4th

After my mom died, I read every journal and planner she left behind. There weren’t many. The entries were sporadic, sometimes leaping a year—or even five—with little information and a lot of space devoted to her weight and what she was going to do about it. Haha. We weren’t so different, me and this woman who shared half my DNA.

In one of the planners, I found an incomplete Fourth Step. My mom had been sober my entire life—she got sober before I was born—and by the time I was twelve or thirteen when she had started this Fourth Step, she had already been sober for fifteen or sixteen years. The Fourth Step is the part of Alcoholics Anonymous where you make “a searching and fearless moral inventory” of yourself: your wrongs, fears, resentments, and the damage you’ve done. A lot of people get stuck there. They write down what they can and then stop.

My mom had stopped, too.

That was where I learned she had slept with her younger sister’s college boyfriend—the sister who didn’t like my mom and thought she was much prettier because she was blonde. Which is funny, because I had also heard my aunt’s version: that my mom only claimed she’d slept with him to hurt her. After all, he only liked blondes like my aunt. He couldn’t have done it. He just wouldn't have slept with a brunette like my mom.

I never learned which version was true. But I believe my mom.

I also learned that, in her early twenties, my mom had worked in a nursing-home kitchen. One of the residents died after choking on a piece of hot dog. Almost two decades later, my mom still believed it was her fault because she hadn’t cut the hot dog into small enough pieces, even though she knew the resident was at risk of choking.

There was other stuff too, but the inventory felt awfully incomplete. She didn’t get into half the things I had seen.

Maybe that was the point. Maybe no one can make a complete inventory of a life—not even a person trying to account for all the ways she had failed.

Still, it was through the worst choices of my mother’s life that I grew to respect her. I learned to cheer for her—not because she had been innocent, and not because sobriety erased what came before, but because she kept going while carrying everything she believed she had done.

And somewhere in all that unfinished writing, I began to understand her: not as the mother I had needed her to be, but as the woman she had been trying, imperfectly, to become.

My Own Undoing

Yet again, I dreamt of captive whales—  

orcas circling the tank, their black backs  

breaking the water, then vanishing,  

their tails trained to lift them  

from one side to the other,  

while my dead mother holds my hand  

and assures me,  

“Oh, don’t fret. They really like that.”

I wake to the fear still gnawing,  

a beaver worrying at a trunk,  

wearing it down by instinct—  

the fear that I, too,  

have become the loyal, fervent servant  

of my own undoing.

I could count, but don’t,  

the times I’ve made life-or-death decisions.  

Somehow, the deaths don’t stay with me.  

It’s the lives—the living—  

and the endless circles,  

the hoops held low enough  

to jump through,  

high enough  

to make the crowd applaud.

Apparently, I Am Responsible for Myself

"Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm." -Abraham Lincoln

Yet again, I come to the blog with no literary motivations and no attempt at prose. And, to make things worse for you, gentle readers, I yet again must begin a crappy little internet diary entry with, “I have no words to explain what I am feeling.” Then proceed to write a whole bunch of words. Perhaps, all in all, the lesson at the center of this dried-up Tootsie Pop, found crusty and clinging to life at the bottom of a purse, is this: 

I am actually a liar.

I have plenty of words.

So let us not begin in the present. Let’s begin in the past, though of course the entirety of the present is just a reflection of the past, so whatever whatever, it’s all chunks of junk in the same soup bowl.

One of the common themes of my childhood, prominent messages, both implicit and explicit, from my mother was that I, a child, was the source of everything wrong with her, a full-grown adult’s, life.

Not some things. Not even many things.

Everything.

Her car was messy? Because I stole all her time she would have cleaned. She hates her job ? She only took it to support me. She gained weight last year? Probably some hormonal imbalance from pregnancy delayed by a decade.

See? Every small and insignificant to big and huge problem in her life was all because I existed.

I existed, and therefore things were wrong.

And I suppose this sounds exaggerative, because it is. See, when she would speak these things into my child ears, she was upset, over the top. She was embellishing to be hurtful. She was saying things a grown woman should never have said to a child, and I was a child who had no way of knowing which parts were true and which parts were just said because she was angry.

It’s strange. I am 38. At my age, my mom had an 11-year-old burden. At least, that’s how she presented it. So perhaps I don’t understand the pressure and stress she was experiencing, as I have no kid. But alas, I’m not getting into all that. It’s too much for a blog post.

And sure, I’m not saying kids aren’t a lot of responsibility. I’m not claiming that for a minute.

Just like I’m not going to claim I am some calm, cool, chill girl who is so easy to get along with. I am not blind and naïve. I know I have flaws. I know that I can be a touch inconsiderate, overwhelming, emotional, sensitive, etc., etc., etc. Whatever. I’m so sick of listing what others say they can’t handle about me.

Handle.

What a word to describe it.

Handle insinuates that there is holding. Noun version: a part of an object used for holding and carrying it. A part designed to be grasped by hand, such as a doorknob, suitcase strap, or mug. Verb version: to touch or hold, lifting or moving an item using your hands; to manage or control; to be responsible for a job, problem, or person.

Yet, it seems—and perhaps I am wrong, as I have no doubt there would be a counterargument—that if you can’t handle me, then that is your failing, not mine. More importantly, at this day and age, have I asked anyone to handle me? This seems to be some self-appointed role, self-selected and self-failing, so don’t pin it on me.

Actually, would we not all be doing a little bit better if you just focused on yourself?

AH HA! Ope. Back it up, Caroline! Heal thyself, physician!

You are right. I have been so, so, so fearful of rejection. I have sought to be liked to the point that I have self-abandoned, grovelled, cared for others until I felt bled dry. I have tried to make myself easier to hold.

Something-something Freudian about love and acceptance being tied to removing all difficulties from another’s life. I don’t think a child being told her existence is the sole source of all her adult caregiver’s problems is a factor. (Sarcasm.)

But you see, let’s expand upon this.

My mother has been dead for nine years.

I know she was wrong. Rationally, I know she was wrong. I know that because I can describe all of this now, from the distance of adulthood, and see the absurdity of placing the weight of a grown woman’s life on a child.

She had some decent qualities, too. Of course she did. But yet again, that’s beyond the scope of this entry. To love and hate someone. To utterly be made, created, formed by another person, yet also reject so much of what they stood for.

We just gotta keep moving through the train of thought. CHOO CHOO. No stops.

Yes, at 38, I have had 20 years out of my mother’s shadow, nine years of her completely not even being in this world, and only 18 legally bound. Of course, this is all approximate. Because, you know, of course I didn’t cut off contact at 18.

