BAD@LOVE - by Katya Mills

flash short #story published today here on latinosusa ... https://latinosenglishedition.wordpress.com/2025/07/01/bad-love-by-katya-mills/

4.4.2025

here is a novel I wrote a few years ago. I am super proud of it. the highest marks aka reviews of all my 7 publications. tale of survival. it is creative nonfiction. dual narrators face dangerous urban characters ...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42799793-ame-and-the-tangy-energetic

1.4.25

I tend to delight in things others dont make much of. I know you poets and writers understand. then it's like I am a bore to them. but I am not trying to be a great entertainer. just myself. the ones who care tend to show up for more.  #katyamills

stockton boulevard

down an uneven stretch of stockton boulevard in summer, south of sacramento, i came across a classy broken broad, remarkably postured like a runway girl, walking bubblegum pink stilettos, long tan legs up to daisy dukes, a halter top, don't stop, the mechanical boyish stroll, dry heat tempered by a bottle blue parasol angled off her skinny shoulder blade, urban electric milkmaid conjuring the ghost, to the tomb of some unknown soldier

americano

i went to visit my good friend in san francisco up in merced heights. the wind was several knots and the Pacific foaming at the beach. my friend had fallen back to sleep. something happened to his knee so he walks funny now.  he needs surgery cause he tore something and its inflammed. i remember when my whole life was swell. we went to lunch in daly city on a sunday when all the country's got politics and black lives matter on its mind. robots detonating bombs to take out snipers. honestly i wouldn't want to be black in this country, when simple traffic stops can turn deadly. racial tensions are growing again like they often do. our country is founded on tensions. you could argue tension is what makes the whole thing tick. i've known my friend for a decade and maybe half that time we were incommunicado. at the cafe by the beach and facing the wind, he told me he thinks we have agreed about 87% of the time. i thought about that number while i sipped on my iced americano. no cream. no sugar. just water and finely ground coffee. he's a banker and he's always calculating. 87%. i'm not gonna argue. he's probably somehow right. 88% of the time, he is.

Journal # 06.26.2016

Tonight I seem to have lost a year but it doesn't matter, time is fluid showers over us, slanting down shoulder blades, slips between fingers, in and out of endless divots the fabric of pores, circles the drain and away, guided by threads and spinning. Tonight I am petulant, a tenured professor, setting myself up against impossible deadlines, racking my brains and then breaking. Tonight I am quiet going about my weekend, on the steps of the back porch platformed above the backyard below sky, listening to catfights, a solo calling bird, waiting for dawn and the burgeoning rush of highways, the streaming of sound, faraway, trying to trust, outdoors. Tonight I could be any old brick of clay, unformed and pulled from plastic, rather drab and uniform yet gleaming somehow from the inside out, on a table of hardwood in the center of a studio... with so much promise I could only walk away from myself disturbed, hands suffering and unoccupied, clasping one another in desperation. Tonight I am insatiable as moving water, thirsty as a life behind bars, free from all resentment not worrying about the future, schizophrenic, I could dive into the fabric and bury us there. This early morning time exposure of lightening, geese in arrows across the sky, ducks regimented walking to water. Find me disoriented as usual, unable to fall in line, unwilling to surrender, drumming up another battle, steeled against this order... this morning I make my own cadence, lucky as hell, restless like Cassius Clay, on my toes, laced up, face down in this adventure, counting seams, watching the canvas of the earth receive and genuflect, feeling the sensuous tension, riveted into play, feeling the sweat bead up and draw watermarks... dropping my head back to see stars. and god it was bright i saw stars.  -KatYa

Journal # 06.08.16

The kids were at play across the way and I wondered how to set myself loose like that, again, is my only forum in my head anymore? Summer strikes up a breeze from the delta and I know the blues and oughta sing. You keep that inside and you risk intimidating your blood. I have quarantined myself off the frolicking ocean of internet, maybe as much for you as for me. I wonder do you still have nothing to do but play with your phone all day. Is there anyone holds you anymore? I hope you have someone who loves you, sometimes I still wish it could be me. Today like most days I am trying real hard to simply love the life I have been given. There was a time I didn't have to try, I sure was a lucky kid. I have my moments but it's a lot harder to reach the beach. Please don't ever forget that I love you, maybe not as clearly or definitively like when we were in each other's arms, okay, but the memory of us warms my heart and I won't forget the terror of it all. Cause being honest keeps it real.

