My Muse

It serves me right for neglecting her. She left me. I took her for granted, and she left me.

She had always been there, hovering in the periphery. Ever since I was a small child, she would tap on my shoulder and invite me to play.

As I grew older, she became the drug I used to escape the daily tortures I’d endure; she’d take me to places and to people I wanted to be a part of.

In my adolescence, she became a needy lover beckoning me at all hours of the day and night. She’d cause me to leave gatherings just to please her, and I happily obliged. Young, passionate love.

She knew I had a masochistic desire to continually become infatuated with men who, I know now, weren’t worth the time or precious energy I expelled over them. During these calamitous times, she would distance herself a bit, but would never completely abandon me; and when the unrequited or unworthy lover would depart leaving nothing but a layer of silt on my heart and torn calendar pages, she would be there to console and embrace me. Time and time again, we did that dance.

For a time, we reached a point of harmonious stasis, and we were both happy.

It was during this time of contentment, that the lover who would become my current partner arrived, and with his pale green eyes and gentle assertiveness, he began to draw my attention away from her.

Ever loyal, she stayed by my side, but being as needy and ravenous as she always was, she grew frustrated and distant.

We’d visit each other infrequently, but it wasn’t the same as it had been during the years of teenage angst. In the last few years, she had called on me at the most inopportune times: in the shower, during a walk, with raw chicken parts between my fingers as I prepped dinner, always at times when I had no implements to appease her.

She would whisper in my ear while I washed dished and would spark my brain with her soft nuzzles.

When she insisted on pestering me at work, I would shoo her away and hope that she’d call on me at a better time, but that better time would never come. Her pleas to me became increasingly frequent, and incessant in their desperation; hearing from her became painful, and I became paralyzed with silence from the fear that we could never have what we once used to.

After years of neglect, she left me. I would wait for her, but she wouldn’t arrive. The hallow pain in my heart ached to think that I had taken her for granted and that she may never return to me.

Weeks of near radio silence had caused me to reflect and decide that I needed her back, but I wasn’t sure where to look. I needed to learn to manage how to be in a joyful, loving relationship with both my partner, and woo her back as well and live in harmony with both. My partner knew how much I needed her in my life, and supported me in my search.

I looked for her in the usual places: at the kitchen sink, on long walks, in my bed, during my silent times, but my search was unfruitful.

Unexpectedly, she began to emerge like a sunken ship rising from the ocean or a ghost materializing slowly before my eyes. I found her, in all her glory, radiant, and vibrant as ever, doing a samba among several Rock en Espanol bands that I had great nostalgia for.

Gingerly and humbly, I approached her. She smiled in her usual way and took my hand to start a brand new dance.

We are not what we used to be, but we are starting over with empty pages full of possibilities.

Curse of the Gods

Written for MWBB Flash Fic challenge. Prompt Song: “Moksha” by Vas

I never remembered how I got there. Perhaps it fell over me like a dark veil or a burial shroud; or maybe I was the one tumbling into it without preamble.

But, they were always filled with snakes that slithered and contorted into the shapes of smooth hips that swayed, seducing me like a silent metronome. I was terrified and allured all at once.

The line between fantasy and reality, friend or foe, had blurred beyond recognition, and I could not force myself to care. Self preservation was barely a whispered thought in the chaos of emotions that argued in my mind.

A riotous battle ensued within my pounding chest; I both moved toward the serpentine movements and wanted to recoil from the danger that surely lurked within each shifting curve.

I could not speak nor could I fight against the magnetism that pulled me forth.

I had never felt so akin to a moth, welcoming the scalding on my skin as I approached my certain death with my an unbridled desire for the joyous oblivion that laid just ahead burning me and tugging at me from the inside.

The creature’s villainous green orbs that it dared to call eyes called to me like a siren song, and the almost certainly venomous parting, smiling lips heated my blood to a rumbling boil.

My traitorous form sought to close the space between my parched mouth and the smirking grin before me. And as my dry lips were about to reach the smooth, cool oasis they yearned for, I was viciously and violently torn away from unconsciousness and flung into a puddle of my own stagnant sweat and twisted, over-heated sheets.

“No!” I croaked clutching the sheets only to remember I was alone once more (I had been alone).

