Walking isn’t peaceful anymore. Each step is a syllable marching forward through some remembered story. It feels like an addiction, this retelling. It’s how I feel when someone describes a particularly flavorful beer or a perfectly balanced whiskey. After months of blissful indifference I want it, suddenly and immediately, transfused and coursing through my veins. Even though I know, I know, that it will pull me apart me from the inside out, chomping at the liver and love I’ve been working so hard to heal.
step, step, step.
In these old stories I am a cursed villain or a stumbling idiot. A naive child or a crook caught red-handed. In more than one, the village laughs with mocking disdain that I, mistakenly, take for sincere glee.
ha, ha, ha.
It is not until later, until the inevitable dissection, that I realize my error.
My ignorance and my mistakes—they are the things I wish to flush from my system. But the toxic slurry of loathing I am pumping in to take its place kills indiscriminately. It might rid me of my shame, but is it worth my softness?
Regardless,
for fear of waking Memory, I tread lightly.
writing
Storied Past // Notes on Moths
(TW: mention of rape)
We sat in a coffee shop and I could feel my eyes wide in my sockets. The leather chair beneath my body was tucked into a windowed corner, overlooking the edge of campus. Concrete steps and brutalist architecture surrounded us. We sat in contrast to the harsh angles and hard surfaces: bleeding warmth amidst a starkly frigid landscape.
She told me the latest story: how she had gotten into a car accident that weekend. How her clunker car was finally totaled. She continued on, telling me about her bike ride to work that morning. How she fell, yet again, down the slick, grassy hill outside the dining hall. She raised her hands to show off the road rash: red gouges in her pale skin.
“I’m so sorry that happened,” I whispered. “I’m so glad you’re okay.” She brushed it off, bravely. I admired her for that—the bravery. Did she ask me about my life then? I don’t remember. But inevitably the time came for us to go our separate ways and I wished her well, uttering a silent prayer as I watched her leave.
. . .
Was I the opposite of a fair-weather friend?
. . .
I kept suggesting that she write a book, to tell the world all the things she was telling me. Her life truly seemed to be one unbelievable event after another, walking some line between adventure and insanity. When I said that to her, though, I can’t remember: did her expression falter? Did she change the subject? In those moments, what did I fail to see?
. . .
Months prior, a mutual friend had introduced us. He said she needed some female friends to ‘love on her.’ That was one of those phrases we threw around at the time. As in, ‘to heap love upon someone.’ Anyway, we took her in as if she were some sort of stray animal in need of a home. There was backstory that I didn’t know about until later, yet my little ministry-molded heart was drawn to her like a moth to a flame.
Early on in this new friendship, a few of us got a call. It was late and we all had class in the morning, but she needed help. There was alcohol involved, without a doubt. Possibly other substances as well. We drove across campus under the stars. The car was left to idle illegally in the parking lot, risking the ever-vigilant tow trucks, as a foot chase ensued. After we knocked on her door she somehow snuck past us off a balcony.
. . .
Or, at least I think that’s how it all went down. I don’t mean to mix the details—but has been over eight years since that night and these events. Those memories sit strangely in my sleep-deprived memory. But also, I have to remind myself: it was hard to keep all the details straight, even then.
. . .
In the days that followed, we were informed that this binge was prompted by a traumatic event. She confided in us that she had been raped. Understandably, she did not want to go to the police or file charges. I scrambled to do what research I could for her, in case she changed her mind. I made a visit to the women’s center on her anonymous behalf, making time between classes. From my meager savings I bought her a pregnancy test, just in case.
With her consent, I left the pregnancy test outside of her door. Hours later she informed us that it was positive: she was pregnant. Presumably with the child of her rapist. This led to a wider circle of people involved in the frenzy. Potential adoptive parents and scheduled doctor’s appointments. Research and conversations. All the while, the semester continued on.
Against the guidance of our ministry leader, she made an appointment with Planned Parenthood. The matter was settled. After a while, the entire situation dropped from our minds.
Well, as much as something like that could be forgotten, I suppose.
. . .
That was all at the beginning. That was before the late-night darts in my bedroom or the dress shopping. That was before the talks of fruit dehydration and long before the texts from her roommates or the calls from the rehab.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The summer after she graduated, I received a call from her. I was driving my little blue Corolla and she was on speaker phone. She told me about her summer. About some volunteer work she had been doing at a hospital involving legal aid. She told me about this child she was helping in an abuse case. She built up the story with gut-wrenching detail. She described this feeling she had that things just ‘weren’t quite right’ with the case, or with the child’s guardians. She decided to sneak the child out of the hospital to safety. It played out like a plot to some movie. Dodging personnel and feeling out the back exit. Driving off with the child and being chased by the police. Being accused of kidnapping. Luckily, she said, she got off scot-free because she made a deal with the police. They said that the charges would be dropped if she agreed to help the cops bust a criminal ring. So that’s what she did. And that’s why she hadn’t been returning calls or texts recently, she said. That’s why she bailed on a camping trip. It was top secret stuff so she really couldn’t say more, she said. But they got the bad guys because of her. She said.