Twenty years.

Nine years.

Miles and decades of space.

And still, somehow, I am here, hanging my troubles on another person.

And so here now I present thee with a strange paradox.

Oh no. The irony!

I am doing to a dead woman the same thing she did to me as a child.
Can you believe it?

This is probably that “cycle” and “pattern” and “programming” or whatever whatever they be talking about.

Except I don’t think the answer is that I have to stop blaming my mother.

Maybe she really is to blame for some of it.

Maybe she really did hurt me.

Maybe some of what I carry came directly from her.

I don’t have to rewrite history to take responsibility for what happens next.

Please consider this a wise and fantastic closing. Some lovely transition that ties up all the loose ends and makes it a palatable and satisfying end.

But, as you probably also suspect, this is not an end.

No, this is a beginning.

Somehow, I might be a little better than my mother and do a little different.

And anyhow, even if, let’s just say, she actually IS to blame for my unhappiness, she isn’t coming back from the dead to do anything about it.

So I guess it’s high time I take care of it myself.

The Bloodletting

        Historically, marketing emphasized the material qualities of a product—its specifications, functions, and practical benefits. Over time, however, advertising evolved toward the production of symbolic value, positioning commodities not merely as useful objects but as vehicles through which consumers might perform identity, autonomy, status, and self-actualization. The emergence of targeted advertising represents a further epistemological shift in the relationship between commerce and subjectivity. Rather than simply responding to preexisting desires, algorithmic advertising increasingly identifies, cultivates, and monetizes latent insecurities, rendering the individual both consumer and product within an ever-expanding digital marketplace of self-optimization. This essay seeks to interrogate the implications of this paradigm while situating the contemporary body as a contested site of neoliberal commodification.

Just kidding. 

I have been getting a lot of ads targeting my breast shape lately, and I'm unsure how "they" even know this information about me.

"They."

Who are they?

Big shrug.

Big money.

The Man.

They know far more about me than I know about them.

I have big ol' floppy tits. As my mother had before me, and her mother before her. And probably all the way back to my ancestors in Germany, hauling kegs of beer around a tavern—or so I imagine them.

Yet the internet knows this about me.

I looked at my photos on Instagram. They couldn't possibly have figured this out from my pictures. I generally point the camera at my face. I have never Googled my breast shape.

Why there are loads of breasts in this world. There are flatty-flats and roundy-rounds and perky-perks and lopsy-sides. A million kinds of tits for a million kinds of women, and they are all pretty. 

Including mine. 

And apparently the internet knows exactly what they look like.

Well, thanks to targeted ads, I have been informed that I have "teardrop boobs."

Until last week, I had never heard of this. But now, thank you, marketing executives, I know that "teardrop boobs" are not only what these—imagine I'm motioning to my chest—are called, but that they are apparently a terrible condition which can and should be addressed.

What I find most troubling about this recent influx of "fix your shit tits" ads is that last month, I took a few minutes each day to rub lotion lovingly onto my chest and, in my head, tell my breasts that they are beautiful and wonderful and that I love them.

Do you think my phone was listening to all that?

Listening to my daily tit affirmations?

Did they think I was like a little kid whispering to myself, "It's okay," because she felt ashamed—and not because I actually like the big ol' floppy flops of my matriarchal lineage?

Because now it is shoveling five kinds of bras, a chest binder, breast reduction surgery, breast lift surgery, a supplement to "drain toxins from the lymph nodes in breast tissue" made from some sort of deep-sea algae, and a dress that lifts the tits.

Oh, free consultation!

Fifteen percent off when you sign up for the newsletter!

Decreased sagging in just two weeks!

Never feel ashamed of your sad, sad teardrop boobs again!

So sad they're even called teardrops.

Aren't you crying yet, girlie?

Not yet, bruh.

The other day, I was in the bath, my floppies just floating and flopping, as they do, in the water. Swaying sweetly with the motion of the warm water. And they weren't teardrops at all. They were round little buoys, bouncing and playing like dolphins in the ocean. It was delightful. Press them down and they'd bob back up to the surface.

Hello! 

Hello!

Ahoy, matey!

Then I dried myself off and saw droplets of blood all over the tile floor. Then streaks of blood on my feet and calves. I leaned down to clean it up, and there was blood smeared all over my left breast—the slightly smaller one. I tried to clean it up and find the source, but as I did, it only seemed to get worse.

Finally, I found the tiny, minuscule nick on my thigh, just above my knee, from shaving.

How so much poured out of my body through such a small hole, I don't know.

But I dabbed a little toilet paper on it.

Stopped it up.

And as I cleaned the mess, I thought about how much of my DNA—those same little nucleotides that made my tits, and my mother's, and her mother's before her—was now still on the floor. 

Just traces, of course. 

Like a crime scene after the cleanup.

Just enough left behind to tell someone exactly who had been there.

Enough to break the whole case wide open.

Funny, isn't it?

How a detective can reconstruct a life from a drop of blood, while an algorithm seems determined to reconstruct an insecurity from a body.

I'm sure this week I'll get a billion ads for safety razors and creams and lotions and products to prevent nicks and get a closer, smoother shave. Maybe wax. Maybe Nair. Maybe some other product to address the terrible condition of growing hair like the ape I am instead of the mannequin I could become with enough money and enough time.

And you know what?

It didn't need fixing.

It never needed fixing.

A body with some miles on it.

 "The old pleasures were gone. They were but memories. Never could we recapture the great moments of the past. There was an insistent yearning to enjoy life as we once did and a heartbreaking obsession that some new miracle of control would enable us to do it. There was always one more attempt—and one more failure."

—Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

I haven’t been inspired to write as of late. I wanted to, but nothing comes out. And there are these things that seem like they could weave into something coherent.

Like, for six days I’ve felt on the edge of my period: breasts ache, body bloated, acne, moody-bitchy-no-good-foul-mood, yet... nothing.

And I am flipping through my notes. Yes, because if I don’t write it down, I might forget it. Yes, I can live it, feel it in my body, it can hijack my life for almost half a month, but as the moon spins, I am stupid again. So, to the notes!

Maybe it’s diet, medication, stress. Or even just an off month, schedules off, summer heat. God knows it might even be my brain. You know what I’m talking about, like when your brain makes you sick by thinking about being sick.

But it could be menopause.

And I really need to take a step back and tell you vital context. I have never really feared growing old or “the change,” as women older and obviously less progressive than I called it when I was young.

At most, there was a brief time when I felt the need to decide if I was or was not going to have kids.