That dream had been what those dreams always are, a taunt dangled before me by the gods.

The New Cradle of Life

Written for the following Writing Prompt: https://thetsuruokafiles.wordpress.com/2015/05/26/mid-week-blues-buster-week-2-52-two-years-before-the-mast/

Prompt Song: “Eminence Front” by The Who

She’d saved for several years.

After acquiring a modest home and a modest vehicle in a modest neighborhood to offer a good foundation, Alana was finally bearing witness to the creation of life she’d been craving for so long.

Over several decades, the process had been perfected to the point where it only took a few days instead of a few months for the building blocks of life to come together.

The forty-something year-old sat comfortably in a warm room as the synthetic womb fed and cocooned the still growing fetus within.

Alana was perfectly capable of physically carrying a child to term, and people in her socioeconomic class still continued to birth children naturally, but nine months felt like too long for a working, single woman to play incubator.

And not only did it come with more health risks than Alana cared to entertain, but more traditional methods of conception didn’t offer as high a probability of ensuring that her offspring would be free of the diseases that had killed many of the women in her family at young ages.

Alana herself had taken extreme measures to help prevent becoming a victim of those hereditary illnesses by undergoing several heavily invasive surgeries.

The red headed woman shook those thoughts out of her head, and continued to maintain a vigilant gaze on her growing child. Her tired eyes were grateful for the dim and soothing lighting in the small circular room.

Though it wasn’t required to do so, Alana had taken maternity leave from running a nonprofit women’s organization to be present for every phase of the creation and birth process. Though she’d been antsy the first two days wondering if things were being taken care of at work, by the fifth day, she could think of nothing else but the tiny being floating peacefully before her. Alana was so transfixed by the subtle changes that were taking place behind the glass that she’d refused to leave Maya’s side to eat or shower. Luckily, the birthing center encouraged parents to spend as much time with the newly forming babies as possible to help both parent and child bond.

Walking away from the comfortable, cushioned sofa and tepid tea on the side table, Alana lied on the mattress that curved around the glass that housed the sleeping child.

“Maya. Maya,” Alana cooed softly as she bent closer to the womb and traced a finger over the warm glass.

She smiled as the baby wiggled sleepily in recognition to her mother’s voice.

The nervousness of realizing that Alana would now have to care for and protect this tiny child had soon been overshadowed by the excitement that in just three more days, she’d be able to hold her daughter and take her home.

My Own Enemy

Written for Mid-Week Blues-Bluster Week 2.40 Prompt Song “Me and the Devil” by Gil Scott-Heron.

Eva felt the unforgiving, overcast light permeate through the curtains before violently awakening, barely making it to the porcelain bowl to wretch up the remnants of the previous night.

She should know better than to mix tequila and vodka; it felt like Mexico and Russia were having an agave/potato war in her belly.

Washing her face and rinsing her mouth, Eva flexed her fingers, and her knuckles ached with new but already purpling bruises.

She gasped with horror and bit back tears before trying to find anything of herself she recognized in the stained mirror above the sink. The stranger peering back at her had a gaunt, pale face, and her dark eyes looked glassy and sunken like a shoe print on muddy graveyard sod.

“Fuck,” she fisted her hands into her limp, raven hair, “Not again,” she quietly mumbled a cry.

As usual, memories of what she’d done were dim, and last night was another unaccounted period of time for which she was still accountable and inevitably felt shitty for.

Covering her mouth, she clamped her teeth into her fist to keep from hollering. It was as if something or someone hijacked her body shoving her to impotently watch the action from the sidelines. Everything was fuzzy, and she’d claw and scream from the inside with little influence on the demon possessing and controlling the outcome.

“But it’s still my fault,” she reminded herself.

The familiar dread of facing consequences reared up inside of her, and she did not want to go into the bedroom to assess the damage like so many times before. Her apprehension made her feel like a child approaching a loved one in a coffin.

Eva hated herself for the things she did and wished she could exorcise the anger and the pain that engulfed her like flames that burnt the ones she claimed to love.

With a trembling hand on the doorknob, she opened the door and gingerly approached the slumped, cowering mound on the bed. Slowly, she knelt down on the carpet near the edge of the bed and abruptly shuddered when she saw her lover’s boyish face with a blossoming bruise on his cheek.

