time blind

The sun set on a quiet winter day and they fell off into a faraway cavernous thought space with music playing off a box radio plugged in and hung up over the sink with bungees so they could access it from the bed, too heavy to move. Time got lost in their blindness of it.

#katyamills

April 28

my god how I cooled into a calm to see you settle into this deep faith leaving your momentary suffering behind.     #katyamills

chop

they kept quiet beneath the hum of the two-stroke engine, the water's chop flattened by the belly of the boat and the drunken rants of their captain, squinting at the sun.

#katyamills

bottle blue

the voices bombed her head until she told them off

a touch of bottle blue coffee on her tongue

the cats lapped up a saucer of oat milk

the painting of a grape harvest had eight different shades of red

when the afternoon sun crept down the wall 

from the window and caught it

#katyamills

scarlet

it was often the same theme, in a dream something was taken from her and she became increasingly upset. he called and woke her at the designated time, 5:30, in his truck already driving, and the relief she felt was unparalleled. outside the sky in phases of development. scarlet.  #katyamills

Redington Beach

strange summer sky. long thin pier we trod the planks corridor of pelicans standing on the rails in quiet anticipation. hunger. there's a man calling out got an amber jack on his line. want your picture taken? no thanks. today you travel leaving the storm behind. my soul lives inside a flash. it's a black and white deal.

  #katyamills

coordinated thing

it's a coordinated thing, doctor healing patient then making love to a nurse, lights down, in the operating theatre. it's anarchy, ballet slippers breaking apart, toenail cracking. a shot of anaesthetic... it's coming out of it, tossing and sick, creeping toward war.   #katyamills

drops like that

Backs pale against the carpet. I knew I was getting close when the titles stood out. The Shining, his pained psychotic face at the door. American Dream I got from a yard sale in Largo, edged in blue, Mailer and his shotguns. She pressured the 20th Century Russian Reader with her palm and we came. I held her as we slipped down into cotton fibers. I turn my head to the side and face The Waves. They are breaking and rolling outside. Russian vodka drops me like that, blacks me out. Soon I will be far away. Another city. Another state. - by #katyamills

Royal. [8.16.1998]

The sleep would not come the ink would not run. Close to paranoia in paralysis on bleached sheets, drag off a newport, shallow lying on my side on this borrowed mattress on brown paint roses and thumbtacked vinyl on a slanting floor. And when i drop off a car alarm rebukes me, setting a dog to barking, a call gets a response, and now they all are howling like wolves in a forest. The sleep will not come again. the ink will not run though i try, opening up my journal to the blank page bookmarked. Without words so i sketched a poor rendition of your face from the side, the image vivid in my mind, too bad i am no good at drawing. I make up a wonderful imaginary eye. The following night made up for the last with relentless dreams. Riding around in cars. Running too fast down a hill with a friend and he gets close and crosses my leg and i tumble for a fall. A man walks confidently into my bedroom (plush and much nicer than the real one) to steal me away. My mother getting stoned and accidentally telling me i am beautiful.   

by #katyamills  on 8.16.1998

Royal [8.15.1998]

Exertion to almost dawn evolved into something effortless… the whole production seemed almost pointless but that’s what made it carefree… the later the night the heavier things got… the drinking, the smoking, the chasing… powder folded up with mirrors hide the life lines cracked like former factory floors, the pores like potholes clogged with oil and dirt… rising up from the basement of tax brackets into some starched shirt’s arms… lush Cadillac interiors rolling low on tired struts below the immense buildings… the money clean the language dirty. wanting it all. coffee stains the teeth like lacquered tables. a simple twist of a blind loosens tongues behind loveless lips. service workers bending backs for high tips. exhaust bubbles up over a line of pipes along the curb, a stone’s throw from a great lake, outside clubs with cathedral ceilings. sometimes life is a mess, empty pockets and hurt feelings.

by #katyamills from 8.15.1998

planet

The music pounded into them. She was on the couch on a platform facing the long bar stubbing her Planet out on an ashtray.     #katyamills

k memoir exxxcerpt

 When we fight I can go from zero to one hundred and all the memories of all the fights I have ever been in, come back. This time I was flashing back on Kali and how terribly we fought when we were under some influence. She would come at me with a fist and I would be shocked and try to duck and sometimes she would catch me on the jawline or jab her knuckles into my shoulder and I have to confess it felt good being hit, I wanted to be, it brought me into my body and out of my head where all the bad thoughts were torturing me in those days. We were lovers in these strange phases of wanting to kill each other. It would last for hours maybe days or until one of us acquiesced. and we made a shaky peace because it was too exhausting to keep on fighting and we lived together. Then we could lie our bodies down and watch mindless tv and drink and wonder if we could ever hold one another and feel loved the way we had before, after all the blistering hatefulness. This was twenty ten and I was thirty-seven and Kali, who I thought at the time was my forever, who I wanted to be and burdened with the responsibility of being my forever, was almost forty. We took selfies of ourselves and printed them out on colored paper after photoshopping them and tacked them to the wall of the room where we were staying. We walked down the paths hidden beneath trees down the hill to Grand Avenue and the last Blockbuster in the world, holding hands, to rent obscure movies. I preferred horror and she preferred crime, and the genres seemed to bleed off the screen and into our life together. We didn’t fuck enough, in her opinion, and she held it against me. And the more she held it against me, the less I wanted to. #katyamills

dreamer

see nothing is permanent. i just got tired trading out shells for new ones. to live in a place i could own on the basis of a loan. i was a dreamer. listening to the oven cook the pulp out of pumpkin seeds. the future did not frighten me.    #katyamills

hard won

like you I have been hurt 

one too many times

god bear witness to surviving the self and other harms done

chin up. until death come we both know 

it will be hard won

#katyamills

cuts in the fabric

the black jeans broke apart again at the knees. while stitching them back together all the memories from the past ten years the details of which were in the scuffs and nicks and paint stains and cuts in the fabric set off images and the feelings intricate as hell

 #katyamills

immediacy

you twisted the storyline. it was a lesbian memoir from the year 2000. must you? I got turned off by this thing that turned you on. Imagining me with other men and women. We were at quite an impasse. a little hopeless. I looked you in the eyes. we both started laughing.

  #katyamills

down in it

summer is ending. the farmers harvest the grapes. the hawk wings tipped to the side observes the changes from above. i am down in it. in the city they live in tents on the avenues with blue-nosed pits to protect them. a simple walk on a cool fall morning is my high. 

  #katyamills

blood

The first draft had to be almost effortless or else you would get caught up in editing too soon and lose the story.  The final copy would have to come off as almost effortless. The difference between the first draft and the final copy was blood sweat and tears. Okay, blood is an exaggeration. Usually.   #katyamills

taraxacum erythrospermum

Dandelion was the name of the candy store in the town where I grew up. a tall man with a moustache used to keep shop with an anxious high whistle. he watched us kids by mirrors with hawk eyes. when they make you for a thief long enough, you want to prove them right. one day the whole gang flooded the store, eight of us, then took off like we done something wrong. we dropped our skateboards over the curb and rolled out. breaking apart like the seeds of a taraxacum erythrospermum blown by the wind.   #katyamills

take a chance on

summer nights

the heat was deep and sustained forcing 

rolling blackouts like a wave over the power grid

you filled the void by malt liquor and fits of patriarchal tyranny

we have no candles i lied

descending the back stairwell i would rather 

take a chance on 

the street

#katyamills