"I won't hurt you," he said.

"Just let me kiss you," he said.

Feeling depressed and nothing;

he took advantage of me.

I only did what I thought was right,

I did't owe him,

I didn't - NO!

He pulled me closer so fast, said I "wouldn't even feel a thing."

Paralyzed in my whole body,

I couldn't even blink.

And, oh, the thoughts in my mind -

They wouldn't even form.

I felt like a tortoise being tossed into the shore.

He looked over at me...

Could tell I couldn't breathe...

He just watched me leave...

It didn't mean anything...

Floozy, tramp, slut, whore -

What did I even come here for?

He pulled me closer so fast, said I "wouldn't even feel a thing."

Paralyzed in my whole body,

I couldn't even blink.

And, oh, the thoughts in my mind -

They wouldn't even form.

I felt like a tortoise being tossed into the shore.

Seeing my friends see me...

was worse than being me.

They knew before I did.

"I think he raped me," I said.

They couldn't believe it at all.

"Maybe it's no one's fault."

But I told them,

"He pulled me closer so fast, said I 'wouldn't even feel a thing.'

Paralyzed in my whole body,

I couldn't even blink.

And, oh, the thoughts in my mind -

They wouldn't even form.

I felt like a tortoise being tossed into the shore."

"Come and meet him outside."

I said, "No."

I go and meet him outside,

He doesn't go away.

It doesn't go away.

It doesn't go -

I moved onto the rooftop and felt myself look around.

One foot through the fence and I'll be lying on the ground.

I could die on the ground...

I won't die on the ground...

One of the hardest struggles is to feel like nobody needs you. To lay awake at night, and to feel the absence of one of the most important people in your life. Trying to avoid the empty space to assure yourself that it’s not empty, convince yourself somebody’s there. Desperate thoughts circling around your skull like a distant buzzing you can’t escape from. A steady stream of tears carving a path down your cheek, and washing away your mask.

I’m not getting any sleep tonight. Tiptoeing down the hallway, I hesitate at my son’s room. Light escapes through the crack under his door, but not a sound can be heard. I can’t see him, but I know that his tears mirror my own. His pain is as uncontrollable as the light in the way that it seeps underneath his door. It’s hard not to dwell on the days when I knew how to comfort him, the days when all he feared was a simple thunderstorm.

The sounds of the clouds crashing overhead woke him. We were woken when he snuck into our room, shaking and crying quietly with fright. My husband’s reassuring words were no consolation to him. That night, nothing could have convinced him that he was safe. The lightning illuminated our room and the clouds angrily bellowed at us from the gray sky above. Nothing could distract him, the sky was at war and that’s all he could think about.

Now we stand on opposite sides of a wooden door, both of us wanting reassurance. Only separated by the turn of a doorknob. Wanting so intensely to be the one to close the gap between us, but knowing that I can’t. This time, I can’t be the one to comfort him. Every day he seems to become more independent. He hardly even needs me anymore. This time, I can’t be the one to decide for him, regardless of the pain it causes me.

Now, he falls asleep to the sound of silent thunder, that only he can hear. I know that he won’t reach out. He wants his independence, and I have to be strong enough to give it to him. When he was younger, I was the one who helped him through every scraped knee, every mean word, every stormy night. I’ve held his hand through everything, but we’ve reached a point where I have to let go. I wish I could still solve all of his problems, but there are some battles that need to be fought alone.

#fiction

Deep down, I love you,

But, certain days, I hate you

There are times, I despise

Everything about you

Your entire being,

All that you are

Sometimes, I wish

The hate would stay

I'm much too soft for that,

It eventually fades away

Instead, I'm left waiting,

Waiting to be hurt again

Because as much as I love you,

Hurting is all you do

I miss him.

I miss him so much,

but my mind doesn’t want to admit it.

I pretend that he wants me too.

When he turns back,

he’s actually looking at me.

When he walks by,

it’s because he wanted to see me.

I pretend that we have this secret affection.

That his heart longs for mine,

and I’m the one who doesn’t want him.

I’m the one who is too good for him.

too smart for him,

too pretty for him,

too much for him.

But my mind is a liar,

and my eyes decieve me.

For the fact is,

it’s all deception.

When he turns around,

he’s looking at someone else.

When he comes by,

he’s just walking.

And anyone can see

he’s too good for me.

He doesn’t even notice my existence anymore.

And as much as I want him to,

he doesn’t want me.

silence

more silence

we looked into each others eyes

and then at the dagers in our hands

and pushed them forward

tears rolling down our eyes

we had to do this

this was the only way we could be together

away from the world

away from the society

away from its people

my dager met her chest and hers met mine

our eyes locked in a hope to unite

we were scared, not of dying

but of being separated

we pushed the dagers further

allowing them to tear the skin

our love was true

eternal

it wasn’t being killed

no

our love was strong

stronger than the society

and then

1

2

she asked me- what if we really die?

i said-What if we end up together?

and finally

3

her pulse slowed

and so did mine

her hand went cold

and so did mine

my heart stopped

but hers was beating

my eyes closed

but hers were seeing

i said-darling, you must live for me

our love is strong, and would forever be.