Her first instinct was to bring her open hand up to caress and soothe, but the marks on her knuckles reminded her that she had been the one who had marred his face with fists that no one deserved.

The tears Eva had been holding back unleashed themselves in torrents as she collapsed on the floor with unuttered apologizes.
He’d forgive her; he always did, but how would she forgive herself?

A Spade is a Spade

Written for Weekly Blues Buster prompt song “Bury My Troubles” by Imelda May

Bob welcomed the warm breeze as it flooded in from the driver’s side window, and was glad there was a short reprieve of silence as his Studebaker chugged along into the desert’s darkness.

One good thing about having a cut on his hand was the dual use of handkerchief wrapped around it; tipping up the brim of his fedora, he wiped the sweat from his hairline.

He was thankful his wife never asked questions about his business, but the briefest glimmer of concern in her dark eyes never went unnoticed when Bob came home with a black eye or a busted lip. But her worry always swam away like a prized fish through his slick palms, then she’d look away and reignite her tirade about hating the desert and missing the city.

The Bronx in her voice would kick up into a high-pitched whine until they were yelling at each other until he was disgusted with himself, then she’d bring on the waterworks.

Running a hand over his face, Bob shook the thought away and considered sending Mary some flowers just because, but then again that might lead to questions…, and then she’d bring up Mitzy again and make him sleep on the sofa.

“Christ,” he cursed to himself. Better not.

The quiet was short lived as the banging from the trunk resumed.

Bob grumbled, but thank the almighty for tiny miracles, he was almost there.

Cutting the engine and trudging toward the trunk, he took a moment to bask in the swirl of dust that kicked up.

The barrel-chested man opened the hatch to reveal a slip of a dark haired man, tied up and gagged, but flailing in the dark crevice. The boyish man let out a high pitched squeal as Bob unceremoniously dragged him out and forced him to stand.

Grabbing a shovel and leaving his lantern (the full moon lit up the pebbles and shrubs), Bob cut the rope on the man’s slender ankles and quickly pressed his snub nose pistol into his back. The older man’s actions were practiced, mechanical and dull in their tedium.

Bob forced the other man to march into the night and stood by with his gun fixed on him as he forced the waif to dig his own shallow grave all the while pleading mostly to himself as the older man wasn’t listening.

Bob yawned and momentarily considered helping dig just so he wouldn’t be out until sunrise, but his back, a veteran of years of brawls and spontaneous burials, protested.

“That’s enough,” Bob declared.

The man in the pit trembled in fear, “You don’t have to do this,” he plead.

Bob sighed gesturing with his gun, “C’mon. You brought this on yourself, kid.”

“I was gonna pay him back!” tears streamed down his dirt covered cheeks.

“It’s the principal of the thing,” Bob replied flatly at the overused line as he approached the younger man pulling back the hammer on his raised gun.

“Wait!” the man shouted holding out his hands in front of him.

“Quit stalling,” Bob retorted irritably.

The young man grasped for something to say, “Y-you wouldn’t kill a-a woman would you!?”

“What?”

“I’m a woman!”

Bob laughed heartily, “Well, that’s a first.”

“I can prove it!”

Sure there was nothing to lose, Bob indulged the soon to be dead man, “Alright. Prove it.”

Nervously, the man in the pit tore open his shirt sending buttons flying in the dirt before tugging at thick bandages wrapped around his chest until he revealed a set of breast that shouldn’t be there.

“What in the hell?” Bob stared dumbfoundedly.

His mind was straining with too many questions like crabs fighting in a bucket jarring him out of his well rehearsed routine.

“Go,” he uttered slowly, “You are dead. You leave, and do not come back here.”

The stunned person in the aborted grave scrambled to cover up and crawled out of the hole, but moved gingerly unsure if they’d receive a shot to the back.

“I said go!” Bob shouted.

Without further hesitation, the girl(?) ran until Bob was surrounded by only darkness and confusion for a moment before he filled in the empty pit.

See Me

Written for Mid-Week Blues Buster’s prompt song “Faded Flowers” by Shriekback.

Some of the tech accessibility is inspired by a scene in Pedro Almodovar’s “Los Abrazos Rotos” (Broken Embraces).