And in 2016, when I was 28, I went almost mad and actually was thinking I might. It lasted two months.

But I had so many other things to take care of and do, and it was on the back burner until finally I didn’t. I probably did not want kids.

After all, I put everything else in front of it.

A decade later, I decided I had feelings about it, complex feelings, but ultimately love my life as is.

So the idea of menopause and aging and not having kids doesn’t scare me.

I’m not even sure if scared is the right word. When I was 10, I used to put socks balled up under my shirt and pretend they were boobs. By 12, I had some and was excited, but then at 14, they were too big, too floppy, too cumbersome, and the outfits I could comfortably wear in public dwindled.

Repeat this with everything puberty. Period, excited, then it’s too much. Armpit hair, excited, then it is too much.

Till it more or less evened out and my body morphed slowly. Like erosion, like hair growing, so stealth and soft and quiet in the background, like gaining five pounds. It just happens.

It’s been gradual. I am a fish still in the bag, my temperature adjusting.

And now, what if it’s all wonky again? I will have to learn how to live and feel best in a new body again. Like an alien, I wake up—yet again in my short life—to find all the physical rules of my existence different. We were playing Uno, but now it’s poker—go fish!

And a woman I’ve never met in my life and probably won’t commented five years ago about over-the-counter progesterone cream, and now, six days into the sneaky little menses-who-cried-wolf no-show, I’m rubbing this hormone cream on my tits.

I guess this is what happens to women when all the crones are just shit-posting AI fake news on Facebook. If I had a daughter, I hope I would let her into everything I’m feeling and thinking right now.

She shouldn’t be flying into it blind.

Yes, all those women in my life, older women, elderly women, all those women, and I heard plenty of fear about menopause and so little of what it was actually like.

P.S. Tonight I microwaved nacho cheese in a “29 and holding” mug I thought was so funny and ironic when Mom gave it to me when I was 25.

But Then There's Me

So, my husband should be going out of town next week. This will be only the third time in our nine-year relationship that we will have been apart overnight.

The first was in December 2016. I went to Florida solo to visit my mom, grandma, and aunt—all of whom are dead now, in that order.

Which feels impossible when I write it that way. At the time, they were simply people I was going to see.

It was very early in our relationship, before we were married. We had been living together for less than two months. It was easy on both of us.

Then, in October 2024, he went to Indiana to look at a house. It was only a few days, and I had work, which I did from home each day. I cleaned the oven, cleaned the whole house, watched the entire first season of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, watched Room and Saltburn, baked cookies, and talked to him on the phone three to five times a day.

In some ways, it was kind of fun.

So, at the prospect of my husband being out of town next week for a few days, I figured it would be the same.

But next week, Juneteenth—a day I have off from work—falls during his trip. I didn't realize this until after all the plans were made: tickets bought, car reserved, hotel booked.

Why does one day—no work, no husband—hold some sort of newness that I'm examining yet can't quite explain?

In my first marriage, to a totally different guy, I was alone a lot. I was on my own a lot. There were months when he didn't step foot into the apartment where we lived, and I saw him only a few days a week. In many regards, it was as if I wasn't married at all.

I was married, but I didn't share my life with him, and he did not share a life with me. We were coexisting in the way coworkers might sometimes see each other in meetings, make small talk, help out on a project, then disappear back into their own tasks completely separate from one another.

What do they even do on a daily basis?

We don't really know.

It's only the overlap we see and feel and know.

But this marriage has been different. From the start, we wove our lives together into one. The minutes, the hours, the days, the weeks—it is intrinsically linked. We have time apart, hours here and there. We have separate hobbies, hours here and there. But even apart, there's this line of communication: texts when we get there, when we leave, check-ins, do you need anything, do you want a Coke from the gas station?

Perhaps it's the solitude, quietness, the realization of how noisy my life is.
How full.

Of course, there is the background noise: another person with whom I share my home, moving from room to room, working, taking phone calls with colleagues, watching TV.

But then there's me.

When all that external noise falls away, I fill it with podcasts, TV, YouTube, music, voice messages to friends. I am always filling the void.

I keep picturing ten o'clock on that Friday morning.

No meetings?

No husband in the next room?

No agenda?

Just coffee growing cold somewhere in the house and no particular reason to be anywhere.

Just open-ended moments.

Just who I am when nobody needs anything from me.

Who I am when nobody even wants anything from me.

My mother is gone.

My grandmother is gone.

My aunt is gone.

The first time we spent a night apart, they were all still here.

And, for now, my husband is simply my husband. In the next room. Going on a road trip. Mowing the grass. Stopping at the gas station.

Footsteps echoing from the other side of the house.

But a thirty-six-year age gap has a way of making the future feel less hypothetical.

Maybe that's what feels so strange about next Friday.

Not that he will be gone temporarily.

That someday he will truly be gone forever.

For one quiet Friday, I find myself staring at the smallest possible version of that reality.

No work. No husband. Just me.

Maybe that's what feels so strange about the whole thing.

Not being alone, but remembering I will eventually have to re-learn how.

The Second House in Four Years

Tomorrow, I am going to a neighbor’s house to hang out.

Aside from my own, I’ve only ever been inside one other house in this neighborhood, and every minute of those ten minutes, I was praying to leave.

Easter last year, the wife next door asked if we wanted some of the Easter dinner leftovers. I had assumed Paul would decline, but instead, I found myself tasked with getting Tupperware from the kitchen. I brought three containers. Few enough not to seem greedy, and few enough not to commit to too much time in the house, but enough to seem earnest.

Luckily, the kitchen was near the door, so at the time, I considered myself lucky. She showed me items and asked if I wanted some. I said sure to everything, but knew deep down I didn’t want any of it. 

But what do you do in this situation? Say, no, I don’t want your baked beans that are a special recipe and have been a family favorite for decades, because if I know one thing about myself, it’s that I secretly prefer baked beans straight out of the can, bland, room temperature, and scooped out with chips. Potato or tortilla, depending on my mood. Sometimes I can get a little wild.

I saw sweet release in sight as she snapped a lid on the third container with macaroni and cheese inside. Which, perhaps this is bragging and not the right time to mention, but I make very, very, very good macaroni and cheese. I hand-shred extra sharp cheddar from a block. I freshly grate Parmesan off a fragrant, hard hunk. I slowly stir the bits of cheese into evaporated milk and macaroni over low heat and watch them melt into a beautiful, decadent blend. I didn’t want her mac and cheese. I wanted the third dish filled so I could leave.