I was driving down the road and that sense she described of things feeling ‘not quite right’—a sense that had been building below the surface for years—suddenly felt all too relatable. “Wow, that’s remarkable,” I said aloud, feeding her what she wanted. “Sounds like you need to add that to the book!” I said, desperately wanting to cling to the belief in my friend.
. . .
Wanting to see the best in people really does blind us to reality, doesn’t it?
. . .
Years later, after one final visit to her new post-college city, I was settled into a nannying job that I adored. The little one was napping and I was checking my phone. There were some odd texts. We hadn’t been in touch for a long time, but the messages were from two people claiming to be “her new roommates.” They had some questions as they were trying to piece some things together and “could we talk?”
A few of us involved in her life during college coordinated with these new roommates. As details were shared and information was swapped, the truth, or at least a sliver of it, had become obvious.
Journals and empty bottles in hand, the new roommates confronted her. Her mentor may have gotten involved too, if I remember correctly. She went off to rehab and I secondhand wished her well. I sent no silent prayers this time.
A week or so later I received a call. A rehab employee, pushed to the brink, was forced to break confidentiality agreements for the sake of the patient. “Can you corroborate any of this information?” he asked.
“I can,” I responded.
She was lying to everyone at rehab, it turns out.
She was lying to everyone, period.
Was it always that way? Was it ever a mixture?
Truth coated in lies? Or lies wrapped in truth?
Or was it always solidly deceit, through and through?
. . .
I just remembered: the conversation on the chairs in the campus coffee shop—that was when she told me about the cancer, not a car accident. Stage 4. Something rare and difficult to research. There was the possibility of an experimental treatment at a hospital in a nearby city.
“You’re taking this better than I expected,” she said. Had she wanted me to cry?
Is it worth going back to fix those details? The story I’m telling is not meant to be fiction, yet it remains riddled with it despite my best efforts.
. . .
I so desperately wanted it to be her, writing this into a book. Because I so desperately didn’t want to believe that she was lying to me. To my face. Over and over again.
And I didn’t want to face the fact that I had believed her. Over and over again. I twisted my brain into knots, justifying. Lying to myself, while she lied to me.
The worst part of it was, I genuinely thought I was helping.
She filled herself into every crevice I had in my over-scheduled life. Her roots wound their way in and I kept pouring the water, egging them on.
I was feeding the little moth-monster inside of her, drawn to the flames of attention and adoration. Drawn to a place where she could tell stories and someone would listen.
And she was feeding the little moth-monster inside of me, drawn to the flames of the ‘needy’ and ‘hurting’. Drawn to a place where I could feel important and useful.
Together, we created a whirlwind of drama and lies and so much hurting.
Or maybe, she created it, and I was simply sucked in.
Either way, after all this time, I’m still not sure:
Am I the only one with wings burned?
what to call it, besides the obvious
To say that we were young, dumb, and unprepared
Is to wave away a cobweb
Once an intricate tangle of emotion, religion, attachment,
now a dusty remnant in the corner.
Though let’s not overcomplicate it.
We were young and dumb and unprepared.
I was the victim, with natural desires, and insecurities: human.
I was the villain, with wordless expectations and an unfathomable well of resentment: monster.
I can be every character in the story, says my memory.
And you can choose whatever corrugated cutout you desire
to sit across from me as I chug another beer
and try to blur your scissored edges into flesh
as dinner gets cold, again.
But what can a drowning person do, if they never learned to swim?
Good intentions are not as buoyant as they seem.
I was suffocating in our small-town, thoughts-and-prayers, believers-in-Normal bubble.
I was tired of filling the shoes of a woman you didn’t know how to grieve.
I was twisted up too tightly, wrapped in the sheets of my unchecked mind, never having learned how to sleep in the bed by myself and suddenly thrust into it all with a stranger.
What can a drowning person do, if they never learned to swim?
Truthfully, I didn’t know there was a way to just float.
Always treading, moving, hiding, shifting
It’s addictive, until it isn’t.
We were the victims,
and the villains.
And I promise, I’ve moved on.
