stragglers

the family rules. she broke the ones predicated on that's just the way it is and always been. long after she left home she found the stragglers and scraped them off like barnacles. 

#katyamills

envy and foreboding

foreboding was the sky
foreboding the crack of beer he opened home from work

she thought up the colorful ways
she might get out of the building


she stared at blondie through the open window
her heart full of envy
all night on the fire escape swishing tail
unaccosted

#katyamills

hubba bubba

i let the machine choose our quick picks. hubbabubba. you asked me if i could make change for a fifty. no but there's like thirty cashiers here can you ask one of them? okay hubbabubba. i only realize this is my nickname when a woman who has overheard our exchange asks. is that what he calls you? oh. ya probably. he comes up with a new one almost every day. that's adorable. while i would love to win the mega millions, life is not likely to get any better than it already is.   #katyamills

#katyamills

fatal moment #12

imbue the heart with dreamy goodness 

after some fatal provocation 

in a strange house 

edge of railyards 

wind whistling past the ears 

under the cut of Saturn ring 

encircled by many moons 

confetti of blown stars 

home roast sumatran 

8 track potential 

friendship 

at last

#katyamills

love at the AMPM

Rockstar set them up against an iridescent sun. they flew through yellow light for poke. makame and scallions in a base of sushi rice. black lady asked them where they party? they said those days behind me.   she did not believe them at the AMPM.

#katyamills 

10 post

 after the many many touches i bimble to the post. letting go this letter. from my heart to yours.

#katyamills

egolessness

had to die a hundred times

all within a single day

for what i thought had happened to me

was nothing 

was okay

#katyamills

it's not what you think

 

the sun lasered the moon into a lemon wedge

what we thought

this day would be like

was nothing like

what it was

#katyamills

date with the center of the earth

falling

all the escape routes calling out  

i choose none

#katyamills

ph.enom

wistfully I recall our chemical hearts 

pumping at breakneck speeds

cooled by alcohol and valium

welcome to hell

did you make it out alive?

god only knows 

i wish for you

this spacious transfer this 

soundless rejuvenation of energy

this big love

  #katyamills

the ruins

young lovers sucking tapioca up the straws. the bees taking apart coastal buckwheat strand by strand. want to be influencers snapping photos at a high place by the old Cliff House. a tall athletic girl running in circles in her lululemons. a thousand broken steps surround what was. a black and white memory of the Sutro Baths. we walk out on the rocks and drape our clumsy bodies over them, staring at the big one. angling pelicans. ptarmigans. laughing gulls. skimmers in perfect lines a touch above. all is calm and nonviolent like, when the sea reaches suddenly in, grabs and pulls us under.

#katyamills

social prefab

the social fabric, sewn with prefabrications, was moth eaten. the yarn ran easily off cat claws. we held on to the senseless hope it would withstand the fast approaching fall 

#katyamills

geometry of fields

he was trucking through farmland, california endless with it. she and a song she liked to carry on the mind. he would help her, too, for all the years. the ovuliferous inflorescences bursting forth in the geometry of fields. the ocean made the math lay down.   #katyamills

2 august

what the world dubs a literary masterpiece was once dismissed as nonsense, panned by critics, denounced by haters and assholes

#katyamills

take a moment

this very moment 

like you 

like me

moves and wakes

recedes quakes and

sometimes boils over

this moment

like me like you

asking only to be held

tenderly then let

go

#katyamills

lovers?

an ambulance charged down the street ignoring traffic laws and warming up the atmosphere. a striking coat of red. we were like that once, full of sound and light. people stopped and stared. we were accidental. we were lovers and we were monsters, too

 #katyamills

ex.ile

without fail

night after night

they lit a candle in the highest window

for the exiles return

#katyamills

cricket

they tended to voice the hard things in the soft spoken way

#katyamills

final trick

her life did come apart and it was a tale as old as time. she took on credit card debt and sometimes her checks bounced. they came and ripped her cable out and the car on lease was long since repossessed. she found it harder and harder to tough it out. she got by on canned goods at the save mart and public transportation to a minimum wage job. she wasn't going to ask anyone close to her for money when there was little hope in paying them back. second hand stores for clothes and government assistance for food. she had already moved several times and the rent was going up. she chose escorting to bring some stability to the equation. this worked for a while but she got discouraged by the scum of the earth. maybe one out of ten johns. the other nine were fine. the work paid well enough and she met them online so she had not yet been in trouble with the law. she had a guy she trusted to watch her back. she paid her debt and got a high def tv with all the movie channels. she shopped at Macys and bought a lightly used late model Ford. she signed up for classes to become a phlebotomist and got prescription glasses. she met a man who made her laugh and did not judge. she had close calls with cruel men and she got beat. the guy she hired for muscle caught one and payback. in tribute to her sister, the one who disappeared and never heard from again, she did a final trick and got out of the game. this super turnaround would not be covered by the nightly news.  #katyamills