I lost my dad exactly two months and 13 days ago to cancer.

Death teaches you how to live. Not just in the way that it reminds you how every kiss, hug, memory, and connection is a special and fleeting moment, but in the way that it brings you into a closer understanding of yourself, the ways you interact in this earthly world, as well as a deeper understanding of the Being you lost. It also teaches you how to soak in every last bit you can, while you can, before you can't anymore. I feel like I have soaked in ten years of wisdom through the loss of my father, and feel a deep, yet sometimes disoriented, spiritual connection to him since his passing.

The passing of my father wasn’t as big of a shock as a death can be. His diagnosis was a shock, his inability to talk to anybody about it, was a shock, and watching his strong, healthy body deteriorate over the course of two and a half years, was a shock. But his final resting felt almost like a breath of fresh air. Which felt strange, because for the last weeks of his life he spent in hospice in the comfort of our cozy home, he breathed borrowed air from the oxygen machine that still haunts me with its nauseating sound of life stealing death, stealing back life.

My dad and I got ‘Breathe Easy’ tattooed together after we completed our Scuba Diving certification when I was 17 years old. We made a deal that if I did that with him, he would get my first tattoo with me. During his final moments, as I crippled under fear that every breath would be his last, and as he struggled between each, reaching deeper and deeper to the life still left in his lungs, I kept whispering to him to ‘Breathe Easy’, and he did, steadily, focused and determined.

He made his way to the top of a mountain in these moments. A mountain I seek to discover, a cliff I cannot wait to get to, so that I can get closer to him.

I ran outside to be with the moon during his final moments, as the fear and physical pain was too much for me to bear, but, he did breathe easy, all the way to the next stage of his souls existence.

My mother, sister, and I had a lot of time to comprehend what was happening - watched it close up, and couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it. It was this agonizing, slow, painful process that doesn’t make much sense when it comes to understanding the course of life and death. Every day was a kick to the gut with a slap in the face of reality reminding you that yes, this is real, and yes, this will define the rest of your life whether you want it to or not. You lose all sense of control over every single thing happening in your life, you have no say in what will happen next. This slow process allows you no time to heal, because how can you when every second of every day is a ticking clock staring you in the face, seemingly laughing at your gripling to get back into the given health we are born with. It was as if he was dying a thousand deaths.

You fight so hard against your body that no longer wants to work for you, to know that eventually, sooner rather than later, it would come to an end, and all the fighting, although necessary, wasn’t necessarily worth it. Your quality of life will never be the same once you start fighting poison with poison… everything around you starts to become poisoned.

My dad was clear about how dissatisfied he was with this entire situation he found himself in and that he truly didn’t believe it to be as bad as it actually was. His last two years was spent being devastated and pissed he couldn’t go do the things he wanted to do, like be outside, fish, hike, run, bike, Be. But he did all that he could with the time he did have, and it reminded me to not take a single breath for granted.

Papa B truly believed that when you speak something out loud - complain about it, stress about it, talk about it - you were manifesting it into existence. This was unacceptable when it came to his diagnosis. It didn’t exist within him, or so he convinced himself, and he started to convince all of us of that if we continued to build on that faith that things would turn around for the better.

He was one of the chosen ones - one of the ‘hosts’. In this painful experience, his body decided it would manifest into this poisonous evil that would eventually cause his demise. For a man who was so spiritual, his ego sure got ahold of him throughout this process. He was ashamed of himself for not being able to fight this, he hated the way the chemo made him look, he was disgusted with how the painkillers made him feel, but what he forgot was that that didn’t mean HE was weak, and I think that’s where he lost himself, because no longer did he have any say over what was going to happen down this dark journey he found himself walking.

I was fully aware that although this ‘meat-suit’ we find ourselves confined in didn’t always work the way it is suppose to, that doesn’t mean it’s our fault, it doesn’t mean our soul essence is losing the battle, too. In fact, I’m starting to believe that maybe it is winning the fight. Maybe all of the best people get taken somewhere better, as they were tested, and passed into the next stage of this multi-dimensional universe, (but that is a discussion for another day).

I find it interesting and terrifying how comforting it is to know of so many people who have experienced this same kind of loss in their lives. Why is cancer such a prevalent thing in today’s modern world? Doesn’t that scare us at all? To know that no matter what we do, 1 in 3 people will have some sort of cancer hosting itself inside of their body and through all the treatments and preventative supplements, there is still a very large possibility one of us will host it?