Journal # 06.03.16

Give me the night give me silence, a destination where i stand, so I can live here - off and on - this land. Give me an apple to stir up my blood - i will give you my all - anything and a juicy story to tell. Find me at the river at dawn - the valley drawn - straight outta my mind. Come and hold me if you can. I made a ring of water and hold no promises - i'm an honest girl - still circling round the fire burned my heart. Now I know I have no control. And when I remember it's better this way. The green glass Tanqueray and all the drunken dreams dissolved, unreal, taken by the current, back to the channel, the great wide open and changed the world. We were left behind where we found us, belly to belly and eyes upon us, down in the dust of the dusk, nine at night. Making out all right, on the bank, snuggled up against a fallen tree, you and me, summer times together, we started something never ended like the war. Fallen in your arms again some day, unexpectedly, you and me, over tea. You may throw your cap into the air - spinning like the dream - left me dead lost in my despair. Tangles in my hair, I will jump off a rock into the eddy. Wake myself up so good to share my life with you. Under the sky, dead heat in the sun. Wet. And ready...

the rhythm of a mistake

Ya, you always said the unpopular thing and that was cool, when someone was about to get hurt and someone had to say something and no one did but you. We didn't have the guts back then to stand up for what was right. I didn't. Things happen so fast it's over before you've made up your mind. Fear gettin the best of courage. What would happen if you went against the rhythm of a mistake? All eyes on you, maybe some cursin and shovin and pushin as you try and stand your ground and stand up for what you know is right. We were all asking ourselves the wrong question. What would happen if you didn't break the rhythm of a mistake? The song would go on and carry out over the trees, into the valleys, echoing, bouncing around the canyons and maybe even out to sea. And everyone and Donald Trump would be singing it, without knowing what it really meant. And the heat of the sun wouldn't enliven you anymore. The heat from the sun would just burn you.  -KatYa

Here's my latest reading from Maze...

Book Two
Chapter 16:1

Journal # 03.24.16

Life was gonna be painful for a morning dove whose call was so random and throaty and pure only hours before my tigers took him out. what was left of life was gonna be painful then surreal then blurry, then over. i imagine euphoria takes over in the end, when defenceless one's life force rushes to heal. life is bloody and open wide and clawed at. attacked from all sides. in the midst of a glorious spring morning. the dew has burned off and the day becomes sharp and direct and furious when you're caught by those who were born to hunt you down. actually they meant you no harm. they just do what they do. it's the same the world over. impersonal. intimate. euphoric. terribly violent and sad. ever changing. renewed. life.    - © KatYa, 2016

what 2008 looked like

She met a guy on the streets of San Francisco, she was looking to score and she would, like usual and it was two thousand eight maybe, a distant cry from straight, well she met a guy randomly and they went back to his place to fix, and they made it all night in his place, in front of his roommate who was twice their age and they were pretty young, and the dealer was just down the hall, one of a thousand boarding houses in the city, and it was all just a knock on a door away, the instant sorta gratification and the excitement of strangers meeting in the night, and taking a dare, scoring and fixing and fucking and all that sorta nonsense kids in their thirties engage in, and he knew nothing of her past and she knew nothing of his, and they didn't fucking care! The old man thanking her for letting him watch and stare, wow, what the fuck came into vocabulary that night and then the dawn, and they had made it like all night, she thought there was some music maybe but who could remember? When two became one and then smiling when she come and then and there she goes, walking on down the street, picks up the car after a wakeup and a spike, drives a couple blocks back and puts on the hazards in the excitement of the high and the rain, and the flashing yellows and here he comes again, running out the door and get inside! and they drive to safeway for some odwalla and iced coffee and maybe something to eat, and there's an easy connection in the lot, thanks a lot, thanks a lot, and they are smiling and back for some more? until noon when it's all over, but gimme your number, she says, and he is thrilled to put the shred of paper in her hand, cause he knows she's gonna call, a week later, and do it all over again. She drives away laughing and trying to fix her hair but it's so obvious, hell, it's so obvious so let it go and that's wild.

the temples

I wasn't on anything, I was just on . 
I was circumstantial.