psychotherapy is at its best an art

Some of my patients want therapy to be a certain way. As a professional I want to be open and give you what you want. Therapy cannot be everything so misconceptions must be brought out and cleared away. Some want structure and psychoeducation. Others want it to be motivational, to free them from inaction. I see six to nine patients a day, and each one demands something from me, whether the demand is covert or overt, it is there. And that's a good challenge. I always try to ask the day I meet someone, how has therapy been for you in the past? what worked and what did not? What would you like it to be? I do like working with the ones who ask for a more freeform, conversational approach. Often the younger ones, Generation Z, like it this way. Psychotherapy is at its best an art. Each session becomes an adventure, an exploration. Curiosity makes it interesting. You don't always know where to begin and you may be surprised where we end up.   #katyamills

low key damage

I have seen sunrises  and lived by the llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll light

funny how we fall asleep listening to our favorite murders or keyed up watching World War Two battles in color. it's not a big deal, really, but every night? are you a true crime junky? shine a light on your actions. that could be low key damaging

#katyamills

July 11 2023

As a practicing psychotherapist, I notice my clients coming into therapy worn down from battling external world stressors and they do not yet have the approach or the skills (mindfulness) to see how the internal world (thoughts, feelings, sensations, impulses) is operating. Or they may be avoiding the interior (which often works against them). You can empower yourself by learning mindfulness which is in some part just directing your attention to your internal world and listening without judgment. You will find that your greater awareness can hold just about anything, and you can have a little distance from them by becoming a witness of your own experience. Try simply noticing, acknowledging and describing what's happening. What thoughts are arising? What feelings? What sensations or impulses are arising in relationship to those automatic feelings and thoughts? These feelings and thoughts inform one another and influence our behavior and our inaction, too. It helps to build a relationship with them. Dialogue with your fear, your anxiety, your sadness. Ask it what it wants from you at any particular moment. You will find they have good and bad sides to them. They may be trying to help you but in all the wrong ways. You can challenge them if they are over or under blown. Meditation can help. Watching them arise as you are trying to focus on your posture and your breath. Letting it all be. Acknowledging it happening without judging or criticizing yourself. Becoming less attached and less unattached or avoidant. Watch how they subside, arising and falling like waves. Understand the natural cycles of things. Surf an urge or impulse without actually acting on it. See how long you can last. Play with it. The problem with mindlessness, in my opinion, is that we become enmeshed with aspects of our interior world, and when you think you are your thoughts, or you are your feelings, this can cause suffering. You can learn not to buy in so much. Just let them in, have them for tea, but challenge them when they have outrageous ideas like telling you that you are nobody or nobody likes you, or that you will never get things right because you're a screw up. No! That is a lie! You’re really not broken or faulty or unloved. You are living in the context of an unforgiving, fast-paced, judgmental, patriarchal, capitalist world! And it is having a bad effect on you. Anyone might naturally feel lonely, alienated, weak, and hopeless in this context. Don't believe everything your automatic thoughts tell you. Talk to them. Question them. Stay curious. And try to keep moving toward your values, toward your happiness. Fight for your life if you must. Find the ones out there who you can understand, the ones who can appreciate your struggle, the ones who give you the sense of belonging that everyone is thirsty for. Try to envision your best self and be your best self today. Don't give up hope!  #katyamills

neuro 1

Hitched a ride with a game obsessed neurodivergent

We hugged the mountain road for hours

We felt bodies of water 

Touching without touch

Everything was golden!

Our cells cried out for more 

#katyamills

July 23

I rolled up the cuffs and took my time. washed the glass on both sides. borders brought in line. i drove pins into the frame and secured it on the wall. hyper focus tended to still these mercurial waters. studying the face behind glass i saw we suffer the same

  #katyamills

chalk on canvas

where land and water meet

in a white dress fastened by a blue sash 

auburn hair cut close to the head 

a dove sheltered under the chin 

tail feathers fanning down

the gaze subdued and searching 

they are made of more than 

chalk on canvas

#katyamills

fade

the body may. the mind may. the spirit never fades

#katyamills

passage

we talked all night

let the heaviness inside 

out. i watched it fall

off your aura like

a film restoration 

criterion collection

passage through point

of inflection

#katyamills

sun and sea

the old sea turns

a very deep blue

our eyes skipping stones

flirt with the pages

everything touched by the sun

i ask can it be?

you say it's forever

maybe

maybe

#katyamills

the fifth

this one full of fear would plead the fifth amendment unforeseen powers lead from conceptualization

untold dangers inherent the same dependent upon the aim out on bail nod to a lenient judge he drank a fifth to quell the pounding heart

#katyamills

all the soft sounds

cat tail swishes

electric lights fizzling out

morning dove

water rush behind the drywall pipes

moths wings

pilot ignition ticking

clocks

dawn holds all the soft sounds premature in its infinite silence

#katyamills

plastic oceans

awash in plastic oceans

they lived for the ones who could not

no longer medicated numb

no longer heralded by fear 

no longer dressed in tailored ads

the followers of fads

they lived for community

like it was the first day 

like it was

the last

#katyamills