My mother is a saint of a woman. If it weren't for her, he would have gone a long time ago. She is strong, willful, honest, and comforting. She has this sense of grace about her that makes any horrible situation seem surmountable. She is our safety blanket when anything is wrong, and without her, I’m not so sure we would have been able to get ourselves through this. Sometimes I’m amazed by the ways in which she carries herself in the face of such pain. The ways in which, throughout her entire life, the heaviest of storms have passed over and through her, striking down every chance they get, yet she remains calm, despite every wave trying to drown her.

Death is a strange thing to wrap your head around, especially when you believe so wholeheartedly in a dense after-life. Does believing in energy transmutation and reincarnation make death easier to accept? Does knowing that there is a spirit world, fueled by the energy of love, make the days pass with more ease without this person physically in your world? I’m starting to slowly believe so.

Some days are easy to come by as acceptance feels like this weapon I am easily able to hold onto and ward off any unwanted energies. It's like learning to use a sword and I am the best swordsman out there, slicing through any of the doubts associated with grief. Then, there are the days that feel like my body has been turned inside out. I feel like my heart is on the outside of my body and everybody that comes near me, living out their “perfect” lives with their families still intact, is seemingly stabbing me with their own special and perfect swords. I often feel this sense of anger and deep-seated sadness whenever I see people who still have their fathers, who haven't experienced this kind of pain before.

Now, I understand that comparison is a lethal game that only steals the joy out of the present moment, and my dad would have been pissed if he saw me not living presently, like he always taught us to.

As much as hospice was a welcoming goodbye, it came with a lot of trauma. Watching your loved one die, especially too soon, at the raw age of 59, is deafening. The nightmares, the re-occurrences of those final moments, the way he looked, the way he felt… I know that this is just my mind playing rotten tricks on me, but how can one get those images out of their heads? You don’t. You learn to live with them, and remind yourself that those moments do not DEFINE that individual. You must remember them as they were. Not how they ended.

Pain

Unceasing pain

Ripping through my body and my innermost being

There is no medicine for this kind of pain

No cure

No hope

My family had a boxer and his name was ozzie. He was our everything. Especially my mom's baby. My neighbors have a bulldog mixed with a pit bull / massiff. One day my brother went outside and forgot to latch the door. Our boxer ran across the yard to our neighbors house and started barking and fighting with our neighbors dog. We all ran over there to try to break up the fight but the dog's jaw was latched and hooked on to our dog's face. When we finally broke them up, our dog ran back to our house with blood dripping everywhere. I was crying and screaming in the corner by the window. In the end we had to put our dog down because our neighbors dog had ripped off the whole jaw of our dog's face. Teeth and everything. A chunk of his face was missing from his face. And all of this happened on the day of my mom's surgery. R.I.P Ozzie. Love maggie.

i thought i knew Pain

a stub of a toe, the black of an eye, the prick of a thumb

i thought i knew Pain

a step on a rock, a tumble or two, the slice of a kitchen knife

i thought i knew Fear

the dark, a ghost, a murderer

i thought i knew a lot of things

"the bones in her leg are twisted, it's called external tibial torsion. she'll need surgery."

what is this, flooding my mind?

i can't move, my limbs are lead

this must be Fear

"we'll make two incisions...sever the bones...twist...a plate and four screws...can't go wrong...3 month recovery.."

the hospital is Fear

the waiting

for hours

the needle in my arm

the drugs flooding my system

i wake up

this is Pain

this must be Pain

then the drugs wear off

my parents watch as i scream and writhe

my nerves are out of whack, i'm told

they had to twist my foot almost ninety degrees

it stretched the nerves

moved them around

nerves allow you to feel Pain

so nerve Pain is Pain in its purest form

and i'm full of it

"she should stay the night, she can't go home like this."

no sleep

finally the nurse decides

morphine

i miss two weeks of school

in bed

crying

screaming

on Pain meds that barely seem to help

eventually, i return

three months later

i'm still limping

physical therapy says it's fine

i just need to regrow the muscles

this is Fear, for sure

i know, something is wrong

i can feel it

when i walk

when i stand

i tell my mom

"it's psycosomatic, you're fine."

still not healed

back to the doctor

words echo through my head "can't go wrong"

.

.

.

.

.

it went wrong

the bone slipped

the screws broke

the plate moved

i have to do it again

i was wrong

knowing Pain

not the idea of Pain

knowing when and where you will feel it

how it will be administered

who will be rearanging your body

the screws that will drill through your bones

holding you together

that is Fear

the drugs are slightly less powerful the second time

i'm still barely awake when they strap me to the table

i barely see the glint of a scalpel

this is Fear

i'm not in an office

i'm strapped to a table

that man will cut me open

and these people will watch

him drill through my bones

at least they give me morphine quicker that night