But alas, friends, perhaps you see by the mass of words that follow this sentence that there is much more to this story. I was not free. Freedom remained elusive and cold, for she then pulled out paper plates and aluminum foil and insisted I take half of a chocolate cake, which she was already cutting and placing on a flimsy paper plate.

Then, after she had forced upon me a little bit of everything, she did the most dreaded thing one could do.

“Would you like a tour?”

“Oh no, no, Paul’s waiting for me and I probably need to get this in the fridge,” I said, gesturing to a mass of food I didn’t want.

“But this is the first time you’ve been to my house.”

Now, I will be honest, I have no idea what exactly that means. I guess somewhere deep in some Southern etiquette book, you are supposed to guide your first-time guest from room to room and show them everything, from the shitter to the bed you fuck in. Maybe I’d be more inclined if I wanted to be her friend, but I didn’t. Just to be clear, it wasn’t because she was elderly. I’ve had and will have senior citizen friends. It’s because she’s a proven, grade-A, top-tier bitch and gossip.

And so I finally was able to leave and carry the unwanted loot home, where I, not being one to completely close myself off, tried a bit of each and then tenderly tipped each container into the trash, disappointed that I suddenly had enough dirty dishes to run the dishwasher after only ten minutes.

But that was a year ago, and now, tomorrow, I am going to a different neighbor’s house. I actually think I could like her. She seems exactly as neurotic as me.

Her husband will be at “group,” which from context clues I have gathered is some version of AA or NA for people who want to not drink or use drugs but refuse AA or NA to do it. Whether “group” is some intellectualized or religiousized or medicalized version remains unknown to me. I’ve seen both. Get sober through science! Get sober through Jesus! Get sober through a pill! I don’t really have strong opinions. I just got sober the same way people have done it since the ’40's and wasn’t too worried about some fandangled new way. AA was just fine for me.

But enough of that! Get this, friends.

When she invited me, she said we could meet at her house or “go out for a charcuterie.” Can you imagine? Anyone who knows me — and of course this woman doesn’t know me — should know that I, of all people, will not be buying cold cuts, crackers, and cheese dried up on a wood board at a 10x markup, right now in Trump’s economy!

Yes, I was forged and quenched like a sword in practicality. Watch now as I, at the age of thirty-eight, mysteriously turn into my mother when I was a child. I am peering down at my own round, youthful, hopeful face, two Lunchables — the ’90s charcuterie predecessor — clutched in my two tiny hands. I can hear my mother’s voice and my voice mashed in garbled synchrony:

“For that price, I could buy a whole box of crackers, a whole pack of bologna, a whole thing of cheese singles.”

She wasn’t wrong.

Just as I wasn’t wrong to text back, “Your house is fine,” when in reality, I am choosing the lesser of two evils. Apparently there is something worse than a neighbor's house and it's spending $25 on $5 of meat cheese, and crackers.

I offer to bake cookies and bring them.

Because, again I am bragging, I am very good at making cookies. People rave about how soft and perfect they are. The trick, you see, is to pull them out of the oven before they seem done.  The key step, then, is to carefully remove them from the pan onto a cooling rack, let the room air circulate around the cookie so it cools slightly and the heat never tips too far.

That’s the main issue, people with hard cookies or overdone cookies — they wait for it to look like the perfect cookie in the oven, or leave them on the pan, forgetting the pan and the heat inside the dough will continue to bake.

I'm sorry. 

So what the fuck is the point of all this you may ask.

Jesus, I don’t know. It’s all kind of meaningless.

The distance between how I understand the world and how others do, how I find myself going to someone else’s house for the second time in two years four years of living in this neighborhood. It’s strange to be me, and probably ten times stranger for these people to meet me.

Parasocial Paramour.

"Life is made up of desires that seem big and vital one minute, and little and absurd the next. I guess we get what's best for us in the end."

 — Alice Caldwell Rice

"Approach/Avoidance is psychology-speak for repeatedly seeking something out and then running away right before you get it, and it’s a common pattern of behavior around power exchange and kink in general."

— The Dominance Playbook, Anton Fulmer

Over the past five years, I've cycled through crushes which, at least for me and my emotional and mental investment, bordered on much more than just a silly schoolgirl crush. I would pour the cement foundation for a house I couldn't yet afford. I was ready to build a life with them all. Why not? If not for this pesky little marriage I found myself in, we could be together. They were what I wanted!

Through these one-way-road relationships, I would push up to the line of plausible deniability. If I was ever called out, I could claim it was just friendship. But assuredly, I tell you, I flirted openly on the Internet, relying on the safety of multiple state lines to protect me—miles and miles of space between us. I could blame all kinds of external forces for why I wasn't happy. It was all these external things holding me back. Distance. Marriage. Husbands. Boyfriends. Timing. Money.

And over the past few months, these crushes fell away. Fell to the sidelines. Fell apart. They seemed fucking stupid. I didn't love them. Actually, I wasn't even sure how much I really liked them. I liked the idea of being close to the edge but never crossing it.

You know, no one is actually stopping me from cheating but myself. No one is stopping me from leaving my husband for any one of these women but myself. At some point, surely, I was bound to look at myself. Hi! It's me! I'm the problem! It's me.

But is it really a problem? Am I actually a problem?

When I was very young, being the only child of a single mom in the '90s, I was allowed to free roam. Until fourth grade, the only rule was that I be home before dark and never go past where the sidewalk ended (just like the Shel Silverstein poem, you know?).

I remember walking to the end of the sidewalk, looking over my shoulder toward our apartment door, and hovering a single foot over the lush, manicured apartment grass. I touched the tip of my shoe down for barely a second, then lifted it up again. When my mother, through maternal psychic discipline, didn't immediately appear at the door to scold me, I planted one whole foot.

I continued to look back at the door. Nothing.

I made a choice then—to test the limits. If Mom came out, I would lie. I would say that I fell off the sidewalk into the grass.

I planted the second foot.

I was past where the sidewalk ended. I was out of bounds.

For five or ten wild seconds before I returned to the safe cement.

Now, almost forty years old, I realize no one would have stopped me. I could have run in that field. I could have run away. I could have run to Mexico.

But I didn't.

In hindsight, my mother trusted me. I knew it. This allowed me unsupervised freedom. It I was type to bolt, I would have played in a locked house.

Still, I felt wild and ungovernable and bad to the bone from those few seconds.

And I have lived my life like that ever since.

Doing what I have been told to do, but just up against the line. Toes over the line. Testing the hold of the rules. Thinking that I am like a prisoner shifting in handcuffs to see if the latch is really holding, secretly hoping there was a weak point.