You told me and you told me again and you told me one more time, and sure I heard you but why would that change anything? I was still gonna hit the streets late at night and up to no good. Your social was not my social, even if we both had ice cream. I cannot even relate, and you think just cause we are related I ought to, like it was good form, I oughta conform to your standard. The whole attitude was circumstantial. And the circumstance was the influence you had over me, waving it like a badge in my face, demanding, demanding!

Laughter.
Clasping of hands behind head.
Pulling elbows in tight against the ears.
The temples.

And if you were to hit the streets with me, what would that be like? Can I imagine it, or will you come into my thoughts with a big fat roll of duct tape and mark my internal off like a crime scene? I don't care if you consider all my lifestyle, irrelevant. What am I gonna tell you, anyway, as you lean upon your own misunderstanding? What I care about, is whether you care how I feel when you cast away all I have become and am becoming...

With a letter
with a look
with a social media
snub.

Hey you! I can dream for us, can't I? I can dream we can meet on equal terms on soft ground some day. Over easy at the diner in nobody's home town. WIth no control over the music in the atmosphere. They might be playing dubstep in 20 years. No more Sinatra. You might need a cane to walk. Ageism tossed in there with the hash browns. But will you stay closed off at the end of a smoke? Not in my dream. In my dream

I will be holding
you tight. Rubbing your
 temples to
sleep.

society has come to polish off the self

I need complete silence for as many hours of every day and as many minutes of every hour and as many seconds of every minute as I can get. There are big ideas circulating which will otherwise be lost to dark matter, casualties of the smart phone alert system. And if comprehension of these ideas are lost, I will be lost with them. Society has decided communal is the only way, at the expense of any self. Myself, yourself. Society has declared the individual no longer to be trusted, no longer significant. Society has come to the internet to polish off the self. There is a war being waged for control over the web, a war of individuals demanding free expression against the ever matriculating constituents of the giant dark formless blob. Hold on to your hats!

Journal # 04.20.15

I am listening to the kids playing in the park across the way. I know adults who sound so giddy. They also have been entrusted little to no responsibility. They can line up for lunch in the parks. They can play silly games and do things that seem irrational. Nobody really listens. And no one picks the adults up at the end of the day, unless it's the law. I am listening to the kids and then the birds. I cannot see the birds unless i inspect the trees closely. Same goes with everthing else. I try my very best to mimic the different birds. The cat looks at me despairingly. I give him a plate with an oval of cream. He laps it up, then licks his whiskers and dreams of the mother he never knew. The cream holds its shape well. I step on the scale. The sound of the mechanism rocking into place. Finding me a number to hold onto today. XXX. Within fifteen pounds of the weight I have been within fifteen pounds of since I was fourteen. I am thirty pounds heavier today than I was then. Hopefully it is all in my mind.

My toenails are painted silver and nobody sees them. My fingernails are not painted. Nobody sees them. My highlights have grown out, so what could excite me anymore? I cannot look forward to sleep. The passage of time disturbs me. From moment to moment, life seems so simple you cannot let it get away from you. And then it gets away from you. I wanna think of you and the kids and the adults seem like kids but don't get picked up at the end of the day. Unless it's the law. A good day is a day I have not much interest in myself. I listen to the birds and the bells of the church ring the hour. I try my hand at mimicry. Then fight to have my voice back. I am tired of the me and my shadow. Whatever happens to me now, is not my concern. Terrible things have happened. Incredible things. And many endless dull days in between. I set my course for the stars, and when I arrive they are city lights and desires. So I struck out for friendship in the night. The times are amazing and I am loved and hated. In the end I got only one thing and that was out of there, alive.

Journal # 03.21.15

 What is left for us is a chance. A chance to wake up again. A chance to rest from the maddening pace of the modern world. I am gonna crack the window now and let some atmosphere in. Maybe some particularly meaningful memory will drift along, so I may forget how strange and hard it can be to be alone. There. There now. You are with me. We are holding one another and it feels amazing. They might call us names but we won't care. Lesbians. Bitches. Whatever you want us to be. Because you may as well be on another planet, pressing your old aching fingers up against the glass, trying to get in. I will feel for you later. Not now. All the arrowheads soften in the glacial tug. I remember how you made me feel. Sure, I had loves before you. And you before me. But nothing was two thousand ten like you and me. Pushing over laptops to get to you. We both lived on the floor. We both lived with guys who worshipped us. We both were running out of money. We both had vices become habits.

