“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.”

“bitch, when the devil stares at you, square up, spit back!”

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”

 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”

People without money cope better than people with money on any given day especially when loss is afoot. I stole my loan from Temple university that was supposed to be for my grad program with no intention of ever paying it back or apologizing for my sudden departure. Social workers aree abused. I left the job that had poached me, took six weeks off, flew to Colorado to console my also deteriorating best friend, planned to move there but begrudgingly flew back to my old life and job. I took six weeks first.

“Commence devolvement!”

I was going to let myself fall deep, deep as I could go. I wore my magician gown and let my sneer spread in the mirror. Twirling for the mirror. For six weeks, I charmed her with my incantations and roses at the nightstand. My house was lit with alternating black and white votives and classical music, tarot decks and a budding synopsis that was plainly wrong but really I’m the fairest thing that ever happened to you. I know because I once saw the whole thing.  You could say I asked for it.

“God,” I began.

I was centered in sigil. My spine was straight, although I usually slouch. I usually admonish myself for taking up too much space on my couch; even alone, even privately, I shrink. This evening was different. I felt propped by something and sitting up, breathing softly, not nervous and with intention. The gasping I am used to transmuted into long, deep inhales; long, thrumming exhales. That night even the callous on my palm where I lay the plastic straw I can’t let go of, can’t stop twiddling as I walk around the city, felt soft.  It felt healed and my hands smelled like cherry blossom from the lotion I rubbed on my knees as I took care of myself, my needs, for once. Once a day, I drink water and rest. Once a day, I pause to smell a honeysuckle. Once in a while, I cease compulsion to drop the straw, pet a dog, move on.

I was melting; suffused with the moonstone resting on my lap, becoming waxing crescent. I was becoming spring. Dust around me tickled my shoulders to remind me: We are here to help you breathe. I immediately became breath. The room rocked like a cradle and I was swathed in her gentle nightlight. I was enveloped. Call the dust what you want, the noise what you want: dirt, fantasy, demons, guides, saints, Lilith and her coven (I light candles to all kinds), they were there that night using my forearms, using my hands, using my throat to sing. My diaphragm rose and fell with ease. God. I asked for breath. Breathe. I became breath. I became nestled in large silk strands.

“God,” I waited and then started again.

I let the fire in my chest build with each name I said until I could feel the slow burning rise to full flame. I waited until I could feel the full pounding of the floor dropping out, until I was hovering in air, until I was on the cloud. It’s the pyre I’ve been waiting for: the charred ribs, the suckled breasts, the ghosts that waft out of the ropes. I waited until I knew who to ask for; until I heard someone say it.

God,” I started again, and let it be known I was not in fear, I was not shaking, I was not anxious. “Whose answered prayer am I?”

There is no trepidation. You only enter with one affirmation. You only enter with perfect love and perfect trust or you do not enter us. I waited. I waited. And though the time crippled me, I still waited for the door to open and I then I rushed.

“the magician”

It didn’t start in New Orleans but it followed me home. Two of them: black and white. And the dreams of them were awful. One I choked and one I yelled at. You can’t say for certain who you are, or were, in a past life. You can’t say anything for certain. That’s what I told the psychiatrist. He said

“It sounds confusing.”
No one ever held me anywhere for long. I was breaking out of everything; talking myself in and out of prison. I had nothing to do with the two witches’ fight. My brother warned me as a child

“You can’t be so trusting, lion, people will hurt you.”
I was a sweet milky flower.
“Don’t be so naive.”
I am a walking torch.
“You’ve opened too many portals.”
I was doomed.
When the first witch came, I was sleeping in bed with a friend in a New Orleans hotel room. I felt her enter before I had the vision. Me, sitting up and my mouth suddenly blowing black smoke that turned into bats.

I told her, “I can’t help you, you’re already dead.”
Then she approached in her form: old and white and I grabbed her by the neck and choked her. I woke up terrified to tell my friend my dream. I slept unsoundly. I had seen my face in a mirror pouring black bats. There was no mirror on the dresser in front of me.
When the black witch came, she was a little mad but I wasn’t sure why. I was sleeping in my bed. It was around Valentine’s Day, 2018. The same friend was there in my bed, we are close, like sisters. The black witch came and cornered me in my own bathroom. I realize now, we were confused. I was yelling at her. She was yelling at me. Sometimes I just saw names. Lists of names. Google found a family dead in the midwest with those names. A black family. I also realize now I didn’t look in the mirror.
“I can’t help you, you’re already dead.”
They always show me The High Priestess and the other dream I wore a bat on my wrist.
“Be careful with that,” a strange woman said to me. “I serve Lucifer.”

