If there was no limit on time or money? If for a day I had endless possibilities?

I would go see my brother. I would drive the 7 hours through highways and country roads to visit him. I'd pack a big bag and stay a while. I'd ask about his car. In the shop again? We'd go straight to the lot and I'd buy him a new one. I'd buy him a nice truck to haul his stuff, no more borrowing from the neighbors. I'd ask about his school debt, credit cards? I'd call and pay them off, no more worries. We'd hang in the house, he'd talk about his days in culinary school as he cooked something inventive and delicious. After eating he'd glance around the house. "The walls could you use some paint." I'd comment. We'd drive over to the hardware store, grab a couple gallons, and paint for the rest of the afternoon. Tired and satisfied we'd head outside to sit in the yard. In lawn chairs, exhausted limbs limp at our sides. Happy to be done. Happy to be together. He'd roll one up, and we'd pass it back and forth. We'd talk about the past. Playing flashlight tag in the woods, riding bikes through the streets, and whittling wands to cast spells. We'd talk about our old dogs, and family camping trips. The time he accidently hit me with a baseball bat, or when he cut his thumb open trying to carve our names into a tree. I'd close my eyes and smile. My heart finally at peace.

My brother and I didn't get along for most of my childhood. We were close in age and nearly opposites. At one time or another, regrettably, I even said I hated my brother. But as our teens came to an end, so did our distain for one another. Our time together became fun, like two friends with a past in common. But in a flash he moved away. A little plot of land that felt too far for a weekend trip.

In my experience, the older you get, the more you realize that nothing matters more than your family. No boyfriend, job, vacation or disagreement matters more than your siblings. I know that one day my parents will be gone, and my brother will be the only one left. Our memories will align, we'll joke about my dad's habits, and smile as we think of our mom's singing. I think about this often, and I miss him terribly.

When eventually I would need to leave, I'd tell him what a good time I'd had. We share a hug, and I'd keep my cool. I slip in to my car, and back out of the driveway. I'd wave as long as I could, hand outstretched with the ASL sign for "I love you" like my parents always did. That's when the tears would begin to fall.

I'd be flooded with many emotions. I miss my brother, and I regret the distance we had as kids. I feel like I wasted time. My brother is a reckless person, maybe a little troubled. Sometimes as I wave good bye I worry if it will be the last time I see him. A fear I've never said out loud. A fear I try to bury.

Maybe this wasn't the writing you were hoping for. No trips to Italy or mansion buying, but it's the truth.

I'd fly to Brussels to give my friend a moment

to breathe

to walk alone

to finish the screenplay

she is writing

away from living out of a suitcase

a long term guest in the home

of a friend

her life on hold

while caring for her octgenerian mom

a refugee of the Ukraine war

homeless now

semi paralyzed

possible Alzheimer's

definite dementia

PTSD

paranoia;

Or to DC

to give my friend a moment

to breathe

to walk alone

to finish the book she is writing

away from the daughter

she cannot leave alone

lest she succeed

in ending the life

she finds unbearable

in her skin

she was born Christy

but knows herself to be

Mark

and my friend does all she can

to support

to get Mark help

as they try

to find their way

to where they're meant

to be;

Or to the Mediterranean

to relax on a boat

with my husband

so he can breathe...

though he may

vacillate between

the joy of being

where he most loves

and the sorrow

of so many yesterdays

so few tomorrows

so few pleasures

left for him

now...

Maybe I'd just stay home

as planned

water the garden

-it's allowed on Wednesdays-

run on the treadmill

work on my lines

for my acting class

read a few stories

on Prose

a chapter in my book

write a line or two

or ten

alone in my house

where I can breathe.

I... Want to go for a pride parade.

It seems weirdly childish to me. I'm not sure why because I have sufficient reason for this desire. See, I'd never really cared as much for one before I watched this series called Sense8. Simply because I'd never really considered the positives as much as I did the negatives. I just thought of it as loud and too full of people and so colourful it would hurt my eyes. Who cares, right? I'm some random human living in an lgbt-phobic country where my existence is illegalised so it wasn't exactly an achievable possibility, anyhow.

Still. I watched the beloved fruity character Lito come into himself while he made his speech on that huge parade float, whatever it was. And I felt this strange wave of acceptance and love from a screen littered with people I didn't know. People who are strange, like me. Strange by our societal standards, anyway.

Apparently, I like the flashiness more than I could've imagined.

Despite the mental overwhelm, I have a sneaking suspicion I would feel safe and extremely overjoyed if I ever got to witness one.

So now it's on my "bucket list". Go to a pride parade. Once upon a time, my answer would've been to fly across the world to meet this person or that person. But now, it's just me and myself fulfilling a tiny little wish for the heck of it.

And who knows? Some day, I might just find a way.

The world I was in

Through the skies.

Sunrise, sunset.

Moonrise, moonset.

Time is going.

Earth is spinning.

Plants are growing,

Blooming and decaying.

Nonstop.

It never whines.

It never complains.

It never says otherwise.

It creates a cycle of predictions.

