72 Hours

This was the first time Agatha was alone with Phineas.

She stood over him for a moment without touching him, wanting to savor the private strangeness of finally having him to herself. He seemed even more beautiful in silence. Without conversation, without interruption, without the clumsy obligations of ordinary life pressing in on either side of them, there was something almost sacred in being able to look at him as long as she pleased.

Agatha let herself look.

His mouth was slightly open, as if he had just been about to say something. One arm rested beside him at an angle that felt careless, unguarded. He looked like a man caught in pause rather than stillness, as though at any second he might turn his head, find her watching him, and let the corner of his mouth lift in that quiet way she had imagined a hundred times before.

But he didn’t.

That emboldened her.

She stepped closer, her pulse beating harder now, and reached for his hand. She touched him lightly at first, giving him the chance to resist, to pull away, to ruin the fantasy before it had even begun.

He didn’t.

Agatha smiled and drew his fingers against her thigh.

The gesture sent heat rolling through her so quickly she nearly laughed. All this time she had wondered what kind of man he would be—whether he would be hesitant, proud, cruel, gentle. Now she thought perhaps she had known all along. He had the kind of face that made a woman want to confess things. The kind of body that suggested a hidden severity. A restraint. As though whatever he wanted, he wanted it deeply enough not to waste language on it.

She leaned down and kissed him.

It was meant to be a test. A soft one. Just enough to wake the moment between them and see whether it lived.

His lips gave beneath hers with an ease that made her breath catch.

Agatha kissed him again, longer this time, and when his hand slipped from where she had placed it, brushing lower against her leg, she shivered. She caught his wrist and guided him back up, this time higher, pressing his palm where she wanted to be touched.

There, she thought.

There you are.

Her body answered before her mind could. She felt herself soften, open, begin. It had been building toward this for longer than she cared to admit. In glances. In imaginings. In the private violence of wanting something she had never once asked for aloud. She had made a whole world out of almost nothing: the shape of his mouth, the breadth of his shoulders, the possibility of his looking at her and seeing not the woman everyone knew, but the woman who lived beneath her skin. The ravenous one. The lonely one. The one who wanted to be chosen so thoroughly it bordered on annihilation.

Now here he was beneath her hands, and if he would not choose her in words, then perhaps he was choosing her this way.

Agatha lifted his hand to her mouth and kissed each finger slowly. She let her lips linger over the knuckles, the tips, the spaces between them, and when she looked back at him she felt a tightening low in her belly so sharp it almost frightened her. She wanted to make him react. Wanted proof that he was as full of hunger as she was. Wanted to drag something visible from him and know she had done it.

Instead, he stayed beautifully quiet.

That too she mistook for depth.

She moved closer and let her hand travel over him with more confidence now, tracing the planes of him, feeling him yield to her touch in a way that made her bolder. She kissed his neck. His chest. Pressed herself against him as though the nearness alone might bring him fully into the moment. She imagined his restraint thinning by degrees, his body giving itself over piece by piece, his silence not empty but loaded. She had known men who made noise too soon, men who rushed to prove themselves with clumsy enthusiasm. Phineas, she thought, was not like that. Phineas felt like a held breath. Like something dark and concentrated.

Agatha wanted to be the one to break him open.

When she shifted against him, his arm slid and dragged along her side, and the accidental intimacy of it sent a tremor through her. She took hold of him again, more urgently this time, arranging him where she wanted him, telling herself she was only helping him say yes in the language he preferred. Her own breathing had begun to fill the room now. She could hear it—thin at first, then rougher, catching in the back of her throat.

“You wanted this,” she whispered.

Whether she meant him or herself, she did not know.

The sentence dissolved between them.

Agatha kissed him harder, and because he did not interrupt her, because he did not break the spell by speaking or pulling away or revealing himself to be smaller than what she had imagined, desire became something denser than desire. It became permission. It became its own proof. In his quiet she found room for every dangerous invention. She could give him any thought she wanted. Any motive. Any ache. He received all of it without contradiction.

Her hand moved lower. Then lower still.

She felt a wild little thrill at the weight of him, at the pliancy of him beneath her handling, at the way everything in the room seemed to narrow around the place where her body ended and his began. The world outside them had gone irrelevant. There was only the pressure of touch, the sound of her own blood, the mounting heat of being able to take what had so long been unavailable.

She climbed over him slowly, as if crossing into something irreversible.

The air touched more of her now. She did not care. She was beyond embarrassment, beyond caution. Whatever version of herself might once have hesitated had already receded. In its place was a woman moving by instinct alone, by need, by the long-denied pleasure of no longer being denied.

She bent over him and kissed him again, deeper than before, one hand braced beside his head, the other guiding him, fitting him, making the moment become what she required it to be. Her hair slipped around them like a curtain. Her mouth opened over his. Her body moved with growing certainty. She pressed herself down and gasped at the force of feeling that rose through her. It was not tenderness now. Not really. It was something stranger and more consuming than tenderness. Something devotional in shape and feral in practice.

In her mind, he met her there.

In her mind, his stillness was effort—the effort not to lose control too soon.

In her mind, his silence was concentration.

In her mind, every slip of his body beneath hers was an answer.

Agatha rocked harder against him, each motion feeding the next, until she could no longer tell whether she was chasing pleasure or trying to bury herself in it. Her hands gripped him wherever they could. Her mouth found his throat again, then his chest, then his mouth. She wanted to overwhelm him. Wanted to be overwhelming. Wanted to feel him overtaken by her, undone by her, wanted so badly that the wanting itself began to feel holy.

The pressure built inside her in hot, merciless waves.

She clutched at him. Guided his hands where she wanted them. Pressed his palms against her body and held them there, dizzy with the luxury of being able to make everything obey the shape of her need. She moved faster. Harder. The sound that escaped her then was raw enough to startle her, but once it was out she could not call it back. More followed—small, broken sounds, then louder ones, stripped of dignity, stripped of thought.

Phineas stayed beneath her, inscrutable and open.

Agatha mistook that openness for surrender.

The room lost its edges. The air thickened. Time unraveled. There was only the insistence of her body, the unbearable closeness of climax, the vast interior thunder of wanting finally given permission to finish itself. She bowed over him with a cry, every muscle seizing, every part of her drawing tight around the force of release. She rode it all the way through, trembling so hard she thought she might split apart under it.

For a few suspended seconds afterward, she remained draped over him, breathing in ragged bursts, eyes closed, unwilling to reenter the world just yet. Her forehead nearly touched his chest. One hand still pinned his wrist where she had placed it. The other shook against him, too weak to hold itself up.

Then she opened her eyes.

At first she did not understand what had changed.

The room was too quiet.

Not intimate quiet. Not the breathless quiet after pleasure.

A larger quiet than that.

Agatha lifted her head slowly.

The light above her buzzed.

A hard white glare fell over the room and flattened everything beneath it. What a moment ago had felt private now looked exposed. Sharpened. Wrong.

Her gaze dropped to the hand she was still holding against her breast.

Very carefully, as though the motion itself might alter reality, she lifted her fingers away one by one.

His hand slid down and fell with a dull, loose weight against her body.

Agatha froze.

“No,” she whispered.

The word came out before thought.

She stared at him.

His eyes were open, but not with desire, not with daze, not with anything. They were simply open. His mouth, which she had been kissing as though it concealed some terrible softness, hung slightly parted in the same unchanging shape. There was no tension in him, no withheld breath, no aftermath. Only arrangement. Only the awful fact that every answer she had felt from him had come from her.

Agatha jerked backward so fast her knee slipped. She hit the floor hard, the impact jolting through her spine, but she barely felt it. Her gaze flew around the room, seeing it now as if a veil had ripped.

Steel.

Tile.

A drain in the floor.

A tray of instruments overturned nearby.

The wall of drawers.

The antiseptic sting in the air.

The table.

The table.

Above her, Phineas lay sprawled on a metal autopsy slab.

Agatha’s face emptied.

Then horror moved in.

Not the abstract kind. Not the delicate kind. Total, bodily horror. The kind that enters through every opening at once.

She looked back at him and this time she saw what had been there all along and what she had refused to name: the weight of limbs that had not resisted because they could not, the passivity she had romanticized into restraint, the yielding she had called consent, the silence she had filled with longing because the alternative was unthinkable.