In the dream, we were underground. I was attending “witch school.” A woman who shared my same birthday told me we talk with our fingers like this and she held them up and twisted them, the way I had done my whole life with the straw. You were there, and this was when I was dead set on meeting your eye. You were talking to two black women and frowning and I was talking to two white women.
I should have never been in the middle of the war. I’m neutral. I’m not from here but they both found me and both begged to tell their stories. One night, I snapped
“And you think it’s ok to disguise yourselves as ONE child that follows me everywhere and whisper your fucking story while I am trying to keep it together?!”
We had covered the mirrors. I don’t know what the fuck has happened to me. That’s where I should have started.
I calmly tell my therapist, “I am ready for hypnosis.”

“the act of naming things”

What I should have told the first psychiatrist is that I had been writing the Valentine’s Day story when I choked on the cherry pit. She had been grinding up seeds to make cyanide to place in the cupcakes but she had also placed thumbtacks in the batter. One way or another, she would prove her might. She trusted her man’s gluttony. The cyanide was devilish simply to prove that women are mechanics too. Women research too. Women design traps too.  I didn’t tell him that, scared of being dismissed, labeled histrionic, fantastic, childish and I wish I had explained it was the synchronicity that was getting to me. It wasn’t just the difficulty swallowing but the fact that I had never been heard. That the song titles changed when I had the same thought. That the electronics began crashing around me, in buildings, at home. The time in Colorado when the blue eyed woman came to pull me out of my body during a nap. It wasn’t just the thought of someone and then they pop up but the way the signs start flashing the same things. It wasn’t just the phone listening, it was the way the oven timer went off. The way I awoke at 3:33 am nightly. The way everyone who entered said my place was “vibrating.” The way pictures fell off the wall. The way I awoke in the middle of the night, paralyzed hearing my father’s voice before he had his heart attack. It was the psychics and the readings and the time I woke up in the living room facing something that looked like my dead brother, glowing white and face stretched like a crocodile, and he was pointing to a painting of a tree he made long ago.

Trust no one, Cat.

Next thing I know I am desperately crawling back to bed, screaming feeling something tear at my legs. Or the little boy I hugged. Or the little girl that chases me.
No one believes anything as much as you do and no one was there to see the apparitions. I take solace in history because witnesses have existed before my long period of loneliness. My partner once, during a nap, tried to wake me. He said I was twitching, moaning, like I was being tortured. When he shook my shoulders, I awoke and screamed in his face causing him to scream.

“You were having a nightmare!”
“Well, you scared me!”

My men say I writhe, talk in my sleep. They’ve never seen me conversing in the living room but they’ve never really stuck around either. My men heard me in my sleep. My men heard me in my privacy.

I did see a therapist. Regularly. She knew about the men, confusion, lists, playlists, fantasy, creative process but I had abandoned her during my most manic stage. For three months, I was on my own. It was during that time I began to explore the benefits of necromancy without a guide and black magic. I used to light the whole apartment with candles and turn off all the lights, sit at the altar facing the front door and begin to draw it with my fingers. It was a vision I was crafting. Me and a man in the woods with a wall separating us and to get by I crafted a giant spell that I would wrap around Philadelphia.
I began to leave things in parks, buried in the dirt. My rose of jericho shell, a crystal, two crystals, a lucky penny. I walked those streets daily dropping totems, asking for favor, offering sacrifrice.
“Your house is haunted because you opened tons of portals.”
“Yes.”
I knew I had haunted my own house but it didn’t make it less terrifying. The reader eyed me.
“You have the power to close them.”
I didn’t tell my therapist everything it’s true. The night I drew the front door spell was the first time my own words entranced me. Cast a net, catch a fish. Cast a bigger net, catch the ocean.
“Bite your tongue until bleeds,” the reader told me. “You are used to treachery but these are modern times. We are no longer in treacherous times.”
This city owes me.

“datura moon”

She did not brandish anything. I knew her cronies were here and I began to feel the net lift slightly, the branch moan. A white and gray beast approached and stood on hind legs scratching my back as I moved from her. This time I felt it. Despite all my layers, I felt her claws dig slightly as the net raised. It was five thirty, snowing lightly, black as hell and I was hanging from a tree. Cackling. Her friends laughed somewhere I couldn’t see; not hidden, but obscured from me.
“You remember?”
I was eight feet in the air moving to nine feet. Not out of reach but higher, and needed to get to the top of the tree. Even still, I was freezing. This is usual.
“Yes.”
Compliant, obedient, supplicant, I understood stockholm syndrome now. Become the sycophant, the nodding doll, dance for your mistress now.
“It will go faster if you just say my name.”
And the one thing I didn’t know was her name.