don’t follow me into the dark

that limitless no-light space is where

i can grow beyond bounds

you shall not see what is yet unseen

there is nothing to moor your eyes to

and there never will be

sometimes, it’s more fun when the love actually dooms everyone. It existed. It meant something. But it didn’t save anybody. No one was fixed; in fact, people were broken.

It was a torrential downpour that eroded banks, a howling wind that carved a path through wood and stone.

It was not hollow. It was full of blood, a solace sought to fill a hole it could not, any other shred that could be found packed in around it to make it fit.

The choice of violent separation is merely the rest, the composition must go on, and winding toward the erratic end means everyone else must lose something. The note of second impact rings true and the resonance frequency rattles everything else apart.

A toast; to those who cannot keep their lips from the flask, who drink love and won’t swallow it, while the rest of the world deals with the fire it set.

Commit Thy Star to the Earth

There is a hole in the yard that resembles a grave but isn’t

If you dig down far enough, the soil becomes firm to the touch

but easy to mold against palms

or persistent enough lips

A soul is like that, I think

get to the layer surrounding the core

and it shies, strikes, or softens to the hand reaching out

There are places it fits without manipulation

Slotting perfectly into a corner or stretch of the universe

curled up or splayed out - however it finds its glory

There is a hole in the ground you can lay in with another soul

but only if you press and puzzle yourselves together

lying in something recognizable but easily mistaken

You can gasp at your second-deepest layer becoming pliable and resembling another’s edge

Or have they both been devised into something entirely new?

(but not foreign, no longer ever foreign)

there is no coffin but you are six feet deep

“why would you willingly commit yourself to the grave?”

A little death, as a treat -

True comfort is knowing the difference between suicide and self-discovery.

when you make art about liminal spaces you must exist in liminal spaces

the empty tunnel from the parking garage to the airport

a retail outlet that won’t be a 24hr establishment for much longer

a highway exit in the desert with a single gas station

the pine barrens after a fresh powder snow on a new moon night

an indoor pool room with tinted windows for walls

or perhaps just as a human that fits no label, in the pre-morning, after-midnight hours.

The Glow of Air

On an Oklahoma summer night you’ll realize that bioluminescence isn’t just for sea creatures

as fireflies swim on humid air and blink their almost-morse messages

hundreds of miles from any shoreline

dimming and shining as (air)waves roll over them

like words said only once but never forgotten

that wash of emotion, no matter how dampened by time or other manner of soaking

not like the tide coming in

but not like it’s leaving either

and it is still so hot you swear you could inhale it and boil before you drown

stars and aurora floating above you

the impossible really is always possible

despite your best efforts to believe in nothing

leaves the color of ichor

mortal and things deified

does not represent beauty in death

rather,

a warning of what is to come

your sycamore is a dart frog

not afflicted with a wasting disease

but seething words that you must hear

so you will not perish

when the color is gone

the ghost of what my life was

still has her own room in my house

she still wakes up in the morning and gets ready

like any day could fall back into her rut

the windows are clean and never shuttered because fear doesn’t live in those walls

there’s always a little bit of dirt on the floor because she came in with her boots on and never left again

WIP #swordtember under the cut

“Ten Thousand Tears
Bled forth into the Well
To Temper a Blade
Meant To Kill the Maestro…”

“…And so shall I deliver this promise unto them,” Deia Marlupe gargled the last words of her oath through the brine of the sea pouring from her lips. She gasped and sputtered, the salt stinging her nostrils, wiping the abrasive crust from her eyes.

Dawn; the sun creeping over the horizon. Orange and lavender banish the dusky night from the sky.

The frigid sea water rolled heavily against her already-soaked tunic, filling her boots and tossing her belts and bags up towards her head. She scrambled backwards, her prickling skin begging for warmth.

It would get none if the clouds continued to move towards her.

She peeled clumps of her dark hair away from her cheeks, her forehead, her neck. Sticky already. Damn this mermaid’s birth.

She did not try, in vain, to scrape the coarse black sand from her skin and clothes like she had so many days before this one.

Forty-one days, to be exact.

When you are promised Divinity, why would you say no?

When your own mother sheds a tear in hope -

When fiery souls feed the hunger -

When your lover asks for the world in exchange for giving you the cosmos -

It is your duty to Respond.