Shucking his cable knit sweater off, Thomas didn’t have to check the calendar to know that Summer was on its way. And with it, he would be cursed with more time on his hands than usual.

Though he couldn’t see the sun, the affects of its light still affected his circadian rhythm keeping him up until his body agreed that the night had come-the lonely night.

His sister had been pressuring him to try dating again, but after his last long-term relationship over two years prior and a string of unfruitful setups, he was loathe to try again.

Maybe the problem was that others were the ones setting him up. For years, he’d wished there was a way he could vet people on his own without the embarrassment of having to go through a date postmortem with his sister or cousin.

Perhaps he could find someone who shared his love for the intricacies of old, Latin-jazz music and also enjoyed the way a good orator could bend words of an audio book. In an ultra-ideal world, he would find someone who wouldn’t mind eloquently describing what was taking place in one of those award nominated films his cousin, Jerry, continually praised (but lacked the patience to narrate for Thomas).

Shuffling into his living room, Thomas plopped down at his desk recalling that a few older, tech savvy teens at the institute he volunteered at a few times a week were going on about a dating app that actually read out profiles to a user.

Pushing past his slight techno phobia and with a grain of apprehension, but with nothing better to do, the 30-something-year old bachelor booted up his laptop and typed on the braille keyboard until the computer informed him he’d reached the site.

“Male? Female? Both?” the electronic voice assistant listed options.

“Both,” Thomas replied into the laptop’s voice command search.

Once choosing gender, he went through and chose an age range and the site also (thankfully) allowed him to choose different interests to help narrow the search.

“You have twenty-three matches,” the staccato voice stated.

Thomas scanned through each profile listening meticulously, but none seemed to be a real match until he listened through the details of a 29-year-old student named Cooper.

Once he was past the superficial description of his appearance and into the young man’s interest in recreational sports as well as obscure cinema and a wide range of books and music, Thomas’ interest was peaked.

His sight-enabled friends and family had told him on multiple occasions that he was handsome, but he’d never put too much stock into what he may or may not look like, though he did try his best to appear neat and clean and wear fabrics with textures that felt good on his extra sensitive skin.

Even so, he created a profile and uploaded a picture his sister took of him a year prior for his freelance voice-to-braille translation work. He’d enjoyed languages for a long time, and he had a talent for transcribing what he heard in one language into another via his braille keyboard. It could be tedious at times to “proof-listen” after typing to make sure the translations made sense, but it was rewarding to think that blind people who spoke languages other than English could listen to speeches and other information that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to.

Biting his lip and nervously tapping his fingertips on the desk, Thomas sent Copper a message of interest.

Emersing himself in work for a few hours, Thomas was startled then happily surprised when the laptop dinged informing him he had a message from Cooper asking if he’d like to meet up.

“Oh crap,” Thomas uttered to himself.

Wiping the sweat from his brow, he prepped a reply in the affirmative and exhaled heavily.

“What have I got to loose?” he asked himself before sending off his reply.

Smiling dumbly, Thomas was so caught up in the exchange and giddiness of a new date that he didn’t realize that he neglected to inform his new suitor that he was blind.

Hungry Muse

She is hungry and listless,

Ravenous for the word, written and unwritten,

unsaid words of

Praise, of

Hate, of

mirth, of

sorrow.

She is insatiable

Devouring every inky utterance

upon the marked page.

She incites the artist like a lust-drunken lover,

Possessed to do nothing,

but CREATE

until She pulls away

to offer a breathy reprieve from

the frenzy of appeasing Her desires.

With a mischievous grin, She’ll saunter

away, but you’ll Pray

that she will one day return.

In The Dark

Written for the Weekly Blues Buster prompt “In the Dark” by Tracy Chapman.

My hear was in a desolate place.

My soul had been battered , and I could scarcely stand on my own two feet.

The copper taste ruminated on my tongue even after I’d spit the blood out of my mouth.

My teeth felt loose and wobbly as the palm of my hand pushed my chin up with a calcium crackle.

My strained fingers ran over the bruises over my chest and dirty, tattered bandages supporting over-stressed skin shifted as I stretched my hand open.

In the pitch blackness, I resigned myself to continue on in isolation, but it was then that my mole-like eyes burned at an unfamiliar incandescence that cut violently through the obscurity.