A sound tore out of her, half gasp and half moan, except now there was no pleasure in it at all.

“No,” she said again, shaking her head violently. “No, no, no.”

But the room had already become itself.

She could smell it now beneath everything else—the cleaned-over nearness of death. She could see the instruments clearly. The suturing materials. The discarded gloves. The chart she had read earlier. She saw his body not as a man withholding himself but as what it was: a body on a slab, a body entrusted to procedure, a body opened to examination, a body that had already belonged to death before she ever touched it.

Her stomach turned with brutal force.

Agatha lurched to one side and vomited onto the tile.

The convulsions wrung through her again and again until her eyes watered and her throat burned. She knelt there, naked and shaking, one hand braced against the floor, strings of saliva hanging from her mouth, while above her the fluorescent light buzzed on as if nothing at all had happened.

Then she looked at Phineas and fury came.

It came because shame alone was too much to bear.

“Fuck you,” she screamed.

Her voice ricocheted off the steel drawers.

“Fuck you for this.”

She snatched the tray nearest her and hurled it. Instruments crashed and scattered. She stumbled to her feet and struck the drawers with the flat of her hand, then again, harder, then with both fists. The pain barely registered. She wanted noise. She wanted destruction. She wanted something outside herself to hold the ugliness of what had happened.

“I’m not sick,” she shouted, wild-eyed, hoarse. “I’m not sick.”

The words sounded unconvincing even to her.

She hit the drawers again.

This is your fault, she thought, because some part of her still needed someone else to be guilty first.

But even as the thought formed, another one came beneath it, colder and cleaner:

He did nothing.

He had done nothing.

He had not chosen. Had not yielded. Had not wanted. Had not asked. Every bit of life she had poured into him had been hers alone—hers to invent, hers to mistake, hers to force.

Agatha sagged.

The rage burned out almost as suddenly as it had arrived. In its wake came shaking. Then sobbing. Then the thin mechanical scrape of her own breath trying to steady itself enough to survive the next minute.

She stood there a long time, arms wrapped around herself, staring at the body on the slab.

At last the part of her that had built a career where other people would have collapsed came forward.

Training.

Discipline.

Procedure.

She bent and collected her clothes. She dressed with stiff, jerking movements, then stopped, stripped again, and crossed to the hose. She cleaned herself with a frantic precision that bordered on violence, as if she could wash not only the fluids from her skin but the event itself from time. She dried off. Dressed again. Tied her hair back with trembling hands.

Then she got to work.

First the floor.

Then the walls.

Then the tray.

Then the instruments.

She cleaned until the room no longer looked interrupted by human emotion. Cleaned until the air stung with disinfectant. Cleaned until the panic had to make room for focus.

Only then did she return to Phineas.

With gloved hands and a face carefully brought back under control, Agatha resumed his autopsy.

She was methodical now. Exact. There was no trace of frenzy in her movements, no softness, no lingering. The woman who had climbed over him in a fever of self-made intimacy was gone. In her place stood Dr. Agatha Vale, pathologist, meticulous, respected, one of the finest in her department. She opened him the way she had opened so many others. She examined what required examining. She documented what required documenting. She moved with the calm of practice, with the merciless mercy of expertise.

When she finished, she sutured him closed.

She washed him.

She arranged him.

Then she slid his body back into a drawer and shut the metal door.

The click was soft.

Almost polite.

Agatha stood there staring at it for a moment, one gloved hand still resting against the handle.

“Goodbye, Phineas,” she said.

Her voice was steady again.

She stripped off her gloves, switched off the overhead light, and stepped into the hallway.

The elevator took only seconds to arrive. Inside, she watched her reflection in the brushed metal doors and fixed it piece by piece: the looseness around her mouth, the redness in her eyes, the suggestion of ruin. By the time the doors opened onto the main floor, she looked like herself again—or close enough.

She crossed the hospital lobby with measured ease.

A resident nodded to her. She nodded back.

Two nurses near reception were laughing at something on a phone. One of them glanced up, smiled politely, and went back to the conversation. The ordinariness of it all nearly undid her. How obscene that the world should continue moving in straight lines while she still felt split open down the center.

Outside, evening had settled in cleanly. The air was cooler now. Cars passed in dull streams beneath the streetlights. Somewhere, far off, a siren rose and faded.

Agatha got into her car and shut the door.

For a while she sat without moving, both hands gripping the steering wheel.

Nothing happened, she told herself.

Nothing that matters.

Nothing that can be proven.

The thought steadied her.

She inhaled. Exhaled. Started the engine.

By tomorrow, she thought, the memory would already begin to flatten. By next week it might feel dreamlike. By next month she would have folded it away so deeply inside herself it would return only in fragments—an image, a taste, a sound. That was how survival worked. Not through innocence, but through compartment.

She pulled out of the hospital lot and drove into the night.

What Agatha did not know—what all her years in medical school, all her training, all her hours in the morgue, and all the private hungers she had so carefully kept hidden had somehow failed to teach her—was this:

It takes roughly seventy-two hours for sperm to die inside a dead man’s body.

You Need Someone

I have been trying to write an essay for a friend.

That sentence should not carry this much weight, and yet it does.

It is a simple essay. The kind of thing sixteen-year-old me could have written in an afternoon, maybe while half-distracted, maybe while listening to music, maybe while doing three other things at once. Back then, words came when I called them. They lined up. They obeyed. They arrived with a kind of loyalty I never had to question.

Now I am nearly finished with this favor, and still it has felt like dragging something holy through mud.

For the past few weeks, I have been telling my brother that I have been struggling with it. Not because the essay itself is impossible, but because I have been overwhelming myself, tangling the task until it feels bigger than it is. Then he sent me one of those harmless little links people send without thinking much of it, something about the birth months that supposedly produce the best writers. June. November. February. Another month I cannot remember. Not May.

I was born in May.

It is almost embarrassing to admit how deeply that stupid detail cut me. It was such a small thing. Such a silly thing. A joke, really. But something in me gave way. It became the cherry on top of a magnificently horrible Sunday. Because it was never really about the list. It was about what the list touched.

It touched the bruise.

It touched the fact that I used to be the person people came to when they needed help writing. The person who edited essays, wrote essays, sometimes got paid to write essays. The person who could write stories at the drop of a dime. The person who could look at someone and make a poem out of them. The person who had language on speed dial.

And now here I was, unable to finish one simple thing.

That is when the joke turned on me.

I texted my brother something playful, something like good for you and Mom, the best writers in the house, because he is November and my mother is February. I was trying to keep it light. But beneath the text, beneath the laugh, something uglier was already waking up. The voice that waits for moments like that. The one that loves a crack in the door.

Guess who is not the best writer. Guess who cannot finish a damn essay. Guess who cannot finish writing their book. Guess who cannot finish a poem. Guess who cannot seem to do any of the things that once came so naturally. Guess who cannot make the art, cannot crochet, cannot sing, cannot pull the thing from the soul and bring it into the world.

It kept going.

Cruelty always knows how to build momentum.

And beneath all of that, the real question began to rise, the one that frightens me most:

Where are you?

Where is the woman who could make things happen? Where is the one with force in their spirit? The one who could create, heal, move, speak, write, become? Where is that version of me that felt not invincible, but deeply, undeniably alive?

Because I know they are still in there.

That is what makes it hurt the way it does. If they were gone, maybe this would be grief with a clean edge. But they are not gone. They feel buried. Locked somewhere inside me, behind fear, behind exhaustion, behind the strange paralysis that trauma leaves in the body long after the danger has passed. Or maybe after some dangers have not quite passed at all.

The truth is that this does not begin and end with writing.

It only looked like writing because that was where the wound surfaced.

For the last few years, and especially these past months, I have felt deeply stuck. Not in the romantic way people talk about being blocked. Not in the neat, temporary way creative droughts are often described. I mean stuck in a way that feels physical, painful, almost surreal. As if the words exist, but snag somewhere between thought and form. As if I can feel them pressing against me from the inside, asking to be let out, and still I cannot free them.

And that kind of stuckness begins to infect everything.