But in reality, I am like a child who squirms and protests a hug to test the hold of love. Secretly grateful when the grip tightens.

My love to obey. Flirt with the line. Touch the line. Toe over the line.

But never run.

I read a short story about a man who liked to be tied up for sex. He pulled and tested his constraints to enhance the sensation of being bound. He wanted sex with men, but he didn't want to want it. Being bound freed him to enjoy sex because it freed him from the responsibility of it all. Accountability. Choice. Gone. No longer his. So he could relax into it with the notion that he couldn't run away even if he tried. Blame the ropes.

But ultimately, he was paying a male dom to tie him up and stroke him, so at what point did he start thinking he wasn't laying down the tracks toward his destination?

Deep denial.

The illusion of being trapped and stuck.

At what point do I admit what I want and quit acting like external factors hold me back? Nothing holds me back but myself. I am choosing this.

Years and years telling myself I am trapped, I am stuck, as if I didn't build this world brick by brick. Touching the wall I constructed myself. Labored to make. Ah! If only there wasn't this beautiful fence I commissioned.and paid for myself!

And it wasn't sudden—my seemingly sudden disinterest in these parasocial paramours. But when I finally realized I wasn't stopped by any tangible constraint but my own. Patterns built up evidence.

I probably only ever touched a toe to the grass because I wanted to know I could.

But I returned to the sidewalk because I didn't want to.

It wasn't fear.

It was love.

Even if there is a little fear. 

My want to stay is stronger than my want to run.

My desire to see it through is stronger than my desire for something new.

Fuck, I don't know if that's maturity.

Or fulfillment.

But it's something to think about.

Mental Skin Tag

    I never had skin tags before. But now I have one too prominent to ignore, and two smaller friends beginning to form on my neck. Google tells me it’s likely due to friction—clothing and jewelry rubbing against the skin. I look at my jewelry box and closet with horror and suspicion. Or maybe it’s aging. Or genetics.

    I am older. I remember my mother having a few around her neck—one of those things I egotistically assumed would never happen to me. Like dry skin on the bottoms of your feet. Or flabby arms.

    But alas, like everything else I believed about my future as a child, I was wrong. Now there is a skin tag big enough to freeze off. I have the kit. I’ve read the instructions. I just haven’t yet. But it does need to go, even if its two little friends will grow and replace it in no time.

    It’s like how, for years—years on years on years, folded on top of more years—I haven’t really been plagued with many new thoughts. Sure, I’ve had new issues. Grappled with feelings. Made goals. Worked. Succeeded. Failed. All that. But thoughts? Recurring new thoughts that linger, rubbing, pressing into my brain? No. Not in years.

    Yes, I’ve had those tired, old thoughts that pop into my head. The negative ones programmed in childhood, surfacing at the worst moments. That I’m unlovable. That I ruin everything. But these aren’t new thoughts. They fade into the noise of my brain and my life—like crumbs on the counter, brushed into the trash. Until panic strikes and another preprogrammed thought appears.

    But now this is a new thought. I wake at 3 a.m. with a new thought, a new fear, rubbing on my brain—the kind of friction that could cause a mental skin tag in just a week.

I haven’t made out with someone in over a decade.

I don’t know when I will again.

Possibly never.

    Silly. I want to tell myself this is silly. Childish—to care about something like this. To cry about something so stupid at 3 a.m., quietly, of course, in bed. It’s probably the same thing men during the Depression thought about steaks. Or women in WWII missing silk stockings—after so long, unsure if they’d ever have them again. For some of them, it probably was never again. But most lived to see steak and stockings again and those thoughts ended. I might live that long too. I have faith I could be one of the lucky few.

    If it even is lucky. WWII alleviated the Depression. The Atomic Bomb ended WWII. We humans often trade one pain for another. A new problem hidden in solution-wrapping paper, soon discarded, leaving only what’s inside. Then I rationalize: if I had some passionate tryst, what new struggles would it unlock? Like Pandora’s box, some things are best left unknown. Perhaps I am lucky to be without. Perhaps people in the past told themselves that too.

    I chuckle through my tears as I hold a pillow tighter to my chest. Imagine my ego, my conceit, to compare a tongue uncaressed to starvation and war. Perhaps women drawing lines on their legs laughed too. Perhaps they reminded themselves that others had endured far worse than bare legs and no steak.

    Are we only human? Wanting what we don’t have, then reminding ourselves of what we do. Leaning on progress like a crutch. I have it better than anyone in the past; therefore, it must be enough. I am wrong to want more. Always more. More. More. But isn’t the wanting of more how we progress? 

    A skin tag just mean I am older, wiser, connected to my mother. My neck is bathed in a wealth of 24k gold and Bandolino shirts. Isn't desire beyond my sufficiency just indulgent? 

Behind all my rationalization: Still, this new thought—my new thought—unwanted, unnerving, unwelcome—enters my mind:

I haven’t made out with someone in over a decade.

I don’t know when I will again.

Possibly never.

    I’m unsure how to address it other than to wait for the mental skin tag to grow large enough to freeze off. Wait for another to grow in its place. Maybe, with time, it won’t be so prominent. Maybe it will become like crumbs on the counter—a thought easily discarded. Not a thought like a favorite necklace or shirt, rubbing a skin tag on to my neck.

inheritance.

Last night I dreamt

the mother of a boy I once knew

stalked me through crowds,

eyes fixed, mouth set.

Then she attacked me in public.

Everyone in the crowd

just stood there, staring.

When I woke, I felt safe.

I knew she was dead—

and so was her son.

Actually, everyone who has ever hurt me,

truly hurt me,

is dead.

Except one.

That’s not some tough-girl flex.

              More like a fun fact.

Eight years ago my mom died.

Yes—everyone who has ever hurt me,

truly hurt me,

is dead.

Except one.

It wasn’t until this morning

I could be honest—with myself,

with others.

All this stuff—my mother,

in her dying days,

curated and selected

just for me—

it’s a burden, not a blessing.

No gift. No inheritance.

Just a continuation I wish to end.

It took me eight years to say no.

To remind myself:

everyone who has ever hurt me,

truly hurt me,

is dead.

Except one.

I am safe.

Safe for now.

I can outlive the worst of them.

The Reset.

Cleaning out the office—

a fresh start

for the new job—

and I found my mother’s lipstick.

Too dark, too used,

still in her purse

when they handed it to me

after she died.

It’s been eight years.

It sat on a desk in plain view

for coworkers to see,

then in a box,

moved across state lines,

and settled here, waiting

for this moment.

