Kathy woke up and realized it was the first of the month, which meant the rent was due, yet again. She was 52 years old and this was the first time in her life she had to be concerned with paying for where she lived. She laid in bed and wondered to herself how she got here. She thought back to when she was a small child and shared an attic bedroom with her 4 other sisters. She dreamed of being a singer and was utterly inspired by Michael Jackson. Kathy just knew back then she would be something amazing when she grew up. She thought back to how that sweet little girl with black ringlets and round almost black eyes had no way of knowing she would never be something special. She would grow up to only know addiction and violence. Addiction is like the fall air, bitter, cold, filled with a sweet smell of maybes but just like the fall, addiction is only filled with endings and death. Kathy knew she had to get out of bed and make it to her dealer before she started to feel dope sick. Her brain already felt like bees had swarmed in to make a nest for the winter. She knew she only had enough for the rent in her account and would be threated with eviction if she used a drop of the money but the threat of the sickness was worse. She gathered her things and kissed her daughter goodbye as she ran out the door to her beat up old Toyota. It wasn’t a far drive and she knew she could make it before her skin would start turning gray with withdrawal. She hopped in the car and prayed it would start. The engine turned over and let out a terrible growl. Kathy turned on the radio to distract her from her sour stomach. She thought about her daughters laying in their beds and about her granddaughter on the way. She never spoke of her addiction and neither did her children. She could never allow them to see her weak again. Kathy had just left her youngest daughter’s father, who was a pure beast of a person. She thought about how she had only put up with the abuse for 5 years for her children. She could not provide them with a home without help from him so she dealt with it. She laid next to him everynight with his breath stinking of vodka. She dealt with the punches and the way he grabbed her throat desperate to end her life. She would lay silently scared to wake him to start the violence all over. She had escaped but she never could escape this addiction it clung to her like a fetus desperate for life. She was almost at her dealers, she could almost feel the numb the drug would provide. The body high was nothing compared to the feeling of drifting back to feeling like that little girl singing Michael Jackson at the top of her lungs before she knew the drug and violence that poisoned her life and soul. A time before she was this person who would do anything to get high and before she was a person her children couldn’t look in the eye. She was eager and excited for the high and she could think of nothing else. Kathy was so distracted she couldn’t have seen the truck shifting lanes, coming across the highway ready to make impact. The truck was like the Fall, it was cold as it smashed into the small Toyota, ripping it in half like the wind does to the leaves on the trees. In the moments of her death she realized she would never know anything else but the desire and need of the drug that ended her life. The fall brings death and destruction to nature and all things beautiful like Katherine Ann.

White soft snowy hair.

Tickles the tops of her shoulders

Green sage eyes surrounded by gentle milky creases.

She is so kind. Sings me sweet lullabies by moonlight.

She speaks of racism, death, fear, love, and hate.

There are scars on my skin that when I look at them I can feel the thing that created it as if it were happening over and over again. There are some scars that are so healed I don’t even recall ever having a wound at all. My brain forgot the incident but my skin bears a silver crescent moon scar forever. My skin can remember even when my flimsy mind forgets. You were like that too. Gravity pulls me to you even when my flimsy mind forgets.

My grandmother taught herself to crochet in a barn in the Midwest with a bent nail.

I watched her cut plastic bags into strips.

Scissors sliding across the bags like silk as she spun sweet stories of a lost love.

Now that I am older, I crochet when I get anxious.

I can feel this deep bruised hole in my chest.

If my shaky fingers can move quick enough maybe it can stop the darkness from spreading through my veins like a cancer.

The pain cuts through my nerves with every stitch and knot.

No one ever taught me how to quiet this suffering.

I just move as quickly as my bones will allow.

Each piece I complete and shyly present holds my grief, heartbreak and loneliness.

They can’t see the dried tears that soaked the yarn like an icy winter rain.

I think of my mother who couldn’t read or write but created beautiful pieces from a simple ball of string.

Each knot holding a piece of her own darkness.

I think back to the hundreds of carpets that laid upon my grandmothers floor like autumn leaves in a dark wood and I whisper into the air “what did the world do to you?”

I wish she lived long enough to tell me.

