It’s Alive!

You may or may not have noticed that I’m active again after several years. It’s been an adventure, hopping from kitchen to kitchen and out into other avenues of the workforce. But at the end of the long stretch of days, months, and years I’m back. Back to earning a new degree. Back to learning about who I am now, at this moment, and how I can better myself going forward.

This means writing.

So, some updates were obviously needed:

-Color changes, layout stays the same.
-Proofread, edited, and formatted Pastry Chaos
-Published Credit and Sugar short stories

The new and improved Pastry Chaos, as well as the short stories Credit and Sugar can be found by navigating to their pages directly. Eventually, they’ll get moved into pages and subpages created for “larger” works (ie. anything about 1200+ words).

For now, though, this is me signing off to study for finals.
Enjoy the new work and have a great time out there.

Wr241 – Week 2, lecture 2 – Prompt

Requirements: One main character, one omnipotent creature.

The turtle looked up at Carl almost as enthusiastically as Carl was looking down at the turtle.

“The fuck you doin’ in my pool?” He asked out loud, then followed the question with a chuckle to no one in particular except himself and maybe the agitated reptile, “Carl my boy, you’re losin’ yer mind pal. Talkin to a turtle. Jesus.”

He reached down to pluck the reptile from its new territory but it sank down beneath the surface of the pool.

“Little shit,” Carl growled under his breath, getting down on his knees, then his stomach. His organic knee popped loudly and grunted, and his back made the sound of breaking tree limbs. Carl dipped his hand down into the cool water and the turtle sank deeper.

Frustrated, Carl pulled himself back to his feet, water dripping from his arm onto the white t-shirt that clung desperately to the gut it attempted to contain.

“Wanna play, huh?” Carl spat, pointing down at the turtle that stared mockingly up at him through slitted, nefarious eyes. “Well, fuck you too. I’ll get the net, see how you like that.”

He toweled the pool water off on the leg of his jeans and stomped back to the van, muttering a string of curses as water flicked from the leather of his boots and left stringed beads of water on the hot cement, the oddly warm Seattle summer day quickly pulling the moisture from the ground back into the air. Carl stepped to the van doors and reached out to pull the release lever. He felt the hum in his hand before his skin made contact with the plastic.

Carl took a deep breath and steeled his resolve, then popped the latch and slid the side door open.

The turtle sat at the edge of the floor of the van, right up against the ledge that separated the vehicle from the open doorway, leering at Carl.

9/2/19

Is this even being alive anymore?
Cut throat assholes climbing over social corpses,
Corpses they’ve created but deny a hand in making.

This feels more like stories of Rome.
I am the slave, bureaucracy my dominus,
With whip upon back,
Sweat and floor to replace blood and sand.

I didn’t mean to write this.
I just meant to write one line.

My dog (not ours) tried to bite me today.
The first time since she was a puppy…
I don’t know what else to do but disown her,
Leave her with my parents when I manage to leave again.

I’ve been trying, Grace.
I’ve been trying so god damned hard.
To be better, to be what you saw in me.
But I just don’t know anymore.
Who that is.
If that’s even a pale reflection of the person I’ve become.

I think about you often, the specter of memory still haunting me;
I see your face in my mind.
Like you’ve died, and I am just waiting to join you.
Wasting my time on distractions.
I’ve loved, but can’t know if I’m in love.
All the experiences that have amounted to right now,
All the travels, conversations, lives I’ve seen from outside a window.
They feel as if leading to nowhere.

I only wanted to write one line…

You were right, I really have forgotten how to forgive – haven’t I?

10/10/18

You must have found the fountain of youth.
For how can you age,
when you cannot grow old together?

I’ve been trying to cut this thin red line,
the one that bites into your ankle like a hungry, pissed off dog.
Knife, cleaver, saw,
they all seem to bend, dull, or break.

There’s comedy somewhere here, I swear it.
Or else this is hell.

October, 2017

Sometimes when I talk to you on the phone I feel like I have a gun in my mouth which I do not have my hand or fingers directly, or even remotely, close to the trigger. My voice trembles and I clear my throat to postulate the thoughts that want to come spilling from the dark, damp cave that holds them captive.

I’d like to tell you how beautiful I still think you are.
Physically, mentally, emotionally.
I’d like to tell you how terribly I’ve missed you for the past, what…. four years?
Apologies. I’ll bite my tongue again.
No one likes it when my heart beats.

