Abbott hates the way he puts himself before others, wishing he were more selfless, like his supposed soulmate Finn, who he would be with forever if he hadn’t taken a bullet for Abbott. Literally.

He remembers the day it happened. The blood waterfalling out of Finn’s chest; the gurgling of his throat as he breathed one final time, his Abbott’s eyes locking with his from across the room before he never saw again. Abbott tried to get over there, he really did, but he wasn’t fast enough. That bullet was meant for him, and he knows it.

He wishes he could talk to his Finn again, just one last time. That’s when he started searching.

He remembers picking up the first business card and slipping it into his wallet. The bold print across the top declaring, “Out-Of-This-World Medium! Connect with the Other Side!”

He called the number that night; but received only a voicemail asking him to wire a thousand dollars to Kabul. He sighed deeply and hung up the phone.

Since then, he’s called fifty or sixty more numbers, but to no avail: scams, all going straight to voicemail.

Abbott has one number left on his list, and after that, it’s over. With shaking fingers he dials the phone, circling around to each number. Three... four... seven...

He takes a deep but shaky breath and lifts the receiver.

Raising it to his ear, he pauses. It rings three times... four... and then he hears the click on the other line.

An all-too familiar voice answers, gruffly whispering, exactly like the very last time he spoke, that fateful day:

“Abbott?”

the first thing you should do when you wake up in the morning is look in the mirror.

instead of thinking about what a terrible day you are going to have, or how early it is, simply get up, make your way over to your mirror, and gaze upon your reflection.

sometimes it’s hard to look. sometimes you feel disgusted just seeing yourself. don’t look away. this is how we can get stronger and become more comfortable with ourselves. it starts with the little things.

gaze into your eyes. they hold your whole life story. they hold the pain, the sadness, the fear, the anger, the denial. relax. breathe. let it go, and watch as those emotions melt away.

look at your face. take it all in. is it thin? a little chubby? pale? darker? it doesn’t matter. you are beautiful exactly as you are.

your body is amazing. it is you. without it, you would be nothing. be grateful to your body. we might not be proud of it, but we should, because it does so many amazing things to keep us alive. it doesn’t matter what it looks like. it’s doing its job, and it’s doing it well. be thankful for that.

do you have scars? be proud of them. scars show the battles we’ve fought and obstacles we’ve overcome on the path to where we are today. they are reminders of how strong you are.

you are so strong.

you are so amazing.

you are so beautiful.

we are all blessed to have gotten to be a part of your life, even for a short while.

i thank you for that.

~emme

You can listen to any other, but you still dig my style

Apologies for the lateness, I know it's been a while

But know the people gave me and inch, I had to turn it into a mile

If going through some to tough times, I bet these line will make you smile

That's my plan, my goal, and you can count on my deliver

Done left my comfort zone, had to find somewhere familiar

"You're going to be great one day" say that looking in the mirror

Keep it in mind, and know your mistakes don't make you

And unless you let them, haters can't break you

I know sometimes it's impossible to really smile, so fake it until it's true

I want you to see that you're more than the background you were handed

The idea of you is above so many people's understanding

That's why it's up to you to show them what it means to be outstanding

I used to write about brown eyes as if they were nothing more than melted pools of chocolate when the truth is brown eyes hold so much more to them than their color it’s insane.

You can look into someone’s eyes and see their dreams, their deepest darkest thoughts and sometimes their secrets.

Brown eyes are no different.

I met this girl in high school, right? And back then, her eyes were so expressive I couldn’t look at them for longer than a couple of seconds because I felt as if I was viewing something I wasn’t supposed to be.

And what's crazy is that she still has the type of eyes that brings men to their knees and strips them bare because that’s what she wants, what she needs.

She has her secrets, her dreams, and when she smiles, I can see thunder and lightning in her gaze.

I'm always tempted to grab her by the face and tell her that I see her, but it's more fun catching the dark looks she shoots my way or the way they lighten when she laughs.

Her eyes are brown, yes, but they are so much more than pools of sugar.

They are the hardened husks of trees built to protect the forest of her soul.

They are the hand-crafted tables where she sits and outlines her goals and ambitions with ink-stained fingers.

They are her coffee flavored kisses in the morning and her whiskey dripped lips late at night.