looking at you. K by K 4 K. 2015

The pain seemed so endless, typing away at keyboards. Losing weight. Listening to Sneaker Pimps. Deeper into darkness past anything I ever knew. We both had a marginal place in our families. We both lived on the outskirts of the world of a city. We both loved wasabi peas and scratchers and arizonas. Somehow I pushed past all that and got back to you and you held me. Together we weighed under three hundred pounds. Pushovers. You with your martial arts. Sticking acupuncture needles right where they belonged. You got under my skin. I got under yours. The fleeting moments we pushed past the cats and the cardboard boxes, and fell softly into walmart pillows... and cried out the damage like bleeding? This is what lights my way to resurgence. I only wish it worked out differently. Like we could find us in the bodies of our paragraphs, again. Lord only knows... the margins of our lives.

Journal # 02.28.15

Saturday. I was made in a form. Crescent cut. You were of another, edgeless kinda moon. The difference between us is what made us. Together we elevated. The buttons popped off of my blouse. You touched me. The sky framed us. A puffy cloud walked through us. Left us dripping on star number seven. You counted to ten, I hid in a black hole. You turned to dark matter. I became breathless. You found me. Now I am yours. 

K READS INVISIBLE IMPENETRABLE TRANSPARENT NONEXTANT WALL PART II

ORIGINAL NONFICTION BY KATYA MILLS

(first published on kissilent.wordpress.com)

To whom does intimacy port? How does intimacy travel? Is it firewire fast? Scanned thoroughly or just one-passed? When intimacy gets all awkward for us and scares us, like we are losing the ability to connect, man to man, woman to woman, cross, duck under, stretch, stare, flare, and circle in courtship with such fanfare? The movement is fascinating, but what about the other plains? Do we not still need umbrellas, every time it rains? Relics of nylon stretched over the wiry, long, hovering fingers to the tips. Do we even touch the rain? Does it touch us? What does it mean to dodge all this feeling, being, suffering... seeing?

How will our your species keep up, unless we me port ourselves soon? We know how to run. To hide. We are intimate with rather the ever more impractical, ancient art of NASA space shuttling, away away away. Gasoline is so flammable and smells bad. But it's energy, so take it, tangible smelly burning solitude of petrol, never to upload. Simply bleed out and soak in, absorption into the earth, dissolving into the air. Breaks your my our collective heart. From about where to where? Away away away.  So much easier to gravitate away, along the shipment channels standard, the paths prepioneered, the snow carved out like ribs like rivers like thanks, like giving. Less work, more sedentary Tryptophan-inspired ennui. 

And thus you me? You me we? You me we are free. Aren’t we? HBO specials on dead presidents who stare back at us, with iron spirits carried on currency. Have currency, have freedom? Have nots have none? I you we get confused mixed feelings that throw off our equilibrium sometimes. Fresh liberation we feel so true! Next year enslaved in another addictive groove. Low and weary, we they obey the countenance command: level up from source – level up now…. sad.

Stored back with the medicine balls, the deflation. In the dark, reprioritized, put on the desktop and in the taskbar so you cannot miss it, humanity; but its like an antiquated major looking uncomfortable as Latin between Chinese and Spanish…uncomfortable, horribly so, inside the cardboard strung together, placed over the shoulders of our teenagers needing currency so bad, so bad they would advertise something other than themselves, direct produce and starring in your next product placement plan you put to action. Doing things like we know nothing. This much about nothing.

This much about something. Something about suffering. Something about not able to get quite warm enough in the cold, cool enough in the heat. Not quite able to get exactly the comfort required to prevent a progression toward madness. The garden grows out and over, the vines together cut back to the knees for having passed the invisible, impenetrable, transparent, nonextant wall divides you, me, us. What was to protect us in our idea of safety and personal refuge? What was. What is solitary kind of confinement. Solitary refinement is how you work that angle of free, solitary, introverted, workaholic genius. Empirical proof for us all to be in relief. Relieved.

Nonfiction #77. subset 444

Tuesday.
All seems
 lost...

steaming cup of coffee.

gloves off.

press muse into paper.

sidewalk @ 19th and F

life
gets better
when
we try

girl on girl (not a) crime

Nonfiction by K & B (friend of K).
a 'sext' (text sex) session
Present time. Rated R.