Everyone just wants to fuck and have a good time. I’m down for the good time, but I’m just not interested in the surface deep act of getting down and dirty. Wasting time to show your affection for someone else, when all you’re really doing is engaging in some self satisfying physical narcissism. Dealing more damage to yourself and others than good. Like Godzilla taking on some giant monster in the streets of Japan. It was great to you beat them back and all, giant scary lizard…. But what about our city? What happens when you’ve cum, or they have. Up and out, snagging pieces of sweat stained clothes and tossing them over their now warped and less attractive bodies as they slither from your bed, to the bathroom, and out the door.
Maybe I’ll see you again. This was fun. Call me.
Please don’t. Don’t slither up to me, make small talk, eye contact, conversation.
I’m enjoying my beer, the company of people who matter.
I’m looking for someone who matters.
I just want to spend my time in the company of people who matter. The company of people I matter to.

But I hardly have friends anymore. I left most of them behind, or let them speed off. Like lovers to the bathroom and front door. I’ve walked away from abusive relationships I could no longer help to shelter from. I’ve walked away from people who took advantage of me. I’ve learned my lessons the hard way and had a hell of a good time while I was at it.

But it doesn’t change the fact that I’m lonely.
It doesn’t change the fact that I still think of you all the time.
It doesn’t change the fact that I still feel guilty.
It doesn’t change the fact that you left without me and it wasn’t anyone’s fault but my own.
It doesn’t change the fact that I still love you.
And care. And miss you.
And, and, and.

It doesn’t change the facts.

Traffic

Red brake lights like a far stretching sea. I reach out with one hand still on the wheel and fetch my cell phone. I type thoughts between periods of acceleration, enter reminders for dates and times.

Notifications for days.

This drive is going to take days, and not like the good kind of days. The days where you enter two states and leave three. The kind of days that hours can feel like, only attempting to travel from point a to point b. A hardly noticeable forty miles. Except now that forty miles feels like the length of the Mojave desert, standing atop one if it’s spiny, jagged mountains to survey it’s whole. But this isn’t a mountain, it’s an overpass; the interstate stretches South. For days.

Dear Pepita

Dear Pepita, I’ve stopped writing you love letters in my head. Mostly because this isn’t love. This is being used. So much so that I doubt I’ve ever been used before. I’ve taken back, apologized, and asked for forgiveness from the people I thought had done so before you came strolling so confidently into my life. I have nothing left to say, because if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Maybe that’s why I have been so quiet. Maybe that’s why I’m allowing you your space. Because the words that form on my tongue are venom, swallowed back down to fester in my stomach and be digested. The acids in my gut breaking down sounds and syllables, letters and feelings too strong to let loose upon the drying summer earth.

Now I understand that my dreams, prophetic as they are, are scrambled warnings. Puzzles building and unraveling in my head like poorly knit socks. Comfortable as they may be, they’re still going to fall apart.

Seattle Solo

I was standing in the rain with a gin and tonic in my hand when it hits me. It’s strange to be here without her. Continued drags of cancer while wet sloppy drops fall on my head. My last three visits to Seattle spent here were with Pepita. All three with visits to Kremwork. The first when I met her at this strange basement full of queens, queers, and transgender, gender neutral, non gender, etc people, humans, whatever. The second to see her again, six months later. Sleeping in a tent for three nights only an hour from the city. Then the last four months further on from that which felt like an eternity of waiting. Driving north with Squid to meet her at the airport, our romance in full swing, her then returning from India and our ideas and aspirations manifesting in parallel.

But now I’m here alone, the crazy spin work hurricane of my drag queen friends in full motion around me. Mentally recording conversation in what seems a totally new tongue I’ve yet to decide fully. Stepping in and out of the venue watching an ever evolving alien world breathe from a strange outside perspective.

May, 2017

Is this the love story I’ll be telling

Days in and nights out?

Not – we were entwined and then she left.

But – we hardly met and then we were.

Here, there, everywhere.

Is this the love story we will always talk about, quiet nights in bed. Entwined. Her dark skin soft against my pale calloused soul, self. Bone and skin stretched tight.

She says I love you; I believe her.

Because I love her as well.

Wooden chair, two.

She is gone and I sit in the wooden chair by the sliding glass door.

Thinking, mulling over which steps come next. Lease, Pepita, Squid, home, home.

There is no laundry to drown out my thoughts.

That hurricane named Andrew, that rattled a place I’ve only briefly been.

1986, the year I was also born. The year that hurricane and myself were brought to life.

But it faded with its damage, that wild storm.

While I sit, spin, stagger, and breath on.

Sitting in my wooden chair.