Sometimes, the cycle breaks

Like cells growing repeatedly

Without a checkpoint.

This group will falter

And the next will repeat

Until there is no more.

Meanings: short phrases to make sense around individuals and places. It matters personally or socially. It matters which level is a cellular level and the world level.

Carter Hall pipe tobacco sits in a metal tin. It's like a paint can; the lid has to be pried off. The manufacturer included a little attached tab for that purpose.

I open it every now and then. Inside, a treasure of North Carolina soil and sunshine rests in a foil pouch.

The foil pouch was bought within the last two years. The can itself was new when "Just Say No" was the catchphrase of the day, and the moonwalk was all the craze. Better days?

Or just older days?

This metal can was found on a trip Back Home. When it found me, I was a time-traveller. Once opened, the faintest hint of tobacco was riding barely beneath the surface of consciousness and memory.

I brought it back with me. I purchased new tobacco to keep in it, but not to smoke. I sometimes simply open the can and inhale.

He was a stevedore, but that was just a job. He was more, and he was less. He was an alcoholic, but he was more, and he was less.

He was born before the Great Depression. When Uncle Sam demanded his help in the Philippines, he didn't shy away. He didn't volunteer, but he didn't run when he was called to do his job.

He spent his days in the jungle, hiding from the Japanese and laying railroad track. When I asked him what he did in the War, his rheumy blue eyes looked past me, through me, into me. He saw people forty-years dead, he heard whispers in the dark from half a globe away.

"I was an engineer," he said, half-coughing in his rusty voice. That gray tobacco smoke billowed as he sought distraction from the nosy boy surrounded by the ghosts of yesterday.

He explained that the railroad was important. He had to build it, he had to guard it, but then he had to destroy it. Thoughts of army movies played in my mind where recruits are made to dig a hole, then fill it in, then dig it again as some sort of punishment. I asked him if it was like that.

"It was like that, but with people dying."

I didn't ask him again.

After he passed away, I inherited his home. As I was cleaning up and packing things for donation, I stumbled across a shoebox.

He always wore ankle boots, brown leather, with a zipper. A creature of habit, every two years like clockwork he went to the same place near where he worked on the docks. There, he bought two pair of boots after riding the elevator to the third floor of the old-school department store.

That store is a bar now. Trendy loft apartments fill the third floor.

Inside that shoebox, I found a small cardboard box, the kind that would have held earrings or maybe a necklace. Underneath that box, a few black and white photographs of jungle canopy and destroyed buildings. Written in his award-winning hand writing (I found the Penmanship Award from his elementary school days) was a note that read, "This is what war does."

I took the small box in hand, and I pulled off the top. My heart skipped a beat.

Five silver teeth gleamed in the dim lamp light.

He was a fireman. He was a soldier. He was a smoker, a drinker, a hard man with a calloused softness. He was generous and unkind, he was gentle and he was not.

He was my grandfather, the best one I ever had.

He was less, and he was more.

So much pressure

In the dark and dank

All alone

Inhaling water

Salty water I can taste

Some little drummer boy

Makes a water torture

Relentless cadence

Rhythm just at me

Pa-rum pum pum pum

Oh, pressure

Peaking

Plateauing

Peaking again

Pa-rum pum pum pum

Stop pushing me!

It's so crowded in here

Even though

All alone

And the hat doesn't fit

A square peg

Out of a round hole

The hat-band stretches

To accommodate me

Tight--hurts my head

Stop the pushing and shoving

Leave me (alone--too late)

Pushing me from behind

But The Outsider is here

Seizes me from above

With salad spoons tight tight tight

Gains purchase of my swollen head

Synchs the asynclitic

And pulls so hard on me

So hard on me Par-um

I'm between worlds

Between Heaven and Hell

In a place for infants called Limbo

The person pushing and the one pulling

Conspire to resettle me

At the end of my rope

My valve is closing

I'm a beast with two heads

Ripped asunder

And thrown center stage

I appear and my heart races

I grimace

I struggle to move

I gasp and

I score!

How soon forgotten

Is the land of dark and saltwater,

The leeching and selfish

From the light and the sound and the cold and the drummer

I seize my own drumsticks: Pa-rum pum pum pum

more pain

more pain

more painful things

turn into paintings

tears wet

colour discs

on a palette

that were dried out

and crumbling

juice joins

dusty fissures

makes pigment bridges

hydrates bristles

feeds pictures

more pain

‘it’s the colouring that concerns me’

truth be told

more pain

summons rufio

lost boy

art studio

more pain

more pain

a molotov

for the person

that was

more pain

triple x pain

peter pain

cry like a cockerel

fly again

‘it’s not your fault’

when life serves unskippable ads

big sad

pull out a pad

sketch a draft

new neverland map

never doubt the fire

more pain.

An autodidact in self-harm,

she gets hopes up, smitten, blushing.

Though not for her, she'll crave his charm.

His deflection-- cold, crushing.

She hates herself, her unchecked smarm.

Alarms and flags-- they mean nothing.

She'll run straight to, all good sense fled,

when they're her preferred color… red.