I have been dealing with the weight of CPTSD, for the past few months, with fear that has learned how to make a home in the body. I have been trying to progress while feeling unsafe. Trying to move while feeling watched. Trying to build while still carrying the psychic architecture of being manipulated, frightened, and worn down. There are things that happened to me that made me disconnect from myself for survival, and now survival is no longer enough. Now I want my life back, and I am realizing how difficult it is to return to yourself after you have spent so long being taught to abandon yourself.

That is the terror of it, I think.

Not blood. Not ghosts. Not monsters.

To stand at the threshold of your own life and not fully know how to enter it.

To remember yourself in flashes but not in permanence.

To know the voice is yours and still struggle to speak in it.

The cruelest part is that the things I love most begin to feel like proof of failure when I cannot access them. Writing. Art. Healing. Learning. Teaching. All the things that once made me feel most like myself become tender to the touch, almost threatened, as if losing access to them means losing access to me.

And I do not want that.

I do not want a life where I am severed from my own passions. I do not want to be so afraid, so exhausted, so destabilized that I cannot reach the parts of myself that make living feel meaningful. I want to be awake. Entirely present. I want to do my work well. I want to create without terror sitting beside me. I want to flourish, not merely recover. I want to know who I am outside of fear, outside of projection, outside of survival. I want to know what is truly mine.

Recently, in the middle of an argument with someone I care about, he said something that lodged itself in me: You need someone.

And I remember the immediate offense that rose in my body, because the answer came just as quickly, sharp and certain as a struck match:

No.

I do not need someone.

I need me.

That was the truth sitting beneath all of this grief.

I need me. I didn’t say it out loud, and parts of me felt I should have, but not for him, for me. I need my voice. I need my safety. I need my center of gravity returned to me. I need the self I have been grieving while still carrying them. I need to feel that I belong to myself again. Not to fear. Not to confusion. Not to the aftermath of what other people did to my mind. Me.

Because I do love myself. Fiercely, even now. Enough to know when I have gone missing. Enough to feel the rage of that absence. Enough to keep searching through the dark for the shape of my own hand.

And I think that when I find myself again, I will not only be able to hold myself better, I will be able to stand inside the kind of love that can meet me there. Love that is reciprocal. Safe. Mutual. Love that does not ask me to abandon myself in order to keep it. Love that does not leave me starving and call it devotion. Because I think finding myself also means knowing I am finally well enough to receive what answers me back. Not a love that says I need someone, but a love that recognizes I am the someone, and meets me there whole.

That is what this is, maybe.

Not failure.

Not the death of talent.

Not proof that I have lost whatever gift once lived in me.

Maybe it is the sound of me reaching for myself again, clumsily, angrily, honestly. Maybe it is ugly because return is ugly. Maybe it shakes because I am still shaking. Maybe it comes out in fragments because fragments are what I have had to work with.

But buried is not gone.

Silenced is not emptied.

Blocked is not barren.

They are still here.

A little frightened. A little fractured. A little harder to find than they once were. But here.

And if I need anyone now, it is not another savior, not another witness, not another pair of hands telling me who I am.

It is me.

It has always been me.

Reminder

My body felt grief

but could not remember

how to express

the crippling pain it was feeling.

So I asked guatquyca

in silent words

in the vibrations of my temple.

My aches filled the air.

The sky turned dark,

Broken.

It bore a tempestuous song.

There

they reminded me

and I sang with them.

Little One

During breathwork today, I was told to imagine myself fighting the darkness.

Not hunting it.
Not destroying it.

But forcing it into the light.

I resisted at first.

For years, I have believed the darkness was my refuge.

In meditation, in dreams, since childhood — I have seen a cave.

The soil inside it is black-brown and soft, almost sandy. Clean. Cool.
When I face outward, there is an ocean. Cold. Comforting. Endless.

The cave sits along a beach.

I always believed it was a place to heal.
A place to regenerate.
A place to gather myself before returning to the world.

Because the world is heavy.

Because carrying ancestral memory is heavy.

Because being the child of parents who were never truly there is heavy.

Because loving people who do not know how to love back is heavy.

So I would go into the cave. Into the dark. To prepare myself to go back out.

But today was different.

Today, I was told to bring light into the cave.

When I stepped deeper inside, I saw her.

A child.

At first, I thought she was a little girl I once worked with — the same messy haircut, the same anxious energy. But when I knelt down, I realized she was me.

She was pulling at my heart.

Clawing it.

Squeezing it so tightly I could barely breathe.

She was not trying to hurt me. She was desperate.

She needed me to understand.

She is terrified of being too much.
Terrified of losing people.
Terrified that her need for affection makes her unlovable.

She thinks she ruins things.
She thinks if she wants too much, everyone will leave.

She has spent her whole life begging to be seen — first by narcissistic parents who were never fully present, and then by lovers and friends who mirror that absence in different forms.

Not always cruel.

Sometimes avoidant.
Sometimes “kind,” but distant.
Sometimes people who take and take, and then call her the user for wanting reciprocity.

And the child believes it.

She thinks she is the problem.

She pulls at my heart because she wants someone to finally say:

“I see you. You are not too much.”

So I sat down in the cave.

I took her hand off my heart.

I placed her on my lap and turned her toward the ocean.

I pressed the heart back into her chest.

“Your heart is my heart,” I told her.
“You are safe. You are loved. You do not have to prove anything anymore.”

“You do not have to scream to be heard.”

“You do not have to bleed to be chosen.”

“You do not have to give endlessly to deserve warmth.”

And something shifted.

She stopped crying.

For the first time in what feels like lifetimes — she calmed. Her tears stopped. 

I cradled and hummed with the little one in my arms.

Here is what I understood in that cave:

I have been returning to the darkness not just to heal —
but to recharge so I could go back out and give again.

To people who do not show up the way I show up.

To people who accept devotion but resist intimacy.

To people who project their shame onto me and call it my flaw.

To people who say I am “using” them because I ask for care in return.

That cycle ends here.

Kindness is not a debt.

Generosity is not an invitation for extraction.

Reciprocity is not selfish.

If you continuously show me that you do not value me, I will believe you.

Not because I am worthless.

But because I am finally listening.

I deserve respect.
I deserve tenderness.
I deserve to receive the same presence I offer.

And the little girl in the cave deserves to stop begging.

This is not vengeance.

This is not hardness.

This is light entering the cave.

If this calls you out — good.

If this holds you — good.

If this makes you uncomfortable — sit with it.

But I will not go back into the darkness to prepare myself for more depletion.

I will go into the cave to rest.

And when I step back into the ocean air, I will step out whole.

Not hungry.

A Way - Part Two

“You know I could walk up by my damn self,” Moira snapped, ripping her wrist from Ben’s sweaty grip.

Ben hadn’t even realized he’d been dragging her—from the gym, to the street, up the stairs, breathless and frantic.

“Huh—oh, sorry, Moira, I’m just—when you see it, her, you’ll—”

They stopped short at his door.

Moira planted her palm flat against his chest, holding him there.
“Her?” she demanded. “Wait. I’m meeting someone? You’ve been a wreck for months, Benjamin, and now there’s a her? What the fuck?”

Tears pooled in her eyes, sharp and sudden.

“I don’t need to meet whoever she is,” Moira continued, her voice breaking, “at least not yet. In case you’ve forgotten, she was practically my sister. My family. When I lost everyone, she was there. And—”

“Hey,” a voice said gently from inside the apartment. “What’s going on? I heard voices.”

Angie stood there.

Just as Moira remembered her.
Living. Breathing.

A sound tore its way out of Moira’s chest as her eyes widened and her hand tightened in the fabric of Ben’s jacket. Ben covered Moira’s hand with his own, felt the violent tremor in her fingers, hoped—stupidly—that touch could anchor this moment.

“Moi—”

“Shut up,” Moira whispered. “Shut. Up.”

Tears slid down her face as she slowly let go of Ben. She tilted her head, wonder and disbelief softening her features, her shoulders sagging as if her body wanted to collapse—but didn’t. Bearing witness mattered more than fainting.

“How are…” she tried. Swallowed. “How are you here?”

Angie’s eyes filled as she shrugged helplessly, a small, broken smile tugging at her mouth.
“Honestly? I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe the wedding was a promise. Or a wish. I—I don’t know.”

Moira laughed through her tears and wiped her face.
“A wish,” she echoed. “It was a wish.”

She hugged Angie.

Then Ben did.

For a moment, it was the happiest thing any of them had ever known—the relief of Angie being back, alive, here.

