red

circles

burned

into my

peripheral

kindle

into

migraines

and yet

i still

stare,

waiting

for

words

that will

never

come

it was dark in the car, the others

looking forward,

talking muted, the

music a background humming of

life existing without me

but I was apart and not apart,

connected

somehow

to the faded, heavy darkness

and the lights that blurred away

into sparkles on the dashboard

and I found myself looking out the

rearview window

body twisted softly,

head turned and tilted,

resting on the headrest

as the trees fell away behind me

behind us

and I could feel the tug of everything

always falling away,

always gliding back into the nothing,

and I knew I was

nowhere, and

everywhere.

what if i told you that sometimes

i climb up the steps of your body looking for god

and i meet the moon instead. sometimes she tells me

she doesn’t want to die anymore. says she slips beneath

your skin and that’s why when i wake up beside you

the room glows like a newborn heaven. but darling, see,

i have bad news for you about this thing called heaven.

yes, in the land where our love used to lie, you are sitting

on the porch at the end of the street and counting clouds.

something happened here. is the heart big enough to fill a world?

to define a landscape? it was. it tried to be. and look what happened.

this is a wasteland, alright, and you sit in the middle with a cigarette

and a newspaper waiting for the moon again. she sits behind the

crumbling woodwork and waits for you. patience, dearest, i'm waiting

until i wake up holding you again, until this is a dream again, until the

silver light streaming from your skin renders anger meaningless. i don't

know much but i know there is a reason why we're standing in this

place together beneath the falling sun. why i've joined you to put flowers

on both of our graves. see, this isn't it. this isn't all of it. not the room

where we get it right. darling, in one of these ghost towns, i'm holding

your hand. in one of these worlds, we're okay.

reaching towards

the sun

as she rests

on the string

pulled tight

that is the

horizon

begging her

to start

a

new

day

as we sit

in this stillness

waiting

for

the

wind

to

arrive

Johnny was a six year old boy, who lived with his eight year old sister and their mom.

He was afraid of the dark, and he’d always ask his older sister before the lights went out, “Can I sleep in our bed Jessica? The monster gonna get me.” and Jessica always said, “Yes!”

And every night before Johnny fell asleep, he saw big red eyes staring at him from under his bed, but all he did was shut his eyes and say it wasn’t real.

They woke up, and durring breakfast Johnny told their mom about last night, “After Jessica let me in her bed, I saw the big red eyes again, and the monster didn’t take me!”

Their mom always had the same response, “That’s amazing, dear.”

The next night, their mom told Jessica after dinner, “You should make Johnny sleep in his own bed tonight, he needs to get over his fears.”

Jessica listened, and when Johnny asked if he could sleep in her bed, she said, “No, nothings under your bed.”

Johnny looked scared, but he still went over to his bed and layed down, putting the covers over his face.

A creek sounded from beside his bed, and Johnny thought it was Jessica, so he put his covers down.

Instead it was a huge beast with giant, red eyes who glared down at Johnny.

The beast picked Johnny up, and easily ripped off his head and spraying blood.

Blood poured from Johnny’s decapitated head, and his spine was broken in half.

The red eyed beast dropped Johnny’s body, and ripped off his arms and legs. It crushed them in it’s giant palm, and dropped them on Johnny’s bloody body.

It crushed his head with a pop, and dropped it on his body too.

The beast shoved it’s palm down on Johnny’s limbs and body, crushing them all with a crack and spraying blood everywhere on the floor and on Johnny’s bed.

After it had done that, it slipped back under Johnny’s bed and closed it’s eyes.

* * *

Jessica had heard a creek across the room, though she assumed it was Johnny getting up she had looked anyways.

She saw a large, dark figure standing over her brothers bed.

It quickly turned it’s head and stared at her with its glowing, blood red eyes.

Jessica was paralized with fear, she couldn’t even scream as she watched it tear her brothers head from his body.

She heard the sound of flesh tearing and bone crunching and blood sprayed her face.

Jessica still couldn’t scream, only watch in terror and shock.

There was nothing she could do as it tore apart his limbs, and ripped his body open. She couldn’t even look away.

Jessica wanted to turn her head so she wouldn’t have to watch, so that her face would stop being sprayed with blood. But she couldn’t.

Then the noises and blood suddenly stopped, and the monster crawled back under her brother’s bed.

Finally, she could scream again. And she could hear her mother’s footsteps running down the hall to their room.

Their mom shrieked in terror when she had spotted Johnny’s ripped up body, and she picked up Jessica and ran out of the house fast.

“Jessica, my dear Jessica what happened?” Jessica’s mom asked, horror in her round, moonlit eyes.

Jessica wiped her blood covered face, and said the only thing she could, “R- red eyed m- monster.”

A noose

tugs tighter

around my throat

threatening

to dissolve

it all

and leave

only misery.

Choking sobs

on the brink

of taking

me whole...

Cinched noose.

Deadly tears.

And

I am

floating

in an

abyss

of

thunderclouds.

Rain pools

in puddles

around my feet

rising

rising

rising

Can't breathe.

Can't feel

Anything.

And

I

am

Gone.