9:20AM

B: Hey u
K: Hey

10:42AM
B:Want to fuck?

11:35AM (after a long silence because i was in shock)
K: Huh?
(there was no known intimate past between us)

11:36AM
K: lOl - i thought you were straight

12:04PM
B: Oops!
To my friend!

12:12PM
K: Darn, I was afraid you would say that!
(i figured she was bluffing)

12:16 PM
B: Well we could sext!
K: Anytime, you body rocker, rocking bod

12:18PM
B: Fingers?
12:20PM
K: Fingers??

12:22PM
K: You better not be drinking two fingers
tequila... Nor anything else for that matter
(she doesn't drink anymore)
B: wannt 2 rock your clit

12:23PM
B: Pics?
K: Yes

12:24PM
K: Shit, omg. I don't think I can trust this.
What if you're some kid or some dude
who stole her phone?
(stranger things have happened)
B: Pics

12:26PM
K: Only a dude would ask 4 pics. Who is this?
And what did you do with my friend?
B: Pics

12:27PM
B: Please

12:28PM
K: Nice try... DUDE

12:29PM
B: Fucking myself u want pics?
K: Oh boy, you R fuckin with my DOME

12:31PM
B: Want pics?
12:32PM
K: Just a pic of your face not yer ass, OK?

B sends a pic of her nipple just 
barely peeping over her tank top

12:35PM
K: Wow. Is that u? (still suspicious).
You sure got tan

B sends a face pic. She's a white girl,
29 yrs old, English / American, almond blue eyes
Blonde hair flowing down either side of her face,
same length as mine but more wavy. She appears
to be sitting in her car. The seatbelt gave it away.

12:37PM
K: Ok that's u all right.
B: I just feel like, aka fucking u.

K sends a self-pic of my thighs, bare, from above.

12:38PM
B: Can I try?
K: Ya well where are u anyway?
Are u coming? double entendre

B: How do i fuck myself?
K sends a face pic 

12:40PM
K: Gently with a tattle tale finger wag
across the cut.
12:41PM
K: Like a youngblood slut.
Then deep in the cut...

12:42PM
B: Need a pic
K: continuing Until you hit the spot
Open your lips when you feel yourself
Gettin kinda hot

12:43PM
B sends a pic in the cut
B: want?

12:47PM
K: Beauty
So did you do as I said?

12:48PM
B: Pics?

12:50PM
K sends a pic in the cut

12:52PM
K: I gotta go up north
B: Going?

K: Love u
B: Thank u

Bye

jaded as jade

There i was...

Headed out from my apartment on foot, wearing cheap ass walmart moccassins showing my toes, dressed to the eights (a casual step back from the nines), with blood on my arms from where my four month old kittens attacked me while i was sleeping off a one night stand with my pen.

There i was...

A young american single white female, contemporary of all the other genXers using some sort of animated fiction to report the hideous truths that could never be received by the culture embedded within them.

There i was...

Takin' myself too seriously. All the way down the stairway, with my bicycle on my shoulder, to the street... and then some. Tryin' to take my ass light-heartedly through my morning. Riding on down the street, in the middle of the road at sunrise. Highlighted strands of hair falling out behind my Fuji Feather, licking the base of my neck, like blonde flames. Under the influence of anti-gravity. In the dark and baby blue of the dawn.

There i was...

Down the street after dawn. Dealing with all the personalities of the world in a single room... and then some. Tolerating as best i could tolerate. Day #5 without a cigarette. My own personality, the most difficult and least refreshing of them all. Splitting hairs with split personalities. Jaded as jade. Spitting in the wind.

There i was...

Banana fucking split! Sitting upright on my bike, riding back home. Five miles of legs. No hands. Praying i might take a dive on the railroad tracks. Just so i could feel something different.  Split ends and all my hair falling back anti-gravity to lick my neck, in the wake of me.

There i was...

Dealing with the sinking depression that clung to my soul, all of my life.
Sinking back into my pain, as the burning sun rose silently over my head. In the pits. In central california.

Here i am...

Split ends and all
In the wake of me

Without shade
Praying for a miracle
Jaded as jade

- Katya 08/13