Until Ben’s arms closed around Moira.

“What—no,” Moira gasped, shoving him away. “No. No no no no no.”

Ben’s heart slammed into his throat.

Angie was gone.

Ben stood there, everything still. Even the dust in the air seemed to hold her outline — a shape where she had been.

He looked at Moira.

Her arms were tight at her sides, fingers twitching outward — the same nervous reach she used to make when she’d grab for Angie’s hand in crowded rooms.

Ben kept staring, like his body hadn’t received the message yet.

Then he moved.

“Angie?”

He checked the hallway first, then the bathroom, then the bedroom — opening doors as if she might be standing politely behind one, waiting for the right cue to return.

“Angie, stop. This isn’t—”

“Ben.”

Moira’s shoulders dropped. She stepped into the middle of the living room.

The apartment did not feel empty.

It felt… plucked. Rearranged. Nothing missing. Just shifted.

“She just disappeared,” Ben said, breathing uneven. “We have to find her.”

Moira lifted her hand.

“Hold on.”

“For what?”

“Shhh.”

“You saw her. She was here.”

“I know.”

“And she’s gone.”

“No.”

“What do you mean no?!”

Moira’s jaw tightened.

“Because it can’t be that you saw her all night and I only got her for a few minutes in the morning. Because Benjamin — you may have been her husband — but I am her sister.”

Her voice didn’t rise. It steadied.

“I felt it when she left the first time. I felt it in my ribs. And I’m telling you right now — she is not gone like that.”

Ben swallowed.

Moira took one step closer.

“You think because you two were special bone buddies that makes you more important than me?” she said, deadpan. “Moira equals Bestie for Life. Always.”

Ben blinked.

Then laughed — sharp and startled.

She hit his arm.

He pulled her into a hug. They laughed harder than the moment deserved. Then quieter. Then still. Moira’s head rested on his shoulder. “Where are you here, Ange?” she whispered to the room. “Why leave here  like that? You wouldn’t just go—right? Not with me. Not just like that.”Ben pressed his cheek into her hair. “Like you said,” he murmured. “You feel her. You’ll tell me the day she’s gone again.” Moira nodded once. “A promise.”

That night, Ben woke into paralysis.

He couldn’t move.

The air felt thick, pressing down on his chest.

There was weight at the edge of the mattress.

Tall.

Still.

Watching him.

His throat worked uselessly.

The figure leaned forward.

Hair falling over its face.

And then—

“Oh my god, you should see your face!”

Angie burst into laughter.

The pressure vanished.

Ben jerked upright.

“What the hell, Ange?”

“I have always wanted to scare you like that,” she said, wiping imaginary tears from her eyes. “And I thought this was the best opportunity.”

“You’re dead.”

“And you still scare easy!”

“No, I meant — you’re dead!”

She laughed again, and he lunged for her. She darted away, the room bending strangely around them as if the walls were slightly tilted.

He caught her by the waist and pulled her in.

He buried his face in her hair.. It still smelled like her raspberry cowash.

“Tell me this is real,” he whispered. “Tell me I’m not just dreaming.”

She leaned back slightly and looked at him.

“What I’ve learned so far,” she said gently, “is that two things can be true.”

She placed her hands on his face.

“This is real.”

The clock behind her began to soften at the edges.

“And you are dreaming.”

Ben looked around.

The walls breathed.

The bed stretched slightly too long.

The digital clock melted — numbers fixed at 9:08.

“Why did you leave?”

A small pause.

“I think we misjudged it,” she said. “We don’t always get the whole morning.”

“What happens now?”

She wrapped her arms around him, resting her chin against his chest.

“For now,” she whispered, “we have this.”

“And after?”

“There are ways,” she said softly. “Not all of them look like this.”

“How will I know—”

She stopped him with a kiss.

“Ask Moira.”

She leaned close to his ear.

“And you forgot to turn on your alar—”

Ben woke with a choking gasp.

The room was still.

The microwave clock glowed through the doorway.

9:09 a.m.

He grabbed his phone.

9:09.

His mind snagged on the dream.

9:08.

The number would not let go.

His phone rang.

Moira.

He answered.

There was a long breath on the other end.

“Ben,” she said quietly. “What time was she buried?”

His stomach dropped.

“Nine-oh-eight.”

Silence.

On both ends.

“That’s the hour,” Moira said.

Neither of them said what it meant.

Empieza

Write because you will yourself to.

Write because you make magic and pierce with your words.

Write because this is your strength and your beauty.

This is where you possess your power.

Make.

Your hands can still make

what they have always made.

The lines you carve into paper

shake and tremble—

forming images that tell

stories of life and death and pain,

singing of present and past and unknowns,

of things we cannot reach

but ache to touch.

An inner melody.

Canta.

Porque esa fue la voz

con la que gritaste al revivir

una y otra vez.

Con la que lloras y ríes

y cuentas historias.

Canta por la raíz que te sostiene.

Canta por lo más bonito de tu gente,

de tus ancestros—

la línea que nos conecta

de aquí

al allá.

En esa voz

están tus palabras,

tu don.

En ellas están las semillas,

donde brotan las flores—

las amorosas,

las brillantes,

las brutales.

Las que desmantelarán

todas las impurezas,

todo lo maligno,

toda la vileza.

La mano negra que pesa sobre esta tierra—

la agarraré con mis obras

y romperé cada dedo.

Traeré la luz.

La paz.

Sanaré a la madre.

A mí.

A todo lo que amo tanto.

Pero primero—

Write.

So that this may begin

to end.

To begin,

Empieza.

"We Accept The Love We Think We Deserve."

TW: trauma

I first read The Perks of Being a Wallflower as a teenager, around the same time my own memories of a traumatic youth began to surface—alongside my reconnection to my Indigenous roots. The book resonated deeply with me then, but what I couldn’t have known was how that one line would echo through my life years later.

No matter how much I have learned—through therapy, through reconnection, through family history and hard-earned growth—I still found myself accepting the love I thought I deserved.

Some traumas run deeper than the individual. They are ancestral. Societal. Cultural. I see them reflected in our television shows. I see them in my mother. I see them in my cousins. I hear them in the stories told about the women in my family. And even when I am actively trying to understand, to move forward, I find myself repeating the same mistakes.

“We keep going toward pieces of shit,” my brother once said. “We see the danger, but somehow we convince ourselves that that is the relationship worth salvaging.”

We are conditioned to be hostages to danger. Taught for centuries that we must protect hostile environments—and the people who thrive within them. So when something feels safe, when it feels calm or nurturing, we don’t fight for it.  We don’t work through it. We don’t trust it. Because deep down, we don’t believe we deserve that peace.

We think we deserve the chaos.

The cruel irony is that healing makes this harder to spot at first, especially with people who are good at hiding their faces.We don’t immediately recognize that we’re still following the same patterns—we just think we’re doing better. It takes time. We convince ourselves we’re choosing differently now.

But our bodies remember what our minds try to forget.

The signs start to appear. The same red flags we once ignored. The same tightness in the stomach. The same unease. And suddenly, our body is signaling what our mind hasn’t fully accepted yet: this is harm. And if we are going to truly heal, we must stay present. Alert. Awake.

And then it happens.

The realization lands. The trigger is pulled. Your world collapses. Everything you worked years to build feels like it’s turned to ash. Your body and mind revolt at once, and the old script starts playing:

You deserve this.

No.

You knew this time. You saw the danger. You asked the questions. You set boundaries. You listened to your intuition instead of silencing it. You sought the truth and recognized it for what it was—and you pushed it away.

You didn’t do anything wrong.

You were manipulated. Groomed. Your care was used for someone else’s benefit. And when you are still surrounded by trauma, when escape isn’t simple or immediate, it can be nearly impossible to see that you are trying to “salvage shit” instead of nurturing something that was actually safe.

I blamed myself over and over again. My fault, my fault.

But as I slowly reconnected—communicating again with the person at the center of an old misunderstanding—I felt something unexpected: ease. Safety. Familiar comfort. The feeling I have in my closest friends, my chosen family. The feeling that doesn’t require me to shrink or bleed to earn it.

That quiet sense of home.

That was what I deserved all along.

The feeling I lost through poor communication. Through blurred boundaries. Through things left unsaid. Safety. The safety that could exist when two people are willing to listen—because once upon a time, we really did.

