, nebulas, galaxies. Space Dust. But I'm stuck, right there, the first car in line while the tracks clatter and thunder and that bell comes ringin'. Too late - didn't make it. I never mind, though. And I certainly don't mind this, my very first time witnessing the cocophany of art that is about to unfold for me. Contrary to belief, trains don't go that fast, not through the city. It affords me a country-side view to the best gallery I could ask for, though.

If you've never watched a train go by, you should. The vast surfaces of their cars contain the most beautiful, poetic, raw, tragic, mind-blowing, inspiring, crazed, orbital pieces of art in the world. Graffiti is nothing new. The Romans did it thousands of years ago, and we do it today. And train engineers, also contrary to belief, know that. Here's the thing they might not tell you: they love it too. I'm watching greens and yellows and purple and paint and spray and dripping red streaks with black overtop, I'm watching social determinants take a back seat, I'm watching words of justice, peace, challenge, laughter, *passion* - mostly, it's passion. Art, devastation, hope: stories.

Every once in awhile, there's a freshly painted car. It's never the whole thing. Usually a square, random-looking, sticking out like a sore thumb. It makes it new art, when they have to do it. And you know, deep down, how awful it must feel to have to paint over such pieces of humanity, but the problem is that science, too, is an art. Math is an art. Engineering is an art. And unfortunately, without the right markings on the sides of those cars, telling them which wheels and tracks and cars and fuel and measurements, makes and models, and ten thousand other things that I couldn't tell you but I know are important... well, without that stuff, what you get is a whole lot of hurt.

Railways will do that, you know. They'll cause lots of harm. It's the same harm these mountains know well. Cus' years before this railway here existed, before the GI Bill, before the first infrastructure initiative tore this city in half, destroying one of the most prominent, thriving Black communities and cultural centers in the American South... well, there was music, here. There was no rail. There was a city: intact, accessible from both sides. No "wrong side of the tracks," no Sir, no Ma'am. Lots of love and art and *life*. This used to be a street. The trains don't even know it. The children don't, either. All they know is the innocence of glitter-glue jars like the ones in my passenger seat that they will make today. And they know violence, too - a story for another time. So the kids have no clue, sure.

But I know. The people here know. The earth, air and forest, these mountains, this Valley... It knows. It knows what it used to be, and every so often you can feel it in your bones. You feel the melancholy as these tracks grieve the music, shriek out, and mourn the death of the art that once graced the sides of buildings, buildings which now only exist in the dirt beneath the metal burying the joy which once emanated from them in music, dancing, laughter. I think every time the ground shifts, every time those tracks (now rendered nearly obsolete) creak, it's the remnants of the posters, the newspapers, the fliers that once advertised the Greats appearing on stage. This place is trying to dig itself out.

And maybe the trains don't know. But the tracks? They do. It's difficult to forget when you are built up from destruction, founded on devastation. Those remnants underneath iron and steel stir every time a train is just about to pass not because they have to, but because they feel it coming. After decades of being reduced to nothing, they get a taste of art, again; and they reach for it. Just as the conductors and engineers do everything they can to preserve the years of art on their traincars, so the Valley itself remains dedicated to maintaining its connection to life as we would have it be: free, flowing, and true to our humanity. Beautiful. Ugly. Call it what you will. But altogether, life as we would have it be is, quite simply, summarized in art, just like we are: Messy, broken, fixed, hopeful, passionate. Just like the trains. And me personally, I think that's kinda beautiful.

I remember drunken writes

and broken days,

slurred poetry

and you always understood

the nonsense.

I bought you cookies once,

when you were at your lowest.

You didn't know I was too.

You held those crumbs,

grateful,

I was just glad that

it meant something.

We were etched in ink,

But more.

We were family in our own way.

You called me razzle

I called you an asshole.

We both laughed.

Ill miss our banter

The most.

And your stories in that

slurred southern accent.

And

Writing nonsense in gravity.

The sister I never had.

Wish I'd said it.

At least once.

Feels like a version of me

is lost with you.

One of my favorite parts.

I guess that's why we kill flowers.

Those wilting blooms are for those

That are forced to stay behind.

A reminder.

And So My flower fades.

And I say goodbye.

Knowing that part of me

Will follow you into the dirt,

My favorite friend.

I hope they serve cookies

Where u are.

And I hope they have strippers

And Woodford.

Thank you for everything.

I promise I will never forget

"Old Shells"

May the best of me

follow you down.

Or at least try.

And I will walk away

missing something.

No one will ever hit on my wife

Quite like you.

Or call me a dumbass

when I ramble.

You meant more

than I ever said.

And I'm sorry.

And So My flowers wilt.

May they follow you forever.

My dear friend.

Goodbye. And thank you

for all of it.

For everything to come

Thank you.

My dearest Shells.

If you give your life to yesterday’s corpse, you rot with it.

If you chase tomorrow’s ghost, you vanish.

But if you stay here — bloody, breathing, imperfect —

you might just find out what it means to be alive.

Not a shadow of yourself.

Not a memory in waiting.

Alive.