To Become.

tiny little poem to put in your phone!

sized for phone background usage, 1080x1920

ghosts
who come back
living people
who believed
Can you imagine what’s disappeared?
like a ghost
one day
hanging from the windows
then stopped
And Who?
It Was I

“What do you mean
it was you?”
stunned
shock
Known your whole life and at the same time you’re aware you don’t know
at all
face to face with surprise
open eyes
The Lights
“Understand?”
“Yes,” she said
she couldn’t quite grasp
she needed a little more time

“Give me a minute, please,”
“Of course,”
sat in silence, she was
Thinking Again

my Mother is the Patron Saint of my Novel

When I was a child, and into my teen years, my mom and I went on walks every night with our dog.

In south Texas, the dog that accompanied us was a little mutt - some kind of rat terrier, whippet, beagle-pug abomination we called Uno because of the big brown spot on his wide ribcage.

I was eight years old when my sense of self and mortality sent me on obsessive-compulsive spirals. These long walks through the neighborhood, half the time, were therapy sessions about how to deal with the one life you ostensibly get. The other half of the walks were delving into the media I loved, the careers I wanted, and the creative endeavors that had captured my spirit for the day, week, month.

My mother dutifully listened, comforted me, challenged me, encouraged me. My curiosity was a virtue to cultivate, even when it resulted in tearful questions.

Shortly after our move to southern Oklahoma, Uno had taken to gallivanting around the countryside when we left to visit family down the road. He met his end off the tires of a natural gas tanker semi.

Years down the line, in central Oklahoma, the dog alongside our secluded time to talk was a purebred blue heeler who was smarter than he had any right to be. Pete, named for the mascot of my father’s, and later my own, alma mater.

At fifteen I was determined to be an author, despite all of my time being spent at equestrian facilities, my energy spent on my eating disorder and my budding dressage career. Nothing could match these passions - save for my creative, curious spirit. Often, these walks were spent with explanations of the fantasy world I was creating, and the unique characters that I wanted to write about. I peppered mom with questions about the human psyche - she had earned her Master’s in psychology at this point.

Though I loved it, writing took a backseat to my riding. I was about to graduate college and set off into the professional equestrian world.

The details of my love and obsession for equestrianism is for another time.

My riding career met its end after a particularly bad accident that left me lucky to walk. In pain for the rest of my life, with an incurable condition – but I could still walk.

Still in central Oklahoma, my friends played a game in the world I created so many years ago. Bit by bit, I was able to develop this world into a living, undulating creation that would support the book I was determined to write ten years prior.

Pete made it to fourteen and a half full years, and was peacefully laid to rest with his rolled leather collar on. He never met a food he wouldn’t eat, or a word he wouldn’t learn.

I finished writing the novel exploring the human psyche, set in the world I created.

I sent it to my mom last night.

Soon, she and I will return to our nightly walks – even if they are much shorter than they used to be – and be curious about the world, and our minds, together, as we’ve done my whole life.

My anger with him

bides its time

Like the picturesque waves rolling on the soft sand

we find ourselves sharing

before the water thrashes the pier to which we flee

His love is the breeze surrounding us

in the forest of my creation

the towering redwoods fading into the foggy

low ceiling of collected dew and evaporated ideas

the woods where he would invite all whom he would protect

on gentle ground

soft underfoot

saturated

waltzing through without blessing

without the word of God touching their ear

So too shall they weather this storm

I inhale and hold

until it is needed

when the rains have drained and left the soil wanting

when the moss shrivels and prays

when a trail has been worn

When he tends to me

Broken

not the fault of anyone

but Time and Chance

when the fire smolders at last

Everything I knew

ashes and dust and whispers of eternity

I hold him in kind

though in the clouds of his mind

which cannot hold humans, only souls

and I part them

like I shape the stratus and thunderheads above the forest

or the seafoam at the shore

and I beg for him to break and roll and reform

is he meant to banish the clouds altogether?

so say other men

now and long passed

no, no, the water is the flow and ebb of life

without it there is no land, no forest, no ocean or shore

but Aurelius says

“Are you designed to act; or be acted upon?”

and I think

I didn’t want to change

either

Something was telling him he was looking at someone transient. Not in the way he was; a phantom, a specter of someone who belonged.

This man, currently dressed only in rays of early morning sun and the afterglow of being loved, was transient like the edge of a rainstorm.

When you are stopped for a moment in awe of each raindrop acting as a prism. When the pertrichor overtakes anything else touching your senses.

You don’t need that moment to live. But you want to live in that moment.

Welcome to “With What Words”!

This is a repository for short bits of writing - excerpts, prompts, poetry, and short stories.

Everything included on this blog is original work.

Posts will be tagged according to type and focus.