Is this the missing relic

I’ve needed?

I’ve never used it.

But tonight I might.

Mom's Salmon Patty Recipe

First, you need a can of salmon. In the ’90s, every food pantry box seemed to have one. That might be true—every box we got had a can of salmon. Good protein. Or whatever my mom said. You had to find something good about every handout, or self-pity would be on the horizon.

Open the can and empty it into a bowl. Use your hands to crush the bones. For those who’ve never opened a can of salmon, it’s canned whole—bones and all. Cooking softens them, though they’re still a little crunchy unless you break them up. At this point, my mom would always remind me, “Good calcium. You won’t ever break a bone eating this.” I’m 38 and have never broken a bone, so it must be true.

Then you add an egg. The recipe calls for breadcrumbs or crackers, but we didn’t always have those. Breadcrumbs were surprisingly pricey in the ’90s for just dried, ground-up bread. Mom insisted almost anything would do. No breadcrumbs? No crackers? No problem. Stale bread, cereal, oatmeal, even rice—or rice cakes—worked. Crush it up, mix it into a dough, pat into patties, fry in oil, and eat.

I made salmon patties last night. Same recipe, but now I always have crackers on hand—name-brand and whole wheat. The egg was organic, cage-free, bougie from Costco. Stuff I’m not sure even existed in the ’90s. It feels good to make and eat salmon patties by choice and nostalgia, rather than necessity.

Funny how the things once hated—the scarlet letter “P” for poor of childhood—can, later, become a security blanket. Scarcity turned to comfort, necessity to nostalgia, shame to something I can hold in my hands and eat.

sarcasm chasm

“I wish I had gotten to know your mom more.”

I want to retort, “Yeah, what a shame for you.

My mom died three months after we married.”

Because I use hurtful humor

to look stronger than I am.

But I don’t—because that response

came to me five hours later.

Instead, I cry. You say, “You look

just like her.” I know. As I get older,

I see her in the mirror more every day.

It makes me wish she could see me now.

I wish you had gotten to know her more, too.

If I die at the same age as my mother...

I have just 20 more years.

the day my aunt told me a story about her 7 lb. cat who dragged a 12 lb. turkey to the other room and growled until she ate it clean

I was petting a cat who had once bitten me

with the hand that still bore—

a mark so faint a lover wouldn’t see it—

only me, who remembers the impact.

I was petting that now-purring cat

with that same hand when you answered

the phone. Hurt fades as we encounter

kindness. The feral cat who once bit—

a huge monster then—

now rests on my lap months later.

Enough treats, enough food, enough kind words

can soften even claws.

It’s the same thing that got me

to call you—

and you to answer,

“Happy Julie’s birthday.”

Your dead sister. My dead mom.

I had forgotten.

It’s that same thing

which lets us talk about anything but my mother—

about all the cats you’ve tamed,

the ones I’ve just started.

We agree:

no matter the time,

no matter how sweet,

inside, always—

a bit of the feral remains.

Maybe, inside me, that wild speck,

that lone cell—probably a neuron,

maybe muscle—

just days ago

saw you as looming black winds,

ready to sweep me into darkness.

Feeble like a child—

a child whose whole world,

every emotion,

was implanted by your jealous sister,

my dead mother.

How I was fearful of the worst.

What exactly, I couldn’t say.

Yet today, you seem the mother

I wish I had.

The woman I wish to become.

My mother was right

to be your jealous sister.

But now I know—

she was my jealous mother as well.

We—two feral cats

she could never fully tame.

Prison Rules

She was moving because she was getting divorced—carrying boxes into the house of a new guy. She was certain she would marry him, the homeowner, but not yet. Not until her divorce was finalized.

In her hands, a shoebox full of canary yellow envelopes. Uniform in color and size. All addressed to a P.O. Box in Indianapolis. The return address had no name—no first, no last—just a nine-digit number. An inmate number. Red letters stamped the envelopes: INMATE CORRESPONDENCE. A warning followed, noting the contents were subject to examination.

Letters from her father.

Since the '90s, since she was a child, she had carried that box from home to home. Eight homes in total: childhood homes, dorm rooms, apartments, the spare bedroom of her first husband’s family.

She carried them to remember. For proof—if someone ever doubted her. Sharing her childhood felt like being on the witness stand: too many gaps in the story, too fantastic a tale, too few details.

As she walked past the trash can toward the front door of the home she would occupy for the next five years, she paused. The box was suddenly heavy. Her arms hurt.

She no longer cared to prove anything to anyone—because she knew, finally, what was real.

At one point, she had told a therapist that when she was ready to let go of the letters, she would burn them. But that seemed too formal, too dramatic—too meaningful a send-off.

Tossing them in the garbage, like a bloody tampon to live with the cat shit, felt right.

She propped open the lid and flipped the box in. It landed on top of banana peels and grocery sacks of used kitty litter.

She remembered a Sunday morning in the car—eight years old again.

"I don't want to go," the little girl had whined from the passenger seat.

"Now, Carrie, I already promised him," her mother said firmly.

They were supposed to be going to church. But she noticed the route wasn’t familiar. Not a church route. It was a less familiar, yet still known one.

"Are we going to the prison?" Carrie asked. But she already knew the answer.

She didn’t particularly want to go to church—but she definitely didn’t want to go to prison.

They were close. They had passed the sign warning drivers not to pick up hitchhikers.

Around then, her mother would give the usual reminder: Don’t act like a brat.

In the dirt and gravel parking lot, the mother and daughter got out and walked to a small, closet-sized shed by the gate. Inside, a man took their names and license plate number. Her mother always forgot it, so Carrie had to run back to the car, read it out loud, and recite it.

"She’s a really smart girl," her mother would beam, patting her on the shoulder.

The man didn’t acknowledge the compliment. He just pressed a button. A buzzer sounded. The high chain-link fence crowned with barbed wire opened.

"Have a good visit," he said. He said that to all of them. His supervisor called it customer service. He called it a waste of breath when talking to his wife.

Long corridors. A locker room. Her mother surrendered her purse and keys. A few folded bills from her wallet went into a clear sandwich bag.

They entered the women’s side. Female visitors were patted down by female guards, male visitors by male guards—in separate rooms. The women’s side was always crowded. Carrie often thought it would be faster if they could just use the men’s line.

"Arms out," a large woman commanded. They complied.

Metal detector.

Carrie always feared it would go off on her. Why? She didn’t know. But she was always scared she’d do something wrong here.

After inspecting their shoes, the guard turned to the mother.

"What is your relationship with the inmate Thompson? Girlfriend? Wife?"