In everything and everyone who gave me safety, there was a sense of home. And I hope—truly—that they felt it too. Because that is the kind of love we all deserve.

I accept the love I deserve.

A Way (Part One)

“It’s our anniversary,” Angie murmured as her eyes fluttered open, fixing on the brick archway above her. Her voice echoed softly through the dim space. For a moment, reflex took over—she reached for her neck, grasping quickly, hoping this was only some wild dream.

But the world sharpened instead.

The smell of damp stone and dust.
The cold, unmoving air.
The gentle weight of a chain resting against her collarbone.

And on that chain—

“…the ring.”

She pressed the metal between her thumb and index finger, as if it were something she could still warm by holding.

Angie pushed herself upright and leaned back against the wall, taking in the St. Patrick Basilica catacombs. The place was still beautiful—quiet, reverent, heavy with endings. Every year, she returned to this exact spot. The place where she and Ben had met during a candlelight tour.

A strange place to fall in love.
Stranger still to return to after death.

This was where their love learned how to live.

Her ending happened elsewhere.

But beginnings imprint deeper.

That was why she came back here.

Angie died seven years ago—only three years after meeting Ben. And though death took her body, it didn’t erase the life they built together. They loved each other fiercely, absurdly, as if the universe had made a clerical error and let two halves of the same soul collide too soon.

They met right here, between two cardinals’ tombs, the moment Angie’s shoe betrayed her. The Velcro gave out, and she went flying—face-first—into Ben’s Old Navy blue-label sweater.

“Can you walk?” he asked, annoyed and startled.

“Apparently… no.” She lifted her ankle, showing him the dangling shoe. She tried a hop. “See? Tore up from the—well, not the floor up, but close enough.”

Ben smiled despite himself. His warm brown eyes met her storm-grey ones—and her eyes smiled back at him. Fully. Kindly. A softness he didn’t know eyes were capable of.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m being a dick.”

“Thank you for apologizing,” she replied. “Are you having a bad day?”

“Think I’ve had a few,” he laughed weakly.

“Do you want to talk about it? It’s okay if you don’t—we don’t even know each oth—”

“Would you like to know me?”

She paused. Then smiled.

“Yes,” she said. “Actually… do you want to get coffee?”

That coffee became the first of many.
Hands found each other.
Lives unfolded.

Angie and Ben were in love long before either of them admitted it. They made plans easily, carelessly, believing time would behave itself.

For a while, it did.

Plans for the wedding came together smoothly. The reception plans followed. The years they spent together blurred into a continuous warmth—bright, consuming, deeply ordinary in the way real love often is. They argued sometimes. Small fractures. But they never lost sight of one another. Every day still carried the same spark that had drawn them together in the catacombs.

People like to say the honeymoon phase fades. That it’s just a trick of novelty.

But not for them.

For Angie and Ben, love felt like a long, unbroken thought—something luminous, stretching forward without a visible end.

Ben planned the surprise carefully. Angie had always wanted the small patch of grass near the pier—the place where they’d shared their first kiss—for their wedding reception. It was an odd request. Nearly impossible.

Ben made it happen anyway.

He guided her there blindfolded, one hand wrapped securely around hers. When they reached the grass, music bloomed behind them—her friend’s band covering the song they loved most.

“Are you kidding me?” Angie laughed. “What—oh my god, what’s happening?”

Ben removed the blindfold.

“Remember when you said this place was impossible to get?” he asked, arms folding around her as he tried to stay calm.

Her body bounced with joy. Her eyes filled.

“We got it, babe.”

She screamed—pure, unfiltered happiness—and broke from his arms only to launch herself back into them, kissing him breathless.

“Is there anything you can’t do?”

“Anything we can’t,” he said softly, kissing her back, “we’ll figure out together.”

She swayed against him as the music carried on, humming the words under her breath.

“But I somehow
Slowly love you…”

“Angie?” Ben murmured.

Her steps faltered.

Her weight shifted—wrong, sudden, heavy. He adjusted instinctively, reaching for her face.

Time folded.

Her lips whispered, “a way.”

Her eyes rolled back.

Her head fell.

Ben’s knees hit the grass.

The music stopped.

People rushed forward.

Phones came out.

Angie’s nose began to bleed. Her breathing turned wet and uneven.

No one called 911.

They recorded Ben holding her as she died of an aneurysm in his arms.

“It was our wedding anniversary,” Ben said later, at the eulogy. “We were planning—”

He couldn’t finish. There was no ending to reach.

After the wake, he asked Moira—Angie’s closest friend—to stay behind. He handed her two rings, each threaded onto a chain.

“We never got married,” he said quietly. “All I want is to spend the rest of my life with the woman I love.”

Moira stared at him, grief and horror colliding.

“Oh my fucking god, Ben—are you okay?”

“I just watched the woman I love die in my arms,” he said, breaking. “The least I can do is marry her. Grieve her properly.”

Since Moira was ordained, she performed the ceremony.

She placed Angie’s hand into Ben’s.
Then Ben’s into Angie’s.

“Angie,” she said softly, “do you take this man—”

A pipe banged somewhere in the walls.

They froze.

“And you, Ben?”

“I do.”

Moira lifted the rings—to the sky, to the floor, to the center—and placed the chains around their necks.

“By the powers of earth, time, and all planes between,” she said, “I pronounce you husband and wife.”

The year that followed hollowed Ben out. He lost his job. Sold the apartment. Moved back into his old place. Smoked too much. Drank more. Wondered if it would’ve been easier to follow her instead of surviving her.

By the next anniversary, he wandered the pier drunk and alone, drawn back to the grass without knowing why.

As night fell, people came and went. Eventually, there was no one.

He cried.

He cried as the scent of her perfume slipped into the air. As he felt the gentle press of a hand against his face. He remembered the moment he swore he could feel her soul leave her body.

“A husk,” he muttered.

“Hey,” a voice whispered. “I’m not a husk.”

Ben opened his eyes.

Angie sat in front of him, wearing her pale dress. The ring rested at her throat. She looked whole. Alive.

Ben choked on his breath and scrambled backward in terror.
“How—how did—what are you—”

“It’s our anniversary,” she said gently.

“Our wedding anniversary,” she clarified. “You had Moira perform the ceremony. Remember?”

At first, she told him, waking in the catacombs had been terror. Screaming. Panic. The realization that she was gone. Dying hadn’t just been losing her life—it had been losing him too.

“I don’t know how this is happening,” she said, tears welling. “It’s like you made a wish. And I came back.”

Ben crawled toward her slowly.

“Can I… touch you?”

She guided his hand to her chest. He felt warmth. A heartbeat. The rise and fall of her breath. Her birthmark. The ring.

“Is this permanent?” he asked quietly. “Do we have time?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “What matters is now.”

They kissed—saying everything they couldn’t yet put into words. Longing. Ache. Trauma. Love.

That night, he took her home.

They spoke for hours. Held each other until sleep claimed them both.

At 7:05 a.m., Ben’s alarm went off.

Angie slept beside him.

He smiled. He couldn’t wait to show Moira the miracle.

When Moira arrived, he grabbed her arm.
“You’re taking the day off. You’re coming with me.”

She pulled back immediately.
“Ben—are you okay? Like… really okay?”

“Yes,” he said urgently. “Please. Just come with me. Coffee. I need to show you something.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Once I figure out you’re tore up from the floor up, we’re going to the cuckoo’s nest.”

“I think once you see what I see,” Ben said, “you’re gonna think we should go together.”

Moira followed him, uneasy, back toward his apartment—just a few blocks away—completely unaware of what waited a few floors up.

Orpheus, Or The Violence Of Looking Back

A melodious swing drifting through wind,
born of Dream and Calliope,
came to touch her delicate cheeks,
wipe the tears from her face,
and meet the divine—
Eurydice’s soul.

A blush brushes the surface
of her tender skin,
revealing the soft fall of young
love.

A first love.
An only love.
Something so rare, so unseen—
untouched,
uncanny upon Gaia,
as though it could not possibly
be.

He plays beautifully at their union,
her movements finessed with every note.
She dances with the air,
disappearing into each pluck,
each ping, each sound—
into the trees.

Consent begins to dissolve.

