fight for it!

He served in the Navy and had been a pilot. They thumbed through scrapbooks together and he showed her. There were photos of him arm to arm with his brother and father, both who were aviators before him. It was an intergenerational thing, a legacy. She didn't have to act impressed. When she fell on hard times he volunteered to cover her lodging and food until she could get herself situated. He would not take no for an answer. She said she could handle it but he read between the lines. He would have kept her safe to perpetuity. She loved him a little before all this. They were both fighters. She would love him a little more for loving her, afterward, by heading out into the world with renewed strength to fight for her life. 

 #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

July 10

the warmth we once had between us began to burn. talking to you felt dangerous like dodging thrown knives or jumping a live wire. i don't know where it all went wrong or maybe i do. i cannot answer the phone when you call. not because i don't want to. it's just not safe anymore.

#katyamills

the meaning manufacturing plant

we have our grave differences
crashing around these rooms
we speak as though what we believe were facts


no. they are just opinions
packaged by the meaning manufacturing plant


i would be sincere. acknowledge the power
the thoughts have over us
and love you just the same

#katyamills

hundred days of disputes

the ends of our sentences

anchored with question marks

the cat raiding the panty drawer

the plant trembles above the root

every time the two of us together

after the hundred days of

dispute

#katyamills

lost with you

staying up late into the night and still
early for you. i am listening to the world series
fills the room with sunshine in the muted

waves of sound

the away team has won every game and my heart
can still hear yours. you would laugh at me

for sure, to call the hour
late

we would be just getting started

out looking for videotapes and alleyway treasures
and trouble

in five days we turn time back again
will we remember, you and me?
we strung out different images

off the same
perspective and
none of it looked real

all i have to say is that i cannot forget
what happened. getting lost
with you

getting lost
changed my life

kill it with truth

the ring has gone i lost it and did not know. then i worried about you and had anything happened. touch up auto paint covered my fingernails the pumice could not kill. and how had we died. you killed me with kindness and i. killed you with truth

channeling anxiety into effective action!

today is monday. i have a full work week ahead of me. i wake up semi-refreshed and with a narrow window to make coffee, oatmeal, shower, make up, and dress for the day. i experience the anxiety at first in waking. prayer is helpful to offset it. mindful interaction with my cats. calling someone i love to let them know i care. a mantra i repeat aloud: nam-myoho-renge-kyo. an affirmation: yes. you can do this. the world is yours. basic morning rituals. i hope not to push this anxiety away. it gets larger as i am driving on the freeway. offset it with national public radio. mindfulness in driving. feeling the sensation of the steering wheel. listening to the sound of the road and the engine. soft focusing my eyes so i can see the morning sun as it hits the trees on either side. reminding myself i am capable. i will do the best i can today. i may make mistakes and that's okay. turn the radio down. i try and half smile or even sing a song out loud to myself. look at the city skyscrapes as i pass through downtown. today is monday. if i stay fully present, in the here and now, it is no different than any other day. i can experience it the same if i breathe deeply and pay attention, and bring my wandering mind back into the moment. i cannot stop my mind from wandering. notice where it goes. remembering something which happened yesterday. last week. concerned about the upcoming holidays. or a particular event coming up. i radically accept that it is the nature of the mind to fall into the past and future. my mind is sensitive. it is trying to help me. it just goes about sometimes the wrong way. gently bring my thoughts back into the moment. oh! there it goes again drifting away. its okay. bring it back. gently. try not to judge myself. try not to judge anyone else. this is all information and im curious. i like to learn. the world is a fascinating place to live. i have anxiety and its not gonna kill me. its trying to help me gear up for the day. tackle all my challenges. i want to relate to it. form a working relationship with my anxiety. put a hat on it and give it a name and a purpose in my life, today.

k and k

baseball cap on
backwards
tomboy
bad news
the original
skinny
acidwash
jeans
tore up old
self. like usual

a taller you
a bad hair day
no bra. ya
wool cap
spinning around a
middle
finger
scratcher bingo by
a switchblade
gettin’ high

wow
twenty ten
just look at us
then
the madness
the sadness
followed us
haunted us
still i long to
remember


the way you
touched me
gave me
chills
weight of an eighty
impala beneath us

reading our poems
aloud and again
the fortune of
finding a
friend
oh why
oh why
did it all
have to
end

katya mills © 2018

apple core

this morning i awoke beside you and stretched and growled. you called me tiger and i showed you my claws. the sun was not up yet but we were. i took my meds and fed the cats. we went down the road to the am.pm. we discovered the coffee there is first rate. you got some chocolate chip cookies for breakfast, and i didn't mind. i made a cadillac with half hot chocolate. we aren't that young anymore, but we love to be kids together. maybe that's the core of our apple?

who you are

My sweater has holes in it and you will not forgive me.
I tell you I bought it this way and now you really cannot forgive me.
I tell you I lied, I made it, I cut these holes with knives when I was bored.
You stop blinking and stare.

Trying to smoke
me out.