"Oh no! I'm not dating him."

"Okay, so you're his friend?"

"Not really. I'm here with her—she's his daughter."

"Yes, she is his daughter. I know that. What is your relationship? Court appointed escort?"

The girl looked from face to face as the women squared off over the miscommunication. Why did mom always make it so hard?

Finally, she stepped in, pulling a word from an afternoon TV show she wasn’t supposed to watch.

"She’s his baby mama. I'm his daughter and she is my mother."

Checking a box on her clipboard the guard said, "Oh. Okay. You can proceed. Remember the rules," the guard said, pointing to a large wall of them.

No sitting on laps.

Inmates are not allowed to handle money.

Hands visible on the table.

No yelling.

All clothing, including shoes and jackets, must stay on at all times.

There were more rules, but they were already being escorted toward the visitors' room.

But her mother reviewed the important ones in the car every time:

Don’t tell him anything personal—not your best friend's name, not your school, not your teacher’s name.

Don’t let him touch money.

If we get him a candy bar, you put the dollar in and press the buttons.

Be sure to tell him how well you’re doing in school.

Don’t talk too much.

Don’t talk to anyone but me and him and the guards.

Only answer the guards' questions.

Don’t offer anything extra.

The visiting room wasn’t like on TV. No Plexiglass. No phones. It looked like an elementary school cafeteria—round tables with plastic chairs. A wall of vending machines: candy bars, chips, sodas. A coffee and hot chocolate machine that ground beans before spitting hot liquid into cups that dropped like magic. Always too hot.

Nothing over two dollars.

A mural of a beach scene was crudely painted on plywood and mounted to the wall. After the visit, you and the inmate could pose for a Polaroid in front of it. She had at least seven like that—in the same box that held the letters. Letters from her father. Always addressed to the P.O. Box her mom had opened just for him.

They were directed to a round table.

"Inmate Thompson will be with you shortly."

He approached, escorted by a guard. Her father seemed bigger than last time. As he always said, "Nothing in prison but to work out and read and write letters." His uniform wasn’t black-and-white stripes. It was denim. Levi’s jeans. Levi’s button-up shirt. A sliver of a white undershirt peeked from the collar.

No hugs. Other inmates hugged their visitors, but not him. Not them. No hugs. That was a rule reviewed in the car.

Hands flat on the table where the guards could see them.

"Can I hold your hand?" he asked.

The girl looked at her mother, who gave a small nod. He took her hand. It was heavy. Damp with sweat. She didn’t like it.

A few weeks later, a letter arrived, addressed to her:

“Sorry if your old geezer daddy embarrassed you by holding your hand. I’ll never do it again if you don’t want me to. You’re just growing into such a beautiful young lady. I got a little carried away holding your hand like that. I forget sometimes how grown-up you're getting. You’re not a little kid anymore. Still, you’ll always be my little girl.

I’ve been reading a lot, getting stronger. Stronger than I’ve ever been. Smarter too. You’d be surprised what a man can learn when he’s got nothing but time. When I get out, we’ll have a lot to talk about. Real talks. The way smart people, like us, talk."

She carried that letter for years. But it was instantly obvious—to both her and her mother—that she hadn’t been embarrassed.

Embarrassment is raising your hand in class and getting the answer wrong.

What she felt that day was fear—the uneasy, creeping kind that comes from not knowing exactly why you feel unsafe. At the time, she didn’t fully understand why he was there. Her mother first called it a small incident with drugs. Later, at nine-years-old, she was told the truth.  It had been a yearlong thing with a six-year-old girl.Deep down, Carrie had always known.

After a few silent minutes of hand holding, her mother intervened.

"Hey, Tommy, you want something to eat?"

"Sure," he said, releasing the girl's hand. She followed her parents to the vending machines, relieved.

"Why don’t you help your father, Carrie?" her mother said, handing her the sandwich bag of bills.

"Okay."

"I want a Snickers. That’s A9. And Lay’s chips. I ain’t had those in a while. That’s R3. Can you do that, Carrie? Can’t you, sweetie?" he asked.

The pet name felt uncomfortable. Like wearing a wet swimsuit all day, even if it was just for a second.

"Yeah."

She pulled out a dollar and fed it into the machine. Her small fingers pressed A, then 3.

The machine whirred and dropped a Cookies and Cream bar.

She knew her mistake immediately.

"I’m sorry," she whispered.

"Well, I guess you’ll have to have that candy, Carrie," her mother said, taking the money back. She didn’t particularly want a Cookies and Cream bar, but for the next ten years, everyone would think it was her favorite.

Seeing money change hands, a guard with a gun on his hip stepped closer to watch. Her mother rolled her eyes as if to mockingly say "God forbid an inmate almost touch a dollar bill."

Sighing, the mother said to the inmate:

"I’ll just have to do it myself as usual. You know, she’s smart in other ways. She’s been doing good in school. She's book smart. Like you. What you been reading, Tom?"

Yes, Carrie was smart. Smart enough to carry it all for years—because no one would believe her.

Not when hundreds of men behind those walls shared the same story.

And carrying that weight was the only way for their children to survive.

The Unicorn in the Garden: Fifty-Four Dollars of Memory

Sunday, May 11, 7:38 p.m., text message from Aunt Becky:

"Hi. And happy fur Mother’s Day. I went up to New York City yesterday for a performance. I found a couple of things for you that reminded me of your mother. I also got a $35 henna tattoo."

Me:

"It’s so thoughtful of you to send me something that reminds you of my mom. I’m sure you feel it too—Mother’s Day gets a little weird after your mom’s gone."

Her:

"Yep, it’s weird. And so is Father’s Day when they’re gone—and not having kids to be their mom or have a father person."

She says “fur Mother’s Day” because we’re both childless adult orphans, my aunt and I. But we have cats. The last two Kleins—even if, through marriage, we now have different last names. We orbit each other—tentative, awkward—desperate to connect, and scared to be rejected.

Her trip to the Met on Mother’s Day felt significant. I’ve never been—to the Met or to New York. Certainly not on Mother’s Day.

When her package of mother-relics arrived, I opened it slowly, uncertain of what grief might feel like in bubble wrap. Inside: a mouse pad, an enamel pin, and a greeting card with delicate quilling. Each featured The Unicorn Rests in a Garden, one of the Unicorn Tapestries. The price tags were still on, which meant I knew exactly what it cost her to remember my mother and share those memories with me: fifty-four dollars.

I sent a quick thank-you text. She replied, “It was ironic that I was at The Cloisters on Mother’s Day.”

