"A no good, very bad day." It's a phrase from a children's book I distantly remember, and I whisper the main theme to myself as I mop an entire glass of spilled water from the bathroom counter. I knocked the glass over by leaning in close to the mirror to find my left contact, which… Continue reading My Own Picturebook
Category: grief
When You Took Your Life; Aftermath
Soon, it will have been three years since you died by suicide. Three years since the day I sat in my car outside your place with my cellphone pressed to my ear, requesting a welfare check from the non-emergency police line. It was a Friday and you hadn’t shown up to work. Your car was… Continue reading When You Took Your Life; Aftermath
Voided/Rewritten
“I feel like a fraud” I desperately say, caught in a web of fear. New loss, old loss, future loss - all weaved together, I am centered in it. “I talk about hope and joy one day, then to be on the verge of complete panic attacks the next day? I feel crazy and like… Continue reading Voided/Rewritten
Combustion, Combat
My stomach has been tight with fear today. It's been building all week, a fire slowly being stoked right underneath my chest cavity. I've tried to ignore it, but fear has a sneaky way of slipping through the cracks. I have learned over the past years that pretending my house isn't on fire doesn't keep… Continue reading Combustion, Combat
The Eye of the Earth is Forever
Every moment we have is temporary. There is something wired in us to believe in the infinite - (an ever expanding universe, the gods of our ancestors, souls of the departed) and that seeps into the minutes of our days and nights. But nothing is actually guaranteed. This time next year, things will be different.… Continue reading The Eye of the Earth is Forever
Comfort Comes From American Eagle, Size Small
(Originally written on December 12, 2018) It is a hot day in the middle of summer, and I am finally getting around to an errand I've been meaning to do for a couple of months now. Small bells jingle as I walk into the dry cleaners. "Just the one item today, please" I say, setting… Continue reading Comfort Comes From American Eagle, Size Small
Using Dreams and Dead People
An unfinished piece written March 6, 2019. I dream of heroin, which is strange because it was never my drug of choice. I wake sweaty and tangled, my heavy breathing amplified in the kind of silence only 3 am can bring. The craving hits so hard that if it were in front of me right… Continue reading Using Dreams and Dead People
Silent alarms and birthday songs
(Originally written and posted on Facebook October 8, 2017) Last year, it was on Saturday. We had no grand plans of celebration - it was just the two of us and a shared pizza and it was exactly as it was supposed to be. There was a man with a guitar and a microphone and… Continue reading Silent alarms and birthday songs
The Breaking
(Originally written August 17, 2017) It rained for a week after Caryn died. Memory is a funny thing and can easily be manipulated to suit the stories that we want to tell, so maybe I am wrong, but I remember it as a soft rain, the kind of rain that you can stand under and… Continue reading The Breaking
Lucky Number Thirteen
When I was twenty years old, my mother and grandmother died within three days of each other. I remember feeling almost incredulous. This didn't happen in real life, this was like a story line from the soap operas I watched so religiously in high school. This didn't happen to real people. Except it did, and… Continue reading Lucky Number Thirteen
Now We Are Beginning 