With the sway of hips
against the long blades of grass,
the crowd moves hypnotically
and suddenly forgets
how to see.

The music forgets how to sound.

Eurydice realizes she has lost herself
in the arms of a strange man.

He lifts her—
eyes hungrily grazing her body.

What do you wan—

Before the thought can finish forming,
he lowers his face.
Thunder folds into her,
shaking her sense of place.

He whispers,
to know your ache.

The earth holds its breath.

Suddenly—
as quickly as the stranger takes Eurydice,
a snake bites her ankle.

She screams.

The crowd regains its sight.
Orpheus hears her cries.

When she is found,
the stranger has vanished.

Eurydice is dead.

The snake coils beside her,
as if waiting—
guarding her body,
keeping her unharmed,
though it was
the very thing that killed her.

It watches Orpheus as it slithers away,
its stare almost threatening,
almost judging,
as Eurydice is slowly dragged
into the Underworld.

Orpheus travels past the Styx,
into dark, murky crevices
where he meets
Hades and Persephone—
against their will.

He petitions them,
begging for the love of his life
to be returned
with one song
to pierce Hades’ unrelenting dark.

With Persephone’s persuasion,
Hades agrees.

The lyre plays.
Orpheus sings.
The Underworld fills with light—
a glory known only to Olympus,
if only for a moment.

Moved by feelings long unfelt,
they grant him his love
under one condition.

Hades smiles gently at Persephone,
wipes the tear from her face,
remembering the years of life,
the pain endured—
all that she endured.

Her resilience.

“As you wish, my love,” he says,
pressing her warm, floral hand
to his cold lips.

She turns to Orpheus.

“Eurydice is yours, my dear boy.
I have placed her behind you.
Do. Not. Turn. Around.

You will hear her.
You will feel her.
You will want to look back.
Don’t.

Don’t even speak to her.

Your love brought you here—
against everything.
With a lyre and song,
you moved us like moons pull tides.

If you fought darkness to reach her,
you can walk through it with her,
knowing the only way to protect her
is to look toward the light—
toward Gaia.

You must trust it.
You must trust her.
Trust love.”

He nods.

The Underworld opens.

Something—
someone—
takes his hand.

A cold touch.
(Be.)

He shivers and walks forward,
holding the hand behind him.

Don’t look back.

The light of Gaia is near,
but the path is violent, mischievous.

“Orpheus, why won’t you talk to me?”
“Can’t you hear me?”
“Please— I’m afraid.”

He cannot.
He will not.

Not until he is out.
Not until he is free.

Yet with every step,
his spirit aches—
because it sounds like her,
feels like her,
smells like her.

It is Eurydice.

Her hand is cold.
She is afraid.
They are so close.

What if—
just once—
he looked?

To see if she was whole.
To know it was truly her.
To kiss her once.
To tell her he loved her.

Grass brushes their feet.
The exit nears.
Her hand grows warm.

“My love…” she sobs.

He turns.

Reaching for the tear on her cheek—

She is gone.

He gasps.
Breath fractures.
Panic.
(Be.)

Orpheus walks on,
propelled by shock,
burdened by pain—
losing the only woman he loved
not to fate,
but to disbelief.

He forgot her trust.
Her faith.

She never spoke.
Never questioned.
She followed.

Held his hand.
Closed her eyes.
Let herself be guided—
as instructed.

“You have to trust him.
That love.”
(Believe.)

She did.

Orpheus will never know
how deeply she loved him.
How completely she trusted.

He will only know devastation—
born of immaturity, insecurity,
and the need to see.

Something in the darkness
he should have already known
was as real as the hand
touching him.
(Believe.)

He will let others numb him,
disembody him,
to dull the pain of love lost.

But nothing will sever him
from the love he failed—
his sweet Eurydice.

Orpheus walks on.

Not forward—
but emptied.

The world receives him again,
grass underfoot,
sun on skin,
life continuing as if nothing sacred
has been broken.

But something has.

Inside him,
the music rots,
spoiling down from his skin
into the soil,
seeping into the depths,
playing its mourning songs
into the Underworld—

where Eurydice cries her loss
in betrayal
against Persephone’s kind bosom.

Above,

Orpheus tells himself stories—
that love was cruel,
that gods are tricksters,
that Eurydice slipped because she was weak,
because fate is careless,
because the world conspires.

Anything
but the truth:

He did not trust her.

He begins to fracture.

First, the song leaves him.
Then the will to touch.
Then the want to live among bodies.

He wanders.
He refuses women.
Refuses warmth.
Refuses flesh.

He speaks only to trees,
to stone,
to absence.

And absence answers nothing.

They come for him quietly.

Hands that are not divine,
not merciful—
but human.

They do not hate him.
They do not love him.

They tear.

Arms first—
the hands that once played the lyre,
that once held Eurydice’s
without ever feeling her trust.

They rip them away.

He screams,
but the sound means nothing now.

His chest is split—
the place where belief should have lived,
opened and emptied.

His legs are taken—
the legs that walked toward light
but stopped short,
that chose sight over faith.

Piece by piece,
his body is unmade.

Yet—
he does not die.

What remains
is his head.

Eyes intact.
Mouth intact.
Memory intact.

Still thinking.
Still knowing.

Still remembering
the warmth of her hand
just before it vanished.

The river carries him.

He cannot close his eyes.
He cannot forget.

He sings no more—
but his mind sings endlessly,
replaying the moment
he turned.

The blade of realization
cuts forever:

She trusted him completely.
She did everything right.
He failed her.

Eternity is not fire.
It is awareness.

To exist without a body—
without hands to create,
without arms to hold,
without a heart to justify—

only a mouth
to repeat the truth.

Only a head
to know
that love was offered fully
and refused.

And the world listens
as Orpheus floats,
still alive,
still conscious—

a monument
to disbelief.

Author’s Note: I began thinking about this version of Orpheus and Eurydice after watching The Sandman. It made me reflect on how many versions of Greek mythology exist, and how we’re always—consciously or not—choosing which ones we believe in most. This poem is a blending of the versions I could stand behind.

One of the things I’ve always loved is the story of Dream and Calliope creating Orpheus. In The Sandman, Dream technically could have returned Eurydice to his son—but doing so would have violated every code he lives by and ignited divine infighting and war. And ultimately, that fight was never Dream’s. It was Orpheus’s.

Orpheus asking his father to fix what he lost has always struck me as childish—less about love, more about unresolved power and entitlement. There’s a reason I didn’t include that aspect here.

I also wanted to reframe the snake.

Snakes are often given a bad reputation, but in my culture they represent strength, fertility, and the connection between realms. To make the snake purely evil never made sense to me. In this version, the snake is Gaia—protecting Eurydice, not harming her.

Gaia has watched Zeus take women without their consent again and again. This time, she intervenes. Death is not punishment here; it is removal. Protection. A chance.

With Hades and Persephone, Eurydice has that chance.

The version of Hades and Persephone I draw from is inspired by Lore Olympus: a relationship rooted in devotion, patience, and trust. Hades could have made the decision himself—but instead, he defers to Persephone, because he understands that love is proven not through control, but through trust.

That trust is the test Orpheus fails.

In almost every version of this myth, Orpheus never makes it out with Eurydice. Something always compels him to turn around—to doubt her, to doubt himself, to doubt love. That repetition raises the question: Was it ever true love at all?

This poem is my attempt to answer that—by giving Eurydice her own truth.

She trusted.
She loved.
She stayed.

The gods were not cruel.

He was simply not ready. - Evy Gonzalez Ronceria

Mio

(In this piece, the mirror becomes a gallery. Mío is an act of self-curation — a quiet defiance against every gaze that once claimed ownership. What was once painted for others is now sacred, deliberate, and hers alone.)

———————-

Me maquillo
con una paz.

Respiro profundo,
tocando mi labial,
sabiendo que ninguno
me la va a quitar.

Esto es pa’ mí.
Todo para mí.

Soy una obra de arte.
He esperado tanto tiempo
para ponerte en exhibición,
sin temor, sin pensar
en los demás.

Sin miedo de que algún hombre
vuelva a posar sus manos
sobre tus lindas pinturas.

Ya no.
Todo esto.

Todo lo pinto para mí.
Y nadie me lo quitará sino yo.

English (translation / companion version)

I paint my face
in peace.

