Category: Uncategorized

this is fresh.

like when my cat’s claw gets stuck
in my fingertip or when I
bump my elbow on the armoire
he let me keep.
things only last for seconds unless
they are eternal like
God’s choir,
mass extinction,
our howls like bells
like doom
like fate.

 

I try to tell too many
that this has happened before but
never with the same
patterning; the cavern
patience that’s filled with
liminality   me in the
tub and dreaming.
I have no fear of the color
hazel or unmade beds
or the way you let your fingertip
trace my thigh’s Baphomet
 as you turn to me
and say 

this will never end.

 

I bet you never say a word.
I’ll grow to equatorial proportions
and bellow.
I have no fear of
mirrors, men,
mirages or monsters.
I have no fear of depth.
I have no fear of flight
or landing, heat
or frozen streams.
those talons.
those waves.
those headlights.
I have no fear of death.

you? you will know me
by my sudden strength:
silence and never seen
again the same way.


“the red book (revisited)”

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 I felt her thin fingers caress my neck, leaving me tingling.

 

(two sentence horror stories, pt 1)

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“don’t initiate with ghosts, you’re not there yet.”
 that’s what the last reader said to me. it was far too late, I told her and i disavowed my blame while continuing to charm her.
tituba
 when you need help, you’ll learn to pick a lock to break into the nearest garden; hide out, pick peppers, bide your time in silence. I  watched crickets devour entire leaves in my stillness 

tituba
 they told me to keep quiet. I needed guidance, trusted no one, watched my life melt like paper walls on fire.
tituba
 everyone implored me not to do it and I nodded but I had to. twelve of them beside me, one chasing me and I knew myself so well. I’m laughing because everyone warned against it. I implore you not to do black magic without a guide.
I am humbled.
 I am humbled.

stop and bow to silence.
I’m laughing, 75,000 feet under the sea and smiling. all you need is one current to ride and I will find it.
“excuse me, witches, I have possibly forgotten something and must turn back.”
don’t you turn back Catarina you won’t make it.

“your honor, if I knew the bitch was going back for her brother, we would have started with the larynx.”

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she talked to me all day
 in riddles and I welcomed
 her gentle incursion,
 the way she enunciated certain
 things and said y’all
 and quite frankly charmed
 while armed    broke men with a
 chain or a flash of knee
or surreptitious motive
 and I held steady
 with one open eye
 and crossed arms
 and no plan to move
 in either direction
 when she asked if I still
 favored her.

not a single person in this town
 knew her and not many
 elsewhere.
 if it were up to her,
 she said,
 she’d disappear without a trace
 into the ocean
 or a foreign life
 leaving a legacy of
 riddles and ghosts that
favored her but not one
 in a bed, or
 several chained in a
yard not able
 to break through the
bushes to door.
 yes, I still favor you.

wore a veil,
 wore a shrouded smirk and
 moved wide but
 never wanted anyone to
 recognize her face.
 in the sun,
 became a mist
 wafting wearily
 through rows of houses,
 blocks and noting
 trash, and noting straws,
 noting needles,
 and a penchant for
heart.
 in the dark,
 a trace of flame
 from distant candle but
 never here.
 still,

 ok, howl.
 if you placed her in a cage
 full of rocks and
 sunk her to the bottom of
the mariana trench with enough oxygen
to last her the swim back up,
 she’d find every school,
 hold the middle,
 let the sides be eaten in
 her disguise,
 ride their backs back up,
 wash up on a dolphin
 at your feet, half dead,
 blue, freezing and with an unctuous
 grin just to prove
you still favor her.

“Saturn in Scorpio” or “how guys save me in their phone, reversed”

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My second favorite thing about mania were the playlists.

 “You talk about Spotify more than anyone I have ever met. You should be paid for how often you casually drop that app into conversation. It’s free marketing.”

 I was on a first date with a woman who looked and acted just like me and I wanted to peel my skin and run but I continued. We were both high and had been in psych hospitals and were hot and were reviewing our psychosis. There is no reality.

 “I still use Spotify all of the time.”

 She was giggling and telling me just got out of a relationship with an older man that she met right after her psychosis and realized she actually loved women. This is an illusion.

 “I haven’t fully recovered.”

 She nodded and continued to smoke her vape. I wanted to tear her clothes off and have hours of sex with her but did not value her as a person. She was incredibly crazy. It was the most misogynistic thought I ever had.

 “I’ll call you.”

 That was the first time I ghosted a woman. I felt my dick grow. I should have fucked her to see what it would be like to fuck myself but I was pretty used to that already. I walked home with my earbuds in and let the wave of dissociation begin. An old favorite: electronic, repetitive and I was back in the same harrowing fairy tale. Moving like a slow squall, I let the synthesis approach and blow me. Grounded, it couldn’t move me but further along in the walk towards home.  Getting used to things requires wading in freezing water for a bit. Three stories at once, usually, or vacillating between two to land on a new neutral. I walked like that; in and out of all worlds and still able to say “excuse me” and pass people, offer time, directions, step out of the way of ant hills.

 Run.
 I had been hearing that in my head for years.
 Run.
 It would come so suddenly like that.
 Run.
 I was supposed to be monitoring how it felt when it listened to music.
Like everything I’ve ever loved coming back to me.
 Adrenaline, crescendo, confusion, grandiosity, illusion. My heartbeat usually pulsed. I twisted the straw. My body hurt more from the music than anything. Electricity radiated around me, buzzing, was I losing my hearing? I became frightened of electricity all the while spinning my spoon inside of it, directing it, moving it, asking it for favor. The music moved me to walk for miles.

 Run.
 I was humbled by the strangeness of my life. And out loud, I said

 “Ok! Where?! God damn!”

 And I smiled at a child that had witnessed this.  I made amends. i smiled the entire walk home at any other passing child to show them I was completely aware of my surroundings and there are safe spaces left in this world after all. 

“The story about the playlists”

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 You could not convince me I was not a ghost amongst ghosts. Everywhere I went there they were and I too floated through rooms.

 “This is purgatory.”

 You could only convince me if you said yes. If you agreed with me, then I would believe you. The only way to reality test something like that is to say yes. No one on Earth wanted to admit this was purgatory. No one felt clean enough to dive into the lake. I was ready to jump off the bridge when she came. I told no one of our game. She said her name was Dana.

 “That’s not your name.”

 She made me speak in a southern drawl and take off all my clothes. Sometimes I had to throw coins or other objects on the floor. She liked toffee and I bought it for her. But now

 “Tell me your name.”

 I was naked in the yellow room. I was facing the mirror then ceiling.
 “My name is Dana.”

 “Tell me your real name.”
 She made me crawl on hands and knees naked.
 “You want to know about your boyfriend?” she laughed.

 “Tell me your name.”
 “But you always ask about your boyfriend. Oh he sure does l i k e you. Too bad he’ll never be your boyfriend.”
 I am crazy.
 I am crazy.
 I am crazy.
 I am crazy.
“You like g a m e s don’t you Catarina?”

“the act of naming things”

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