But you know how sometimes you look down and see that one scar that’s lingered after all this time? That one that still causes you think back and wonder what the lesson was?
You are that to me.
Unsolicited
You sliced through my skin
and injected your venom into
the red waters of my body.
Like roots thirsting
it was sucked up hungrily
transported, dispersed
It lingers still
To get feedback of what they think of you
Perhaps I shouldn’t have listened
But then, I never asked.
legacy
Is greatness carved
from the desire for greatness?
Contained within some weighty block,
neither eager nor patient, obstinately set.
Is it cobbled and collaged,
years of sediment mounting and pressing
slowly amassing to some requisite threshold
Is it birthed as if from nothing,
emerging in an ostentatious flare,
the product of greater forces, shifting
What I’m really asking is,
should I flit between the flowers
and lie amongst the grass
while I still can?
(sept. 2022)
dissociation
Consciousness peeling away from my body like sunburned skin;
Like dried glue and fidgety fingers, nervous from thoughts of what is to come
The crash of glasses and you,
Dinner simmering with a cloud of steam fogging the glass – an eyelid closing.
The walls that once felt drafty, now impenetrable.
There’s no use knocking now.
(09.12.22)
. . .
I had this feeling earlier today—at the thought of a memory, or an imagination—of my essence pulling away from myself, separating, hiding, floating, leaving. Watching this dissociation, this image of peeling apart came to me. This sensation I’ve felt many times, of being apart from my body when being in it is too much to handle.
I couldn’t decide, was this the feeling of splitting apart two things made of sameness, or removing a foreign substance from some base existence?
Then I couldn’t help but think of the nervous fidgeting that often pairs with these situations, in the waiting for the next time.
In the moments when a place with ways to see out and in, body and home, becomes foggy and clouded. Claustrophobic traps, hidden. Where no one can see your tears. Where outside hope feels unreachable and the promises beyond the glass, gone.
. . .
surface // the fiction of my flesh
You’re reading my body
The stories of my scars and the writing of my wrinkles
But what does my skin say of the longing in my soul and the aching of my heart
If the tears carved canyons in my cheeks, how deep would they be? Would you climb them?
If the darkened cavern of my skull was filled with black ink swirling, would it be big enough for two?
(09.05.22)
reminders
sidewalk chalk, smudged
a van like his
The trees with severed limbs
still sending sap
to parts no longer there.
The sweetness clumps at the edges,
it can’t turn back.
The leaves fall like rain —
the sound of forgetting,
drowned by the hum of cicadas.
The scent of summer lingers,
I plug my nose and return home.
(09.05.22)
an unplanned saturday
Today contains a yearning
and no balm to soothe it
The harsh light on this walk makes me feel lumpy;
the twice-stubbed toe, fumbling.
A tree covered with leaves like fans,
the intricacy of the patterns of the bark,
and the gentle breeze
almost overtook the moist oppressive heat
and the tree swing locked behind
the fence with gaps just large enough for glimpses.
Almost.
A snake slithered beneath the brush.
Does it know its tail still lingers on the sidewalk?
A child playing hide-and-seek
and a woman all too happy to play along
as they hide in plain sight.
Oh, to be so easily found.
The walk is over and I try another route
But as my eyes skim the final words
of a book both beautiful and sad
there is revealed yet another emptiness
looking up at me with hollow eyes
and open mouth.
I try another route
the pleasure ripples through my body
and a moan escapes.
I open my eyes,
eager,
but the dopamine dissipates
and the bed beside me
is an empty yawning chasm.
Today the sun is a bully,
harsh and taunting,
and the seduction of shopping,
with its a/c and endless supply of stuff
becomes all too alluring
as I sit in my indecision
unsure of what next to throw
into this insatiable hunger.
The emptiness rumbling within me
threatens like a thunderstorm,
a coiled tension with no release,
no balm to soothe it.
(August 2022)
Parch: Futures & Friends
“But all adults hate their jobs right? Even if they do something they used to love, once they have to do it every day in order to put food on the table, they all grow to resent it, right?”
“I don’t think that’s entirely true, Parch. My mom loves being a detective.” Xan was careful with her next words. “I can see how your dad might want you to think that though.”
Parch sighed, looking resigned. “Yeah, no kidding. It’s definitely in his best interest for us to think that being miserable is just the norm.”
“So here’s the thing though.” Xan shifted positions, extending her legs out in front of her. They were sitting under a tree in the park, waiting for their friend Caldra to finish up at the library. “Once you don’t live under his roof anymore you can do whatever you want, right? You don’t have to become an accountant. Or do anything related to the family business. Once you’re out you can decide for yourself if you want to go to music school. Or be a bartender. Or a lumberjack.”