I breathe deep,
fingers on my lipstick,
knowing no one
can take this from me.

This is for me.
All of it, for me.

I am a work of art.
I’ve waited so long
to put you on display,
without fear, without thought
of anyone else.

No longer afraid
that some man will reach
for your lovely paintings.

No more.
All of it—
I paint it for me.

And no one will take it away
but me.

Here Come The Falls

She awakens in a vice of shadow and air—her breath twisted, lifted, siphoned away by the unseen.

In the dark there is nothing. Yet she knows this nothing: a weight settling over her like a blanket she never asked for—warm, steady, looming.

A tear slides across her cheek as her fists curl, straining against an invisible bind. The weight holds fast, pressing with an intent older than her name.

“Move.”

A gasp escapes her. The grip loosens. She spills free of its intangible limbs, her skin alight with a thousand needlepoints of pain. Her palms trace slow, soothing circles over her arms and legs. Sitting up, she takes in the black—thick, endless—until her gaze drops to her feet.

Just beyond the mattress, her Italian Greyhound stands rigid, barking soundlessly—at her.

Before her hand could reach him, he bolted into the abyss. Her eyes fixed on the direction he ran, and with a sinking feeling she began to follow. Suddenly she tripped down invisible steps and gasped. Her feet caught on ground that felt wet, almost breathing.

As her eyes adjusted, all she could see and feel was a dark, warm brown hue surrounding her, a beat thrumming within and through her body—almost celestial.

Little by little she walked, sinking into some places, falling through others—sand or water, she couldn’t tell. It felt like the sands of time—or something. She didn’t know, couldn’t understand. Familiarity and fear pressed against her, threaded with calm.

She felt like water pouring into a plastic cup, recalling a drink poured into his hand. How she wished she could pour herself as gently into his fingers, touch his fingers—she’s touching his fingers…

Touching his fingers… everything stills.

“Close your eyes.”

She closes her eyes. The room vibrates, singing in a language only familiar to her in REM. The aurora borealis shifts in constant waves, and within its movement she sees his visage. Through the watery sands she walks to him.

She says nothing. Here exists only this space—the emotions, the past and present, the histories, the finite and infinite. She holds him close, giving and absorbing in a lovely loop, mending and sewing shut the little pieces left open long ago.

As she continues to enmesh with him, their bodies becoming one, she feels this: home.

“I’m home.”

A crack. Her eyes open. She sees herself as a child outside a glass house, nose bloodied. Her head lifts from his chest.

He’s gone. She runs, the crack widening as water begins to fall from above and rise around her, locking her in. Darkness consumes her as the glass shatters and cold liquid floods in, swallowing her at the pace of a typhoon. She chokes, drowning, swallowing the flood. Darkness floods her eyes, liquid filling her ears and lungs. Nothing can hear the suffocated…

Sound.

Sound.

The sound of a bark. Jasper’s bark. A gasp escapes her.

Her eyes flutter. She mutters in pain, jaw loosening as she spills to her side. Her palms trace slow, soothing circles over her arms and legs, cradling herself.

Slowly sitting up, she looks at her reflection in the dark window, though no reflection truly looks back. She gathers herself in her arms as if holding another body. A whimper slips out, soft and breaking, before she whispers—

“Oh… I miss who you were, before I knew.”

Cenizas

Donde hubo fuego, cenizas quedan
¿De cenizas se puede hacer fuego?
Hm.
No.
Pero de ellas puedo dibujar
La memoria.
El recuerdo.
En esos grises, negros y blancos,
Sin perturbar,
Hubo una llama ardiente
Que daba calor,
Que daba luz,
Que alumbraba alguna vez
Esto que llamábamos hogar.
La memoria es lo que quema,
Y sin darnos cuenta,
A veces,
Nos quemamos.

Oigo tus palabras
Y nado en tu mar de letras.
Me envuelvo en el sargazo de tu voz
Y me recuerdo; me hago recordar
De ese instante,
De tu cara pálida y cansada,
Pero sonriente,
Diciéndome mil y mil cosas…
Eres una grabación en mi mente.
Y en la soledad
Más oscura,
Primaré “play”.

El tiempo sigue.
Todo es tiempo.
Amaré a otros.
Pero lo que vi en tus ojos al mirarme,
Jamás se replicará
Ni en dibujos de cenizas.

Entre Parentesis

Cuando me abrazas (when you hold me)
Sin pensarlo dos veces (without thinking twice)
Pongo mi cabeza debajo de la tuya (I put my head beneath yours)
Tratando de oír tus pensamientos (trying to hear your thoughts)
Pero el pálpito de tu corazón (but the beating of your heart)
Ahoga el sonido (drowns out the sound)
Y mis oídos quedan hipnotizados (and my ears are hypnotized)
Por el ritmo sincopado (by the syncopated rhythm)

Empiezo a sentirme somnolienta (I start to feel drowsy)
Y sacudo mi cabeza (and I shake my head)
No quiero hundirme en tus brazos (I don't want to sink into your arms)
Pero
Sin quererlo, lo hago (without meaning to, I do)
Y en tu camisa de rayitas me cuelgo (and I hang onto your pinstripe shirt for dear life)
Mientras caigo (as I fall)
Digo palabras amortiguadas (I say in muffled tones)
‘Corazoncito lindo, solo tú sabrás cuánto he amado yo a este man en las palabras que él—’

—“What’s that, babe?”—
“Nothing”.
‘En palabras que él nunca entenderá.’

Exhaust

I stepped outside with my dog and began to put her coat and leash on one freezing Saturday morning. My downstairs neighbor was nestled in a broken-down grey Hyundai Elantra, attempting to fix it for the umpteenth time. Exhaust fumes pumped out from the rear and filled the air, and I said with a bit of a chuckle under my breath, “You know, it would be really funny if he was trying to kill me with all these fumes.”

Then, almost with perfect timing, his car kind of sputtered and spit out more fumes. My dog moved away from the tailpipe, but I stayed in my mind and started coughing, thinking, “Hmm, honestly, if this car were more perfectly placed—like IN the garage and not out here—this would be good enough to knock us both out. Quite frankly, this fossil fuel I’m ingesting is impressive. I could literally feel myself slowly going here. Wow.”

The more the fumes filled the air—like a smoke machine bought for a kid’s sweet sixteen in the late ’80s—the more I envisioned these weird scenarios in my head with this death trap of a car.
..Like really, if my neighbor wanted to… he could SAW this entire thing. Like…

————

I'm trapped in this little boxed room with a little TV set cleverly placed in said boxed room, which is filling with noxious gases because, of course, the damn fucking car is there.

I go to the car and see the keys aren’t there. And it won’t turn off! All the while, this dark, dank-ass room is filling up with gas, and it smells rank as shit. I turn around, and through the smoke I see some janky, large-ass clown shoes, and I begin to shake in fear. Suddenly, the TV turns on and he shows up with a silly Jigsaw mask and his hoodie on, smoking his blunt:
“I want to play a game.”

I’m panicked and annoyed.
“You see my car? It’s on, and the air is filling with the exhaust. Alright, over there—you see that? It’s a knife. And to the left of it? It’s a dead clown, and in his stomach there’s a key to turn off the car. You got about a minute… if you don’t get it, the room will fill with exhaust fumes and you’ll die for real. But if you get it—congrats! The car turns off, you live to see another day, and I may just save you some of this blunt...”

As he takes another puff, I freak out and panic, coughing frantically, because I realize the room has no doors and no windows, and I’m stuck with a bloated dead clown. My phobia really starts setting in—hard.

“Um, how well did you plan this, my guy? I mean, truly—how well did you think this through?”

He blows out smoke and kind of Suspicious Fry.gif’s me, looks around, and says,
“I think pretty fucking well, if I do say so myself. Let’s begin our game.”

My eyes begin to dart around frantically as beads of sweat flow from my brow to my cheeks.
“NO! NOOOoo HOo—HOw do I get out of the roo—YOU ASS—THERE ARE NO DOORS HERE!!!”

And that’s when he would just drop everything, unmask, and de-blunt.
“What? cough… ahhh, shiiitt… I only figured it up to the dead clown part. My fault—hold on...”

And then the minute is up because like—one, he would forget to stop the game and take too long to figure out how to get me out, and two, I have the gusto to open up a dead body, but a CLOWN? A CLOWNNN? NO! NOO-UH!