Apprehensively, I turned away from its unfamiliarity and hid myself from its warmth in the crook of my bent elbow to no avail.

Before I knew it, the comforting heat surrounded me and lifted my stone leadened heart shifting things inside my torso and breast like a mad surgeon.

The novelty of it overwhelmed me and caused a strange trickle of moisture to emerge from my hot eyes somehow lubricating the odd movements that were tearing at my entrails.

Somehow, the light found its way inside me and a blossom of things I hadn’t realized I’d longed for were shushed and slowly sated.

I trembled in anticipation and cried out fearing this new hope would be ripped from me too like every other good things I had attempted to zealously covet before.

With my shaking eyes clamped shut, I involuntarily surrendered myself over to the welcome softness of lips grazing my dirt-caked skin and kissing away tears with precious reverence.

Cautiously, I opened my eyes, and slowly they adjusted to the brightness of the light.

Skiddish, like a wounded lion, I stood defensive and broken, but exhaustively hopeful.

Gingerly looking up, I was met with salvation.

Raquel

Based on actual events that transpired on Sunday, Feb. 8, 2015.

With my headphones in, I shut the world out.

I still freely offer a smile at anyone who crosses my path regardless if they see it or return one to me. But walking with music between my ears is my time, the little time I can be okay and be alone with myself without the demands of others covetously tearing at my consciousness for attention.

Even when I’m around others, I can feel so isolated like I cannot relate or they cannot connect. As much as I reach out or not, there is a continual barrier between humanity and me.

Feeling good about a recent physical challenge I’d completed on my own (but lifted up by the moral support of others), I casually and happily made my way home.

On my path approaching from the opposite direction, I saw the smallish figure of an older woman with a smart, mustard colored, knit cardigan. From far away, I briefly saw myself in her as if I was about to cross my elderly doppelganger, and I smiled at her.

Even from far away, I could feel her warm light-heartness, and she proceeded to come closer to me while she fan herself with her hand in mock exaggeration.

“Hablas español?” Do you speak Spanish? she asked.

“Si.”  Yes. I replied.

She grew closer, and I welcomed the interruption to my “me” time and removed my headphones to hear her recount how all her family members had been centenarians.

“Mi abuelo vivió a los 118, mi mama a 110…” My grandfather lived to 118, my mother to 110. She recounted the ages of her elders.

I smiled and listened to her on the hot sidewalk as cars breezed by on the Sunday boulevard.

“…y yo tengo 75, y le pido a Dios, ‘por favor, no me deje vivir tanto!'” …and I’m 75, and I ask God, ‘Please, don’t let me live so long!’ She exclaimed in a Puerto Rican accent and with a statement that made my heart ache in memory of recently deceased Nicaraguan grandmother.

“Por que no!? Hay que vivir!” Why not!? One must live! I told her with my 30-year-old naive wisdom.

She laughed lightly and smiled at me with the kindness every stranger should have for a fellow human being.

She reached out, and I held her wrinkled arm as she crouched closer to me.

I asked her named, and she responded, “Raquel.”

“Jennie,” I replied.

“Ven pa’ca,” Come ‘ere. She held her arms open and hugged me as if she knew I needed it. She knew I needed it when even I didn’t know I needed it.

The embrace was brief, but heart felt, and more touching than anything I had experienced in much too long.

Floating apart, she smiled at me once more and said, “Que Dios te bendiga.” May God bless you.

I am far from religious, but when someone who has never met me before, who knows nothing about me at all, and doesn’t care to ask or to consume surface information about me wishes me well in their own way, it moves me with profound gratitude.

She didn’t care what my thoughts on marriage equality were or whether or not I voted for Obama. All she cared about was that I stopped to listen for a few minutes, and that we connected as two human beings. Two complete strangers on the concrete who shared a fleeting moment in time.

Before walking away, I wished her a happy day, and continued on my path, but something had shifted in me.

I could cry, I thought with a strange stirring of emotions I wasn’t expecting to have, and before I knew it, tears that normally trickle like water from a rock, streamed down my face below my dark sunglasses forcing me to pause and let myself feel the remnants of that thing that is human connection.

Shifting

It’s too late to call,

Too late to see her.

There was no fear, no apprehension.

There was logic and understanding

coupled with the persistent and profound

Hollowness of loss.