Xan watched her friend’s face as she said this, hoping for a smile. Parch couldn’t help themself. They smiled. “Me? A lumberjack? You’re right. These muscles really do scream tree-cutting-extraordinaire.” They flexed their arms with mock bravado.
“Exactly!” Xan said. “Plus we both know how you feel about dirt and nature. And you’d look just fabulous in flannel.”
Parch let out a hearty laugh as this, as they thought about one of the last times the whole gang was together. Caldra had begged everyone to go exploring down by the creek and Parch didn’t realize until they got there just how much they appreciated the comforts of city-living. Paths to walk on, allergy-aggravating flowers contained to window boxes, spider webs kept to a minimum. Normally pretty go-with-the-flow, Parch definitely made their displeasure known that day and their friends teased them for weeks afterward because of it. Annoyed at first, they had grown used to the light-hearted jabs and Parch found this one to be genuinely humorous.
“Ah, yes. You know, you’ve convinced me. Lumberjack it is. You should probably change your path to go into career counseling,” they jabbed back, golden eyes sparkling in the sun.
“I’m always giving the most sound advice, it’s true. If only I could follow some of it myself…”
“Oh, speaking of which, did you decide what you’re doing about the auditions?”
“Nice try buddy, we’re talking about your life problems right now, not mine.”
Parch shrugged. “Worth a shot.” They continued, “You should go for it though. I think you’d be awesome as Imogen.”
“Imogen?! That’s the lead role! I can’t even…” her eyes narrowed as she caught herself falling for the diversion. “Nope! Not falling for it!” Xan’s bright blue hair swayed as she shook her head.
Parch smirked. They glanced over Xan’s shoulder, hoping to see Caldra walking toward them, but no such luck.
“Okay, okay. I see you looking for rescue. We can be done talking about it for now if you want to be. But one last thing. Maybe just think about having an exit strategy. Obviously we’ll all help you however we can, I mean, duh, we’re your friends. But even if you crash with one us for a bit while you’re figuring things out we can’t like, get you into music school.”
“Or pay for music school,” Parch said, back to being glum.
“Ya, unfortunately none of us are that loaded,” agreed Xan. “Well, Eb’s family might be, but that’s beside the point.” Xan trailed off and sat quietly in thought for a minute. The wind rustled the leaves on the trees overhead. A squirrel jumped between branches with an acorn in its mouth. Parch looked up. It really was a beautiful day out.
“What if we all got summer jobs?” Xan said suddenly. “Started saving up for all the stuff we want to do when we finally get to choose? We could apply to something simple that we could all do together, like serving sandwiches. Or you could see if any of the music shops are hiring and–”
“You know my dad would never let me do that.” Parch interrupted.
“—anddd, if you’d let me finish, your dad would let you do it because you’d tell him that you’re going to job shadow their accountant. For practice or experience or whatever.”
Parch didn’t look convinced but at least they looked intrigued. “And what do I do instead? While I’m lying to my father.”
“Whatever it is you do at music shops! Sell instruments. Clean instruments. Copy musical scores. Teach kids how to make less terrible noises on those things, I don’t know! You could even do something related to the bookkeeping if you really don’t want to lie to your dad. At least you’d have your foot in the door and could start making connections and stuff.”
Parch made a non-committal noise and stared off into the park where a kid was trying to throw pebbles into the fountain.
“Just promise me you’ll think about it?”
“But what if he says I should just ‘job shadow’ my aunt? She’s their current accountant so he would probably want me to learn the family’s way of doing things.”
“You could tell him that you wouldn’t want to slow her down by asking a bunch of questions. Orrr, you could tell him that you heard it’s good to get different types of experience because diversifying leads to… efficiency or something.”
“Diversifying…leads…to efficiency? I don’t think that’s a thing, Xan.”
“Well, maybe don’t say that exactly, but we’ll workshop it. We’ll figure something out.”
Parch looked at their friend with affection, feeling lucky to have her in their life. “Okay, okay. I promise I’ll think about it.”
“Think about what?” A voice came from off to the side. They turned to see Caldra striding toward them, a stack of books in her arms, and one of her many quilted skirts hanging from her waist.
“Parch is going to be a musical lumberjack and the rest of us are going to apply to work at Drethro’s to make sandwiches this summer!”
Caldra laughed. “Perfect! I’m in! We all knew the musical lumberjack thing was going to come up sooner or later so I’m glad you finally decided on that.”
Parch shook their head as they tried to hide their grin.
abstract relations vi 