———-

I began to laugh and felt a little dizzy. Still in the fog, my dog stared at me from a distance, wondering if I truly had a death wish by how close I was standing to the tailpipe of the Hyundai—and at this point, so did my neighbor, who had been trying to get my attention by knocking on the glass and waving his hand in a “WTF” manner.

As I slowly took in the full scope of the ambience, I realized the outside of the house had kind of disappeared into fumes, and only we and the car existed. And in this situation, the fog would be kind of like an “ohhh, mysterious, kind of cool, kind of romantic” type of setting—for a novel, a movie, a Lifetime special—but no, not here. This was puhretty bad. I was sucking in this air for a while, straight from the pipe like I was begging for the sweet release of death or something...

And maybe I was. I don’t know.
I’ve struggled with suicidal ideations most of my life, since childhood. And although many of my ideations are more along the lines of “Help me, I want to hang from the door,” or “Anna Karenina, NOW,” standing near a tailpipe and comedically thinking of ways to end it definitely pales in comparison to wanting to stand along the edge of the tracks and throw myself in front of whatever train, making some poor unfortunate soul late to whatever appointment they had.

That desire, that burn, that ache... was painful. And sometimes still can be.

However, those little comedic thoughts—albeit a definite sign that I am exhausted (no pun intended) of being on this timeline—are so much more welcome than what I would see for so long in my life before.

It’s more digestible.

Maybe not as digestible as fossil fuel, but hey—some of us will take even the smallest tastes of death in whatever way we can get it.

But now I live out of spite.
I live in spite of death.

In spite of me.

El Cuarto Rojo

La inseguridad 

Es más difícil 

Pensar que todo este tiempo

Que pasamos

Cultivando 

Una comodidad 

Tierna lealtad 

Cuando en ti confie

Mi dolor

Mi historia

Mi piel

Que en ti por fin pudo encontrar

Su modo de callar

Pudo encontrar

Encanto…

Fui solo un hueco

Para llenar

Una conquista 

Ay pues…

Que pesar.

Que peso

Que me creo

En esta mente

Cuando todo está bien

Cuando todo está calmado 

La inseguridad me dice

Lo que muchas verdades

Me han dicho.

Muchas veces

La costumbre 

Es difícil de sacudir.

Más dicficl

Que el saber lo que tengo

El saber

Lo que soy.

Lo que veo en el espejo

Lo que siento en mis fibras

Si disliza por pequeñas voces

Detras de una cortina

En un cuarto rojo

Y cierro mis ojos, como si apagar las les apagara el sonido.

Les apagara la memoria.

Yo se lo que tengo

Yo se lo que tengo…

Abro los ojos.

Y en esos momentos

Es cuando más me detesto.

Maracuya

Coquetear 

No me nace tan fácil

Como un beso.

Como hacer una taza de té

Hacerte un plato de arroz con pollito

O envolverte en mis piernas,

Reirme contigo.

Mimar 

no me nace tan facil

Cómo cogerte de la mano

Escuchar tus problemas

Sonreir por verte la cara

Desear morderte, tomarte,aguantarte 

Hasta donde pueda.

(Y quedarme con las ganas de bailar contigo a a ver si de verdad puedes)

Ternura 

no me nace fácil

Pero contigo si se

Que algo me nace

De tratarte suavemente.

Me siento en mi

Cuando estoy con ti

La calma

Que me deja revolcarme

Contigo.

Quiero que 

Me beses

Me muerdas

Me amarres

Me lleves

Al punto

Que me olvide

De mi misma

Que nos volvamos

Añicos

Enmarañados entre pieles 

Y

Falta de pudor.

Que nos tratemos

Suave

Cuidandonos donde

Antes nadie nos haya cuidado

Entiendonos

Donde antes nadie

Nos haya podido 

Coger el tiro.

Hay cosas 

Que no me nacen

Tan facil

Pero por ti

Cariño…

Me inclinaria

Suavemente

Revelando

Lo que nace

De mi cuerpo

De mi alma.

Para ti.

Solo prueba de lo más profundo

De mis labios

Y veras.

Khaled

Alma de mi alma

Khaled

Su nombre significaba

Immortal

Y eso es la transición no?

Cuando su piel tocó a la madre.

Cuando su cuerpo fue entregado

A nuestra madre

Quillo en esta muestra de odio

Ha recibido tantos de sus hijos

Sin querer

En multitudes

De rios carmesi

Se mezclan con sus lágrimas de lluvia

con su piel hecha de tierra y mar

Con su cabello hecho de cielo 

Y estrellas

Que se estrechan y se conectan

Al infinito

Una paz 

Qué encuentras

Ya en el rostro

De el difunto

Khaled

Una paz

Que debio tenir

No robada

Y hecada 

Hacia el infinito

Hacia su immortal

Khaled

Alma de mi alma

Pandora

Pongo todo separado (I place everything in separately)

En su tiempo plazo (In term and time)

En espacios callados (in its quiet spaces)

Donde pueda concentrarme (where I can concentrate)

Donde no puedan dañarme (Where I cannot harm myself)

O (or)

Donde no puedan dañarte (Where they cannot harm you)

Danar (harm)

La imagen (the image)

O la realidad  (or the reality)

El espejismo (the mirage)

No lo se. (I don’t know)

Solo se (what I do know)

Que hay una intensa (is that there is this intense)

Necesidad (need)

De proteger (To protect)

Protegerte (Protect you)

Protegerme (Protect me)

De mi (from me)

Asi que (So)

A (get to)

Prender candelas (turning on the candles)

Apagar mis ojos (turning off my eyes)

Y mirar acia Chia (and turning onto Chia)

Que me guie (that she guide me)

Que me muestre (that she show me)

Donde poner (where to lay)

Todos estos divinos cofres (all these divine safes)

En sus divinos (in their divine)

Sepulchres (sepulchers)

Mama (mother)

(Reso yo) (I Pray)

Que nada salga (may nothing leave)

De su debido plazo (from this sacred place)

Que todo quede en su calma (may it all stay in its calm)

Que todo descanse en su paz (may it all rest in its peace)

En su memoria (in its memory)

Y que quede donde tenga que (and where it needs to)

Quedar. (stay)

Ayo…

Y (and)

Alli. (There)

La siento (I feel)

Una pertubiensa (I disturbance)

Como estrellas pequenas (Like little stars)

Cayendo por los lados (falling from the side)

De mi ojo (From my eye)

Perezoso izquierdo.(The left, the lazy)

Es ella. (The lazy)

Pandora

Que se guía por la luz (She is guided by the light)

De la luna (Of the moon)

Buscando (searching)

Lo divino (the divine)

Que yo escondi.( that I have hidden)

Tan curiosa (how curious)

La maldita sea (the damned)

Maldita sea (damn the day)

El día en que te conocí. (in which i met her)

The Spoils

Her lips taste 

Sour

The skin above her right rib 

Bruised

The blackness of her roots grow

White

And she seems 

Expired.

“Not really”

She says.

“I’m just

Tired.

Of these overdrawn carriages and falseness

The constant force of societal bliss.

Ha. 

Is this is what I have missed?”

She says

As

Her body is left to

Spoil.

Cronos

He was told

He was destined to be overcome

By his children

So instead of embracing

Those ugly darlings

He consumed every single one.

If they stayed inside

-He said to himself-

He would have control

He would be able to protect the ones around him

From the burdens of himself.

No one would know what he held inside.

Oh, but those ugly darlings

Kept boring into his world

And that poor man, he just kept eating

Like an involuntary glutton

Until his body was too pregnant with them.

 One day,

Without even a small warning

One ugly darling punched their fist through his mouth

Knocking his teeth

Breaking his jaw open so wide

He was dislodged.

A rapid of them fell out of him

With such a force

That the people he so tried to protect

Were now made to take the hit

Of all that he had inside

He watched

As they drowned in his miasma.

And he could no longer do anything to stop it.

He was told

He was destined to be overcome

By his children.

And there he laid

The maker of his own destiny

Had lost control again.

Looking at the mess he made

He felt embarrassed 

By the pain he had caused

Yet still, he knew himself

It was only a matter of time.

Looking down at his hand

He stared at the shriveled darling

Slipping through his fingers

And put whatever was left of it

In his mouth.