They are the color of her ancestors and family members and the pride she carries in the color of her skin.

They are her, completely her, and no matter how many times I stare at them I always fall to my knees under the weight of their intensity.

Every day I fall more in love with those beautiful, incredible, beyond average brown eyes.

Every night, Nicky wakes up screaming.

Sometimes I can hear him crying. Sometimes it’s just gasping breaths. Either way, Mama goes to his room every night, and holds him close. Just holds him. She’s given up on saying anything, given up on the idea that anything she says could make it better, could erase what he’s seen. She just holds him.

I think she’s glad to have even a single child who lets her touch him.

Fi flinches whenever Mama’s hands go to caress the soft down of her hair; she knows she shouldn’t – she’s told me so – but the touch feels foreign now that it’s only three fingers on her head.

Markus grew up while Nicky and Papa were gone, made himself the man of the house. We don’t really need one – it’s a small town and everyone likes Mama plenty – but he insists he has to be strong to protect us.

I think, secretly – I wouldn’t even tell Fi this – that Markus is afraid of Nicky.

Nicky and Papa left together a long time ago.

Markus was barely grown, seven or eight maybe, and when Nicky came back, he didn’t know who he was. He wouldn’t even let Nicky past the door.

Nicky wasn’t angry. He’s too tired to be angry. And too shaken. Far too shaken. Nicky was always a quiet boy; they never should have taken him. Papa should have found a way – surely one man per family is enough? But Nicky was eighteen, so they took him too. When I think about it, Papa was a quiet man too.

Nicky’s told me he can’t remember Papa’s voice without the sound of gunfire accompanying it. They spent so long in the barracks, he says, that the cacophony became their ease, and the silence could only mean something was wrong. It was hard to differentiate important yelling from normal yelling, he says. And there was a lot of yelling.

I can’t imagine Nicky yelling, but he says he did his fair share of that too.

Fi’s a strange kid. She’s the only one of us left that you can truly call a child anymore. The day after Nicky came home, she asked him, “Did you kill anyone?”

He wasn’t surprised, but he had a haunted look in his eye. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I hope I did, or if I hope I didn’t. Maybe if I did, the fighting could’ve ended sooner, but maybe if I didn’t, another bloke like me could come home to see his family again.”

Fi was quiet after that.

None of us needed to point out the empty seat at the table. We didn’t even need to look. The wooden structure seemed to mourn enough for the five of us.

There’s something else you should know about Nicky.

Before he came home, he was sitting in a truck driving back to the country areas to drop off the men that did their service. (Nicky told this story the night he got home. He had to. Mama was distraught.) As you probably can guess, Papa wasn’t sitting next to him. Papa wasn’t sitting anywhere anymore. But Nicky says that he’d stare at the empty slat next to him in the back of the truck, and wonder if they could fit one more body. They were all gaunt and skinny from the rations – would Papa have been thin enough to crouch next to him?

The other blokes on the truck were quiet too. Nicky wondered if they had folks they’d left behind, folks that came with them, but wouldn’t be coming back. One of the boys in the truck is Will – do you remember Will? he asked my siblings. Markus did, or at least he knew Will’s younger brother from school. Fi got him confused with another Will who works at the granary. I remember Will. Red hair, brightest I’ve ever seen it, and faint lines at the corners of his mouth from smiling so much. A fast runner. Hannah from Church told me he was a good kisser. Hannah from Church is kissing someone else nowadays. Poor Will, so quickly replaced.

Poor Will, Nicky would agree. He’s sitting in the back of the truck and his back is hunched forward, knees brought up to his chest. There’s enough room to cross his legs, but Will digs his thumbs into the crook of the opposite elbow, and stares at his boots. Just staring.

No one is saying anything.

There’s nothing to say.

There never has been.

It’s just that it seems so much quieter now there’s no gunfire in the background.

It’s an emptiness that takes some getting used to.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s the emptiness that makes Nicky shaken too.

All this to say, Nicky is on the back of a truck with some other country blokes, and is coming home.

It’s a long journey, several weeks from the ships to the countryside, so that means a lot of time to think. They stop regularly for piss breaks, and every night to sleep. There’s only one driver. None of the men in the back volunteer to drive. Nicky said he reckons they don’t know if they know how to anymore.