I had to Google The Cloisters... and then, just to be sure, “ironic.” I texted back, “It was!”—even though I wasn’t convinced it really was. The museum was open, and she was there by choice. Seeing medieval art on Mother’s Day didn’t seem any more ironic than me watching Beavis and Butt-Head that same morning.

Still, something about it struck an angelic chord. Maybe it was the effort. Maybe it was the gesture. Maybe it was simply that someone remembered.

And the things she sent—they felt like my mother. But not the version I knew as an adult. They brought back the woman I vaguely remember as a child. Maybe even the one my aunt knew better: before the bitterness, before the disappointment. A mother who still collected unicorns. Who still believed in magic. A woman who vanished long before she actually died.

That version of my mother is someone I’ve come to grieve in pieces. Unlike Aunt Becky, I have no such relics to offer her—nothing of her mother’s, or even of her. My own mother made sure of that. She spent decades keeping both my aunt and grandmother out of our lives. I was left with only a few cryptic explanations, scattered like breadcrumbs by a wounded, vengeful woman to a trusting, hungry child. They didn’t make sense then. They still don’t.

And yet, I still find myself trying to make sense of it. Maybe family is just complicated. Maybe, as an only child, I’ll never fully grasp the tangled roots of sibling rivalry. My successful aunt—a towering figure—against my struggling single mom.

Or maybe it was more personal: the college boyfriend my mom slept with. The husband she cheered when he got another woman—not my aunt—pregnant. The petty, private feuds that bloomed into lifelong rifts.

I’ll never know the full truth, and maybe that’s the inheritance: an unsolvable puzzle. Still, for all the silence and suspicion, this same aunt—estranged, distant—might have known my mother better than I ever could.

What I do know is this: my mother never went to the Met. Never visited The Cloisters. Never saw the Unicorn Tapestries. Not on Mother’s Day. Not on any day. And she didn’t have $54 to spend in any gift shop. She was not like Aunt Becky.

So what becomes of the unrealized dreams of the dead? Do they linger in the spaces they leave behind?

No. They live in the mess of the living who remain.

They become a mouse pad on my desk.

An enamel pin on my corkboard.

A card too beautiful to send.

A package sent across a silent rift,

a thank-you to an aunt
my mother vowed never to speak to again.

Maybe that’s ironic.

Or maybe it’s just one of grief’s stranger tricks: the only way left to commune with my mother is through the person she tried so hard to erase.

Her legacy lives in me, but only if I tear down what she built to keep others out. And perhaps—though I barely dare say it—I’m starting to admire Aunt Becky. She’s reaching out—in the quiet, in the after—when my mother never did.

Perhaps, someday, I will be at The Cloisters on Mother's Day.
Wouldn't that be ironic?

My Hermit Year (almost halfway through)

"A young person is like the springtime of the year. The full time of the fruit is not yet, but there is promise of the blossom...Know that your life is full of glad promise. Such blessings can be yours, such joys, such wonders, as long as you develop in the sunshine of God's love."

My hermit year, almost
halfway through, is deliciously lonely—
lonely like my only-child childhood,
when a five-minute conversation
could be relived seven times before sundown,
each a different variation—
in the past, in the present,
in some imagined future—
each with a different ending.

The days folded like origami:
cranes, cats, boxes—
moments flaking off
like fish in a church fish fry sandwich,
from a church I’d never been to,
except now, because of a sign by the road
Mother saw.

We always stopped.
Summers were storytime adventures
unbothered by people or plans.
We walked through woods,
built fairy teepees from twigs,
introduced ourselves to ferns
and learned their names.
Reading, reading, reading,
acting out TV scenes—
maybe this is how people behave?

I wanted to understand them—
in the same way I wanted
to understand the opossum’s skeleton
behind a bush,
where I watched the flesh
rot away in the heat
of one lovely, lonely summer.
I learned more from that opossum
than any teacher ever tried to give.

And I’d fall asleep at night
not knowing a single thing
about what I was doing
and feeling that might be okay—
a peace in not needing answers,
just the quiet rhythm of being.
Tonight, I will sleep the same way.

there is no such thing as death or birth

If you cut me open, snipped off an ovary, and sliced it in half, you’d find at least 100,000 beacons of potential—eggs. I was born with them already. Once, I was an egg inside my mother, while she was an unborn child inside my grandmother. We were three generations nested like Russian dolls—but I didn’t know it then. 

How strange, that I, as an egg, was with my mother before she was even born. I was there, in a way, when she watched Star Trek, lost her virginity, played a small role in a high school play.

If I were pregnant with a daughter now, she would come from an egg that once existed inside my mother. That egg, formed inside me but first nestled within her, would have felt the rhythm of her heartbeat, the warmth of her body—even though she’s been gone nearly eight years. That egg was with me the day my mother died. It was there through every argument, every first and last word, every time I got drunk, every time I cried.

How can birth or death be entirely real, in the way we’re told, when a newborn’s essence already existed decades before they took form? I’m not saying it’s reincarnation—only that the threads of life vibrate across time in ways we barely understand.

Each month, as my body discards another egg, I feel a pang—not only for the child I don’t have, but for the slow, cellular letting go of my mother. The mother I pushed away, again and again. The mother who, even now, I carry. The mother I was with before she was born, but didn't try to understand till she was dead. But death and birth may not be entirely real.

My Final Thought

The Appalachian Mountains are older than the North Star,
the Atlantic Ocean, even trees. I live at their feet,
searching for a poem in reruns of Jerry Springer.

It feels close—like vein under skin,
the last great space where all our tangled roots are fed
as if the mountains themselves know
the blood buried in the soil beneath our stories.
Stories just like the reruns of Jerry Springer,
where the same betrayals play out, again and again.

What family doesn’t have a call-girl cousin,
a child whose father’s not who they think,
a sister who stole her sister’s man?
Branches growing from a strong trunk. Why—

—In college, my mother slept with my aunt’s boyfriend.
My aunt swears it didn’t happen—he only liked blondes,
that my brunette mother must’ve said it just to hurt her.

But now my mother is dead. I have her journals,
and I am alone
in these deep-time mountains,
re-reading, not speaking, the truth.

Final Thought:
You only get one family, like Jerry says.
When that family betrays you, it’s hard to reunite.
But here, in these mountains, I’ve learned
to sip from the stream that carries without words.
Here, I pick leaves from the trees—
slowly, I listen to the silence speak,
and in it, forgiveness isn’t asked of you.
but the earth lets you choose what to hold
and what to release into the ancient wilds.