I wish she lived long enough to show me how to make the suffering stop.

He was as warm as an August evening. He made me feel like I was fragile glass under his finger tips. He would hold me and I would melt into him. I hadn't known that I had invited the wolf in. A lot of people have lied to me but I believed all the sweet sugar that fell off his lips. His whispers left me breathless in the dark. I told him not tonight. I had spent the day in a whirlwind of emotions and still felt sick. My mouth sour as I laid in his warm embrace. I believed him when he said it was okay. Desperate to be loved. Felt like the right love could fix me. I never imagined how a wolf could break me. October 26 2013 was the last time I was able to fall asleep with the warmth of another person next to me. My bed no longer felt like my own. My skin was foreign to me. My body was a betrayal. Little purple fingertip bruise kissed my thighs. No longer safe. What do you do with skin that has been made dirty by a wolf? I wanted to destroy it. I begged my heavy breath to stop. I couldn't be released into the darkness of sleep for I feared he waited there for me and on most nights he did. I was confused by my feelings. I knew him. I knew he loved me. I knew he was good. He must have been good for me to love him. If I loved someone bad, what does that make me? I brought a cigarette to my lips on my front step in tears, lost, and broken. A friend came out to sit with me. He saw me curled into myself crying. I told him briefly of an attack. He replied " I can show you how a real man would fuck you." More Betrayal. More Fear. I spent a lifetime being abused by those meant to protect me. I thought I finally was free. My skin was cursed to be abused forever. It was the only explanation, I was created to be destroyed by any and everyone. I planned my exit. My sadness was too heavy for me to carry any longer. Death was sweeter than life ever could be. Death would be kinder to my tired soul than any day in the warm sun. With death holding me; no man could hurt me again. I thanked death for my freedom as I slipped away. I was then reborn like the fiery phoenix. Into this firebird of a woman. I was hot to the touch from my rage. Born again for revenge. Born to bring men to their knees, begging for forgiveness at my feet. I am here reborn with new strong clean skin. Unstained from the touch of any wolf. Wolves now bow to me in fear. I use them to hunt evil sickness that plagues the beautiful flowery fields. To protect the other little girls in red hoods that wander the deep wood.

Hands pressed to ears.

In a dark crowded closet.

Eyes closed tightly.

Hiding from the screaming.

Loud smashing of fists to faces.

The sound of your mother's body hitting the hard slate floor.

Heavy foot steps of the monster.

Pinched lips to silence the whimpers escapeing my small mouth.

Heavy footsteps closer and closer.

Soft brown door ripped open to reveal my small scrunched body.

Silent screaming as terror washes over me.

I've thought about you a lot lately. Thought a lot about how I hate you. How I hate myself for being so much like you. It's been 7 years and you are still here. Living inside me like a reoccuring nightmare. I overheard "pain is beauty" on Tuesday and was sent back to my childhood. You loved perfection and having your first daughter be born with a facial deformatity didn't meet your standards, did it Mom? You told me as a child you hid me under blankets in public so people wouldn't see your monster. 13 painful surgeries that ruined my childhood and it never made me into what you wanted. Being ten vomiting blood from bone grafts gone wrong, was one hell of a way to spend my summer nights. "What did you do on summer vaction?" they'd ask the first day back to school. Most kids spent their days in the sun warming their skin on sandy beaches with their parents and siblings. Me? I spent mine waking up from anestheia alone in a cold hospital searching the room for your unforgiving eyes. I knew you wouldn't show. I don't know why my hope-filled eyes even looked. My last surgery at 18 you pointed out everything still wrong with my face to the doctor like the bump on the bridge of my nose that I didn't ever know I had. (It was just like yours, is that you hated it so much Mom? Couldn't stand to see a piece of yourself in a monster like me?) They didn't fix it and now it's all I can see in the mirror. Gone seven years and when I see the bump, your right back behind me whispering hateful words in my ear about how you never wanted me. " you ruined my life" you'd say through your Marlboro stained teeth. Vodka pouring off your breath as your speech slurred your hateful words. I hate myself because I am just like you. I notice everything wrong with my face. I hate myself enough for both of us now. The thing I hate the most about myself now is how much I miss and love you.