*by the way, I don't feel like this currently. But I have felt similarly before.*

reach for the stars

you said

but your actions

did not match your

words, instead

you held me down

at the dirt of the

earth, kicking it

in my face as

i lay on the floor

and you called it

“tough love”.

only it wasnt tough

love at all, but i

was too blind to

see it. it was manipulation

and envy and panic

all that i might actually

reach my goals, my

dreams, before you had

the chance to do so for

yourself. and you made me

feel bad about it.

reach for the stars

he tells me

and he means it.

he uplifts me when i

fail at first and praises

me when i finally succeed.

with him, we are in the

clouds, and we call it home.

we are halfway to the stars

now, and if i fall, he

will catch me.

(The following is fictional. Thinking of turning it into the first chapter of a book I'd like to write...)

When somebody’s dead, they’re dead. Gone. They won’t be stopping by for tea next week or texting you a funny gif that you nonchalantly respond to with, “I’m dying” and one of those crying laughing face emojis. So why do we refer to death as loss?

“Oh, she lost her father last week,” or “Let’s talk about the pain of losing someone.”

Loss implies that the person might somehow be found again, like your favorite pair of socks that you thought had vanished but really just fell behind the dryer. I guess you could argue that the word works if you’re talking about losing someone to somewhere else, as in, you’ll see them again in heaven or the great beyond or whatever you want to call the thing that, despite a significant lack of scientific evidence, you lie in bed at night hoping exists because you’d really like to see your dog again.

But even then, the person’s not truly lost, are they? They’re exactly where they’re supposed to be. It’s not like you ever hear about people getting misplaced into heaven, Peter forgetting his glasses and reading the wrong name at the Pearly Gates. Can you imagine Ruth Bader Ginsburg crossing over and being greeted by Hitler all because of a clerical error?

I don’t think so.

When my mother died, I didn’t feel like she was lost. That would have been a luxury, knowing there was a chance I’d stumble upon her again one day when organizing my closet or looking under the bed. In truth, the person who felt lost was me. I know it’s a cliché to say that nothing in life seemed to make sense anymore, but as David Bowie once said, “All clichés are true,” and who doesn’t trust Bowie?

Without her, everywhere I went and everything I did looked and felt completely unfamiliar. People, going about their regular routines – running, shopping, eating – as if everything was fine. How could they go on laughing and exercising and taking pleasure in pizza when MY MOTHER WAS DEAD? I was also convinced that everyone I knew was having the time of their lives and being totally ungrateful for it. They were blissfully unaware of the kind of pain I carried everywhere. It felt like a hand continuously squishing my heart and twisting up my guts pretty much any time I tried to walk out the door.

“You’re next, motherfuckers!” I shouted inside my head as I passed people on the street. I moved slow and stiff, every bone in my body aching, every muscle exhausted beyond its limit. It was as if I’d aged decades in just a few short minutes of a single phone call.

~

“Catie Girl,” my father’s voice trembled on the other side of the phone, a more desperate version of how it sounded some other times, like when I left for college or gave him a particularly good Father’s Day card.

“It’s your mom, she…”

And then he didn’t continue speaking English. Instead, he let out a guttural, otherworldly sound that startled me so much I dropped my phone to the floor as if it had burned my hand. I’d never heard my father – or anyone – sound like this. I wasn’t yet familiar with the primal nature of this kind of pain. The kind that unleashes a dam within you that you might never be able to close.

When I finally picked the phone back up, my hand shook along with my voice. First, I asked him, “What do you mean?” I was quiet. Like a confused child. My brain could not comprehend what was happening, what had already happened.

Then I tried pleading. “What do you mean?” because I wanted it not to be true. I thought, maybe if I kept asking in earnest he would just relent and say, ‘Okay, nevermind, I take it back.’

But when he didn’t, I couldn’t control myself. I felt like I was going to puke and pass out at the same, like back when I was a kid and I ripped all the ligaments in my ankle jumping on a trampoline, except this time, the pain flowed through my entire body. There was too much of it to keep inside, and so I screamed. I cried. I choked into the stupid cell phone. “DADDY, WHAT DO YOU MEAN?!”

The last time I called my father “Daddy” I was probably 10 years old. This was the sound of my dam breaking.

The rest of that day was a blur. What was incomprehensible to me then is still incomprehensible to me now, but not in the same way. Back then, it was about being unable to process such an unexpected seismic shift in my universe. Now, I’ve processed it insofar as at present, I can concretely say that my mother is, in fact, dead, but I still don't get why she’s gone. She hasn’t been lost; rather, she’s been taken – no, ripped – from me. Gone before she had a chance to see me publish my first novel or get married or maybe have a kid of my own one day.

So now, when I walk down the street or sit on the train or just lie in bed, I mostly think about how none of it matters without her here. In fact, I’m almost certain it must have never mattered at all. Because if there was any justice or karma or meaning in the world, she’d still be in it.

Waterfalls paint my skin

Is all that grey coming from

the sky

or my eyes?

it’s been raining nonstop

and my feet are stuck

always forget

the way home

if that’s what you call it

the streets all look the same

no street signs visible

this path I’m taking

has led me down the wrong way

but what is there left to do

when nothing’s going right?

Waterfall -{renata ferretti}

his eyes pour into mine

and for a moment

he knows all of me

every dream, every fear

the songs i listen to

when i am sad

his fingers trace my skin

and i am no longer my own

but i have fallen into him

and i am not alive

until he touches me

his voice is soft when he

moans my name, and

its as if i cannot peacefully

sleep until my name rolls off

of his tongue