So they stop one night, and everything’s dead quiet. They’re in a town tonight, dropping one of the blokes off at home and then shutting off the engine next to a barn nearby. They sleep inside on the hay. It’s a lot softer than the weeks of sitting on wood that’s constantly moving and jolting because of the rubbish trails the driver takes.

And Nicky’s up thinking that night. Thinking and seeing. And when he eventually goes to sleep, he sees the same thing he sees every night.

He screamed back then too.

He says most of the blokes do.

And he’s awake and his heart is pumping and he sees a rifle on the tack next to the hay and he knows what he has to do and he takes the rifle, puts it to his eye and-

Nicky wears an eyepatch now.

He didn’t want to see things anymore.

When Mama heard all this, she just cried. Tears rolling down her face, and she sobbed into her grubby apron. Nicky couldn’t get up to hug her, he just sat there and stared at her. He didn’t know what to do. We didn’t either.

Every night, Nicky wakes up screaming.

Last night, I found a rifle under his bed but I didn’t say anything.

Last night, I didn’t hear Nicky scream.

I heard something much, much worse.

Why do I write?

I took some time pondering the question and decided I write because I genuinely feel like it. I can't explain why I just do. Sometimes I just feel like sitting down and writing. Hearing the faint clicks of the keyboard's keys and watching the words instantly appear on the screen just feels right. I want to create complex worlds with my words.A place where I can escape to when I am sad, bored or even happy. Just a place I can go to and am in complete control. A place where I am a mini-god. Efficiently creating and methodically destroying, the whole deal.

I guess I write because I just want to.

Is that a good enough answer?

You are on an ordinary roadtrip, sprawled across the back seats of the car, iced tea bottles and potato chip bags strewn around you.

Then the car comes to a halt

The accident is over ten miles away, but traffic his built up and plugged the freeway. Bringing everything to a standstill. You don't know how long you'll remain stuck, but the minutes turn into hours. You beg for the slightest hint of progress in this standstill, but nothing happens. Rage builds up inside of you, like the vehicles in this pile up. You should have reached your destination about now. Why did some idiot on the highway have to ruin everything for you. But then a pang of guilt hits your gut, you suddenly feel selfish, it's not entirely their fault. But it is, they made a mistake and ruined everything for you. Right when you were about to visit a friend who had moved away years ago.

The screams piling inside of you spill out of your mouth. You can't take it anymore, the lack of movement, the lack of progress are getting into your brain. The car has stopped but life hasn't, life has continued to move forward while it has left you behind in a traffic jam. You must keep going, you don't want to be pulled into a hotel, for every moment spent with you spend with your lost friend is priceless. Anger is overshadowed by sadness and longing. You quiet after the driver threatens you again.

You make sure that'll be his last

We are losing rainforests at a rate of one and a half acres per minute, but I bet most people sitting at their jobs or in their comfortable homes clicking past TV news channels explaining the mistakes humanity is making didn’t know that. If we keep this up, we’ll lose the rainforest by 2020. And that would really be a huge problem because we’ll die without them. We all rely on antibiotics to cure the simplest diseases that used to kill people. But nobody can pull their heads out of the sand long enough to realize that this ‘climate crisis’ isn’t something exclusively affecting scientists. It’s affecting everyone. Rainforests hold cures to cancer that we still haven’t been able to find, but nobody cares, do they? All they want is to have their Oreos with palm oil and hour-long showers, to be sitting on a pile of money, letting their problems sift through their fingers like grains of sand, since they can’t come to the realization that once they’ve knocked out all of humanity and wildlife with the carbon emissions fueling their extravagant, greed-filled lifestyles, the money they lust after will no longer be able to save them from their worst fears that finally came true.

Love is blue. Draped everywhere. Overused. Tired. Find it in the sky or the sea, the top of the world or the bottom. Worn by all cultures in every setting. Worn. Even full planets are blue. And stars larger than our solar system.

Blue is comfortable.

But sometimes blue surprises. Not a wisp, but a whip to the senses; vivid, proud, outrageous, and dynamic. It screams, roars with power and youthful exuberance, denouncing all preconceptions and stereotypes of its hue. Pure blue, it is alive, dangerous, mighty, rare, and unforgettable. “Behold me, I am blue, pure blue, I am forever!” All who witness such color cannot escape unaffected.

