withstanding

hunted on the hills

san francisco

hunted under the el tracks

lake street. chicago

hunted by the exes

by childhood

living in the shadows 

of my memories

god gave me the spirit 

i could not summon 

on my own

to withstand

anything

#katyamills

kids (life as lab)

When I was a kid I witnessed attributes and played with them. I wanted to know what would happen when I behaved a certain way. This was life as laboratory. I tried lying and got caught. I tried being super nice to people I didn't know. I tried bullying, after I myself was bullied. I tried kissing my friends (with their consent). I tried doing chores without being asked. I tried fighting with fists. I tried reading a book from beginning to end without stopping.

If an adult caught me experimenting this way, I would often be earmarked from that moment forward based on my behavior. This was called judgment and came very easy to them. I learned not to trust adults very well.

silly

i feel silly cuz i haven't got a need 

to be so serious all the while. i can

act like a child a few moments every

day. when i was a child i did not 

have the luxury of being silly much

of the time. my parents were heavy

drinkers, god bless them, and not 

always friendly with a hyperactive

kid. so i was taught how to mute

the playful spirit and shut up.

k nov'2017

crisp like apples like childhood

i still like apples when they are crisp and cool and fresh, i like biting into them and the taste, it seems unlike life, which is a drag across the cold and hard face of a clock... when i catch an heirloom kinda apple in the palm of my hand it always fits, perfect like a baseball but better cause it's unprocessed, more like childhood when the skin needs no astringent and all the body is firm and thoughts are clear and waking up is fresh and new and motivation is natural and intention pure    - K

kids

we were kids we carried book bags we threw rocks at each other for fun we drank milk and ate cookies and laughed crumbs and stamped them out with our kicks with our boots with our sneaks with our heels with our might, we cried and we raged and we kissed -- harmlessly -- and if the winters storms had blustered and the snow had fallen and melted and then frozen overnight well it would break loose when we thundered down on it and you could hear the earth cracking under us and we laughed fearless, convinced we would never ever never ever never ever ever ever, die

lucky

I had a lucky childhood mostly, which I could not take for granted after the incident when I was in my mother's belly on a two lane highway, an oncoming schoolbus swerved over the line and almost collided with us. I think I remember. I got the best of education and parents and a brother who looked after me with great care. I had my own room at an early age, though I wished I could share a room with my older brother still, in a sprawling Queen Anne Victorian on a hill. We had a dog, a cookie jar, steam radiators, and a piano. My mother issued spankings by the mouth of its winding staircase. My father came home from work and the family gathered round the kitchen table nights, and we picked a prayer from a deck of cards inside a plastic loaf of bread, to read with our heads bowed and fingers clasped before our meal.

I had lots of chores to do and lots of books to explore. I loved the Chronicles of Narnia most. I cherished those books. I had one foot in the church and one foot out, in perfect reflection of my mother's Christianity and my father's atheism. I certainly enjoyed exploring the great cathedrals of New York City and participating in charitable events. And listening to music all the time. Years later I became agnostic and a social worker. Television became a terrible faith. Mindlessness and magical thinking and unreality. I was much better off reading and using my own imagination, playing outdoors with the neighborhood kids in any weather. Skating, running, listening to music, fighting, writing.

Thinking back on my life... there is no wonder i am changed and yet remain quite the same at the core, rock steady somehow, trying to be an innovator, trying to express myself in meaningful waves, and hopefully many more years even twice as many years in store, which i could not even say three years ago today, when was my time of dying. Some like myself cannot stand (for our health) lashing out upon the world when we feel we have been forsaken. Instead we go inward and hurt ourselves, which is no less terrible perhaps - but I would rather swallow the poison than poison you, if between the two was my only choice. That's just me.

sundays

Sundays were never dark even when it rained, and it rained a lot. I would drip drip dry in the back of the house then take off my clothes all soaked to the bone, hang them on hooks (the wood floors start to groan) then run up the back stairs in my underwear in sandals, all ten toes goodness knows i was quick on them, too, and my brother in his room tryin' to learn the guitar, dad in his study with rifles on the wall, and where is mom? well she's coming with a big colored towel, and wraps me inside then takes one to my head as I try to evade, and there's nothing in this world for this life I could trade, growing up lucky in a country so fine... god blessed america is what i want to believe, returning to my knees like i did in my youth (for what's in the heart does not need living proof), i made my own hell by my thoughts and beliefs but i turned it around and hung it on hooks, ran up the stairs for some help  i would look --then fly into the arms of someone who cares, even if it's just god or a pet or a stranger you met, or yourself in the darkness running for light, in the darkest of darkest of darkest of night.

Journal # 05.28.15

I grew up in New England. If I found a lucky niche for myself within a group of people, I would try and hold on to that belonging with all my might. These were times I fought change. The study halls were quiet except the rustling of papers and scratching of pencils on paper. And the heat pushing from the furnace into the pipes. Some kids wet the paper and pulled the pens apart to shoot spit balls. I showed antisocial tendencies at an early age. I would really be inconsolable over something which happened, and no one could reach me. So I would mutiny for awhile and just be upset and burning, unable to stop burning. There were certain trees I liked to sit under. Certain classrooms would be empty at certain times of the day, where I might go to be alone and do my work. When I was well-liked, I wanted this to last. I did not want myself to change, or the circumstances had coincided to make me whole again. I hoped for a snapshot of the context and to keep it in my pocket with the phone number of some new friend all folded up and handmade. I was troubled by and by.

K IS FOR KARMA

"Sure, I might go overboard (and our kind always did) and reduce them to hourglass sand, but why not show me some love? And come out karmically ahead? Have the courage to sit across from me and suck tapioca into the fat straw with sweet and cool, fresh green tea. We need not talk. Just look me in my eyes for a minute, and watch as the good feeling rises up in you, and you begin to have that long lost energetic you had when you were just a child, and fearless." - K

'and we miss you'

and we miss you

by Katya Mills

about innocence, lost

So they finally came over me… wonderfully…. sadly… terribly powerful but so could I only be humbled and basically in tears and sudden mourning and of course, somewhat secretly as is the fashion i guess,  a process instinctuelle - not contrived or deliberated or prepared…no, like all matters of things diverse and sundry, the need comes over me to tell somebody (and possibly nobody), though my faith resides all over planet heart to the core.  

Lineage download to the system 32, or in my case, 39 going on in cautious anticipation through the forty filter which now is like static or push off of some tropical blemish on some warm yummy blue sky caribbean dream day.

Every green spread of earth above sea level, from cuba to barbados across the cuts of rough waters swirling all directions and drawn into tight circles by the rising winds of an incubating tropical depression…

Hell!

The waves lap up against my thoughts with an empathic kiss and on slipping out away moments later. 

A child learning to read and write and get along. 

Just passed that frightening entrance into the great institution.

Now feeling warm and even cared for many days of the week.

Perhaps 'well-acclimated' and relieved to have been ushered in so sweetly…

with all my being I swear I would tear the fucking eyes out the head of the evil which came across and stole them from us…