Creativity, loved

bled, and bloody

left me,

autumnal winds

stretching out

my draft deafening door,

swinging low

with lament:

...you used us

like a drug,

and now

we're fully wasted...

useless body! and breath what

could have been made, cohesive

for consumptive ritual,

you slaughtered

and butchered--!

with Life seeping out

its shell casing, housing

this bullet, aimed falsely

in vigilance, of a second helping

...eating is nonsensical

...and sleep is a wake

for grieving demons,

their gnashing of teeth

foretold

in Revelations!

for those who long buried

with primitive spade and hatchet

the half-spent core, reactive

that which sprouted fevered

exponential saplings, of temptation

blotched green and gold and red...

fading to russet,

brittle and deadening...

an ache I'd hope to feel again

shedding this blanket of snow

It is an ongoing joke between my husband and son that I am probably in the CIA, living undercover in the suburbs of New Jersey with my Russian immigrant husband and son as cover. I’ve never understood what they imagine my assignment to be; nor what about me encourages their thinking. I am an African-American educator with a PhD in Hispanic literature. I am a devoted wife. An adoring mother. Indeed, it is so unlikely as to be far-fetched albeit quite amusing.

Until it wasn’t. I mean, if I tell you, I have to kill you is not merely a line of fiction.

It’s my life.

And so, the day they made the joke in front of my husband’s worthless half brother, Aleksandr, (“former” KGB, ha, unbeknownst to his family), and his gaze sharpened on me, and I knew he knew that I knew that he knew. And he had to die.

And it had to be quick, fatal and undetectable.

My specialty.

“I’ll be right back, guys,” I said, getting up from the dining room table. The cookies should be done.”

“Chocolate chip?” my son asked. I nodded. “I hope you made at least three dozen. I could eat them all. Although Anna’s cookies are great, too,” he added about his girlfriend of the moment.

“I can always bake more, sweetheart,” I replied over my shoulder as I went to the kitchen.

After removing the cookie sheets from the oven, I placed several cookies on three dessert plates: one for my husband, one for my son, and one for Aleksandr. Grabbing a small brown jar from the back of the spice cabinet, I added a drop of the contents to the top cookie on Aleksandr’s plate. I replaced the jar before I picked up the plates and re-entered the dining room.

“Here you go guys! Let me know if you want more” I said, placing an identical plate in front of each of them. “Milk?”

Mouths full, I got a nod of yes from my son, no from Aleksandr and my husband. I could feel Aleksandr’s eyes following me as I left the room.

Back in the kitchen, I took a glass from the cabinet and milk from the refrigerator. As I poured, I heard a chair scrape the wood floor and fall in the dining room.

“What are you three doing now?”

“It’s Aleksandr!” my husband said. “Something’s wrong!”

I ran in the room. Aleksandr was on the floor, clutching his chest. He looked at me in pain and bewilderment. “Oh my God,” I screamed, kneeling next to my husband. “Call 911!” I said to my son.

The EMTs arrived within five minutes.

He was dead within three.

The medical examiner’s report ruled it a heart attack.

My secret is safe.

Chapter 38

Out of the quarter. No feeling of change as it had been, the stranger,

when they had passed the café, the lights were off in back.

No feeling of change.

What that did mean, the seams blending for those to enter.

One of the last lines written to make way for the quarter to become

what it would. The work of them.

This, out of his thoughts, for Aria alone.

His mind for her tonight, only for her.

Where she would be the time after the next dusk, he would only

hold on to hope.

Up the street, her hand in his. The beauty of the city.

Love shining down.

Into pubs, into the cafés.

Live music of the free.

A thought from her, while they listened to the saxophone of a man

to play. The quarter, a change. Passing the tattoo shop, the only one

she would go, one artist inside. Boarded up now, dark. When they had

walked past. Her thoughts, further back in the quarter. The floor of the

building, their floor. They were the only two on it. The rest of the

tenants below. The quiet of them.

In the room, the sounds of music. Out the windows, a filter for neon.

His kiss to her neck. The applause between songs.

The people in the room. She had not seen them in the quarter. They

lived in the true city, graced by chance to not know the pull of the

quarter. Her mind, understanding more from the body of the stranger.

Pieces of mystery, they floated upon strings in the night. Her man, a

man she would kill to die for, the crescendo of song on the stage before

them. His hand holding the two of hers.

The love between them, strong

throughout time.

When the stranger thought of this. Something inside to take him

deep down into the past, into the changing of heart at the table.

It creeped upon him there, held his heart.

Encased in her stomach, what he would feel under the night. The

stars above. A celebration of swirls, the love from there.

Come what would, between death and the time before it.

What he had with her, the time from their first night alone to what

was waiting after the dusk of tomorrow.

Aria, her long ghost. From a hole in a door, he had waited for her,

to let her know who she was for the time fixed ahead.

He was successful in the dream of it.

Her hands in his, what he saw.

Something he would know and she would not believe.

What the quarter had done to her. How it had moved in, through

her skin. What he knew from their first drink outside the quarter, in

the place across. The table by the window.

To understand the lengths of what the quarter had done to her,

blocked from him. If she would go west, he knew their time together

had meant as much as the love from soil to the space above, the swirls

of dust and dream.

---From The Velocity of Ink. I read from it this morning for my channel, if you want to listen. This is just a small part of this morning's session.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O5H15bsUGg&t=1354s

[used to have an account on here last year by the user ‘strawberry’ ,, going to repost some of my writing on this new account :) ]

so, what now?

i told you i loved you and you clamped your hand over my mouth.

i still love you; my mouth is still sealed.

will that change if the sound of trains racing across tracks drowns out the confession?

will it cease to exist if you turn up the music in the car when my tongue wraps around the last syllable?

i still love you; you still know of it.

is there no hope for us, after all?

your teeth marks are still imprinted on my clavicle,

your hands still bruised against my hip,

your saliva still mingled with the bile from my vomit —

do you truly think if we pretend to be shadows in the night, the sun will forget we burn as fire in the day?