Saturday – November 30th, 2019

The new start is already in the past, quiet as a mouse, the wheel turned. Tuesday morning’s tarot reading was like a brisk slap across the face. The message was impossible to misinterpret when I clarified the powerful energies by asking, point-blank, if I should call Tom right now. I began to shuffle, barely having time to make a picture in my mind thinking if the answer is yes show me the sun. At once, two cards flipped up in my hands; the sun and the six of wands were both face-up. I stared disbelievingly at the answer to my question.

I was speechless only for a second before I shot to my feet in wide-eyed amazement. You can’t make this shit up! I laughed aloud as I put the cards down on my bed and grabbed my cell phone, shaking my head back and forth at the empty room. Am I supposed to be doing this right now? I spoke imploringly. Feel free to stop me at any time if this isn’t the right move. Just make my phone glitch out, or his phone not work. If I’m fucking up right now, someone stop me! I tapped the contacts icon on my phone and scrolled to his name. I paused briefly, waiting for a sign to stop me from placing the call, and then before I could analyze what I was doing I hit send.

Tom answered after two rings. My heart was beating in my throat as I paced my bedroom floor, and I could barely respond to his predictably cheery hello. This is how he always sounded when I called out of nowhere, even after a significant amount of time had passed. I can’t remember a time when he was not happy to see or hear from me, no matter what had caused our separation. It was comforting and infuriating at the same time, and I could not stop the broad smile that bloomed involuntarily on my face.

Hi, I said sheepishly. I’m sorry to bother you at work, can you chat for a minute? It was loud wherever he was, but he replied yes without hesitation, although I knew I was interrupting something. The background noise faded within less than a minute, and it was clear he moved to another area where he could speak without distraction. This fact registered in me on an unconscious level, and it was only after the conversation as over that it occurred to me, and with some relief. It’s unsettling how my mind worries about reciprocation, discounting what my soul knows to be true, and that alone causes my confidence to waiver.

I’m eating a lot of crow right now, I said tightly. Nooooo, he replied dragging the word out in a way that suggested he was acting kindy all the while knowing that my calling him was humbling for me. I appreciate you being kind about this, I said. Of course I am. I had no idea my day was going to peak at 7:35 in the morning! He said this with such upbeat boyish charm you would never have thought a biting word exchanged between us. I know it would have been just as easy for you to ignore my call altogether, thank you for answering, I said. He listened to me then without interruption as I explained the purpose of my phone call.

He laughed a little, saying, so the cards told you to call. His words did not come out in a question, but rather a confirmation. His giggle was genuine boyish gayety without a touch of cruelty in it. I was aware that I sounded nutty and the explanation contrived. If the man on the other end of the line had known me less this is certainly what he would have thought, but Tom and I have a long history together, and so the tone in his voice was pure amusement and not disbelief. I said, yes and I just do what I’m told. I didn’t want to call, but the message was so clear… He cut me off then asking, by who, the universe? Again, I replied yes to his question. Tom gave another boyish giggle then and said easily, “I love you.” I was smiling still and didn’t skip a beat replying, “You know I love you too.”

We spoke a little more about the messages I had been receiving from the tarot cards, and I tried not to get too much into the past. I had no idea what I was supposed to be accomplishing with this call, except that I needed to turn the wheel. A new message always comes after the wheel has turned, prompting me onto the next step of the journey. I did my best to be transparent about the matter. I, in no way, wanted to come across shady or pious; I just wanted to present the situation factually, dispassionately.

I knew I had effectively enlisted his help when he asked, “Does this mean we can go see Dr. Sleep together?” I laughed outright at what seemed comfortable acceptance on the face of things, even though I knew matters were more complex underneath. I don’t know, I said, we’ll see. Every time I think I know something I have come up wrong, so let’s just see what happens. “Ok. Let me know what the cards say. I have to get back to work.” That is when I noticed he had stepped away from the loud machine noise that had previously emanated from the background.

Seconds later I was setting my phone aside and picking up the deck again. I shuffled the cards speaking clearly to the visibly empty room. After communicating my intent as fervently as I could I knocked on the deck dispelling any previous energies and laid out the cards. There it was, plain as day, that little conversation was another cog in the wheel. The future energies were vague but foreboding.