The grief caused by an irreplaceable ache for something

you didn’t realize had been occupying space in your being,

and suddenly,

that space is devoid of what had been

causing emotions to collapse and shift like tectonic plates,

shaking loose long buried and discarded emotions so violently that

tears burst like geysers and your chest and limbs tremble with the resonance the shifting causes

until the tremors subside.

When they do, everything is shifted and disheveled,

and we must pick up the shattered pieces of what was and reassemble them into something

functional again.

You gather the pieces of memories that are left behind,

and you figure out how to carry them with you in order to keep moving on.

Abuelita

With bated breath, I’m just waiting for that inevitable call.
I’ve been forewarned. We all know it’s coming; and I’m saying I’m bracing myself, but I’m never truly ready for the loss. I am convinced that, had my parents not divorced (but that goodness they did), my respective parents’ mothers would’ve still been friends gossiping on the wide, old-Spanish style, plaster porch, the porch we decorated so happily every Halloween with spider webs and things. That porch is only a ghost haunting my nostalgic, childhood memories with few pictures to confirm it once existed like my father’s mother soon will be.
As a child, I lived directly across the street from her, but I only saw my Nicaraguan grandmother for extended periods when my Mexican grandmother would take long vacations to visit her sisters in the old country.
Her fair and over worked skin always smelled like clammy moisture and freshly washed and boiled tomatoes, and her kitchen with its wild mint smell always made my stomach grumble when I’d walk through her front door and plop my backpack on the hardwood floor.
I was just another of countless grandchildren spawned by her thirteen surviving children; she was never especially affectionate nor cold to me, but we did have occasions to bond.
At age ten, I had never spent more than a night away from my little sister, and I was sent on an adventure to visit my uncle, aunt and cousins in Hawaii with my grandmother as a chaperone-or maybe I was her temporary care giver on the way there and back. I love/loved those family members, but over the few weeks I was there, I grew increasingly homesick.
One particular evening, I knocked on the door of what continued to be my beloved and deceased cousin’s room. My grandmother let me in and I noted my teenaged cousin’s R. Kelly poser was still on the wall, a detail that’s never faded for some reason. I went over to my grandmother and timidly asked her if she’d braid my long hair like my Mexican grandmother would do nightly back home. She kindly and quietly obliged; it was more of a requested task than an act of affection, but I’ve never forgotten it and remembering it now threatens my eyes with unshed tears.
Fast forward several years, and we’d become almost as thick as thieves, veterans of a common struggle, but on opposing ends of it in a way. For a few years my grandmother was shuttled out of her home and passed around between a handful of her children. Her permanent residence was my father’s home at the time. I, at age twenty, didn’t have much money and was having increasing friction living in my mother’s and step-father’s home. Swapping the futon in my little sister’s room at my mom’s for the one in my father’s living room, I felt like an outsider, a guest in both homes. I don’t doubt that I was loved-am loved-in both homes, but I didn’t feel I had a place I belonged. There was no space that felt like mine.
My grandmother and I shared the storage spaces in her room, and knowing I couldn’t take naps in the busy living room when I’d clock out of work, she’d encourage me to sleep on her bed while she needle pointed or worked the peddle on her sewing machine. She taught me recipes that were second nature even though she hadn’t cooked them in years, and she taught me how to utilize common spaces without shame in order to feed ourselves what we wanted to eat. I’d take her to the occasional doctor’s appointment and translated when she wanted to let the lab techs know they were being too harsh with pulling her into the mammogram machine.
After my neighborhood friend died, and I stumbled home reeking of Grey Goose and over-annunciating my words, she softly took me aside and gently chastised me for my over indulgence, but never once said that “a lady shouldn’t”, just that “one should not”. My father later told me that in Nicaragua, she would sell guaro, a type of moonshine, and I couldn’t help but marvel at how badass that was. It also made me realize, she was young once and just as spunky as my Mexican grandmother, just as outlandish and industrious as I am.
After I moved out, we didn’t talk as much, and I’d see her on the rare holiday she spent in L.A. instead of Las Vegas with the relatives there. She’d told me many times that she was tired, and I hope she’s truly ready now. I’ll have no proper goodbye, but I hold her in my thoughts.
And now, I sit here full of fading memories, and I wait for that call.