I shrug and pour myself a cup of coffee.
I'll never be who you want me to be.
And I forgive you.
You seem to always have that look on your face. In my kitchen.
It's who you are.

talk show generics

She held the boundary for as long as she could and then caved. Her eight year long fascination with him subsided into a temperate love affair punctuated by flurries of drunken fists. This was a special kind of music few could hear, a subculture where the despotic meet those who prefer to be ruled. She had run out of furniture to blame on another blackened eye.

type.writer -xi

they stared at you
they stared at me
get lost! i thought
you said it

i wrote it
i typed it up

one day
i got up off a bar stool
liquid courage
and read it

in 1998
i believed
in you and you
in me

i moved
thousands of miles away
in 2003

i'm not broke
i realized
i'm broken

oxygen starved
the urban air

i don't smoke
i thought
i'm choking...

doesn't mean
i didn't
care

journal # june one

Couldn't stand you but
the weather was
fine

I was under it when we got home
and the heart seated in the center
of the bloody thing
making it go

Organized chaos and classified a mess
your up style had gone down
the eggs scrambled
mostly whites the yolks fell
outta fashion

Couldn't stand it
i mean together

The coffee was too
white i mean
                     mixed
                  up with what the cows
gave

I think it all started
i mean ended
in 1992

wheels

there's really nothing wrong with two people coming together for a time, living together, being together, and then having differences drawin them apart, a change of heart, and then lookin for another start somewhere else with someone else. there might be a culture invested in keeping you together or a family that hopes for you to heal. and yes, you could recover, the two of you, you could but it would have to take both of you with all your might to make it right. all the bad blood pooled up like that. it would be very hard. the world wants you both to make it, yes, the culture, maybe even the family. but suns rise and wheels roll and pavement cracks and suns set, and what with all the change you find it hasn't happened yet? there's really nothing wrong with moving on.

in a fashion of caring

These days I see people in a sacred space who are tragically depressed, like they can hardly get themselves out of the house and make it to session. I see people who are in abusive relationships and sometimes with themselves. I see myself seeing people and I don't know how to help. All the stuff they taught me not always on the ready. What ends up happening is I help create the sacred space in which I see them, and we meet there, and I invite them there again, and I'm not always making any money cuz I volunteer, too, so I may be tired and permanently jetlagged by my nightshift, and I'm sure they see me tired and tryin to pay close attention cuz I care, and hopefully, just hopefully, they will realize they are worth caring for and start to care for themselves a little more, too, but even if they don't, well that's okay, too.

do over

Not all was well, there was a zap and i got zapped, I don't know why it was me but it was, i didn't need a charge this morning i already had my green tea extracted and my acid was lactic the ultra didactic. Someone was having a bad day. Someone really hurt me and thought it was okay. Someone deserted me and i got zapped. What can I say? Someone didn't mean it, they were having a bad day? I wanted to have patience I wanted to be tolerant I wanted to be loving I wanted to be kind. But i got zapped and i kinda lost it, today, not all was well so i gave myself away and traded bullshit for bullshit on a five minute text exchange in the pits of interpersonal refuse calling out a hater like i had nothing to lose. But i lost it. For a moment i lost my sunshine my peace of mind and got zapped. Oh well. I'm gonna forgive myself and start the day over.

chalk it off as existential slowburn -iv

i don't wanna do it. i don't wanna tell you what i think will happen here because i always had hope, always in life i had hope. i wouldn't want to describe a terrible thing to you. i wouldn't want you to misunderstand. it kills me how we fail to come across sometimes. love doesn't need convincing. i doubt you believe in us anymore, actually. can i say that? whereas my sense is you have tried hard and i have tried hard it's just our ways of living here have shifted drastically from how we were raised and it's an ever moving picture whereby we are ever trying to adjust. so, you see, i can and forever love you. i am that way for life, i know i am, and you say you are, too, but i don't know. i don't know why this fucking thing happened and please don't ever tell me again that i'm some broken record, okay, i don't even carry a philosophy to support that kind of talk - about waste and wastelands. i am humbler than when i met you. you gave me this. i am more quiet, it's true, but not necessarily withholding or despising you for talking to me, as you presume. alot of it is just me internally looking at my situation and wondering how i could ever have imagined my life being any less than tragic, in the end... i love you. we've been through a lot and i won't forget you, all i can do now is just live through it with you until maybe i need to live through it without you? i don't know. it's different looking one day to the next. the light. it's just blinding. i gotta close my eyes sometimes.   -fin (from an old letter never was sent)

chalk it off as existential slowburn -iii

... i was foolish. i tried to convince you i loved you. maybe it was all i was capable of - a desperate time - we hardly spoke anymore, one of us bound to be triggered or hypersensitive or so very much in disagreement we would rather be silent and avoid the pain, stuff flared up anyway when we couldn't keep it in any longer - yet love doesn't need convincing - i've never felt like such a colossal failure, it's really fucked, the enduring pain of being alive and becoming more aware of whats really going on with everybody, so few people really making it and us, sad and repeating, start out so well like we do, overcoming adversities and falling in love, making a family where there was none, then stricken by some or other corruption, watch sanity slip away in the residuals, wicks away, sad reminders of love affairs we dusted, wondering how they could be so indifferent to us now, realizing in hindsight how i could be so insensitive sometimes, life gets stressful and the bond between two people begins to fray if it cannot hold. love shouldn't need convincing but we go there anyway. chalk it off to existential slow burn.

chalk it off as existential slowburn -ii

... i dont know how to write this. i want to think before i write, but i cannot. i want to treat this
with the attention it requires. the gravity it inspires. the sensitivity it needs. i am even now
holding back from trying to rush to disagree with you on some of your points you made,
because i do feel differently, yes, and thats okay, yes. however, i cannot disagree with your
overall vision. because this is also what i see. atleast i think our visions of us are pretty
much alike. it doesnt matter if they are or they aren't, though. i truly believe that.

god i feel like im in church all of a sudden. because my spirit is aching. i feel my spirit through
my body in that powerful way like i did on the best sundays in the earliest 1980s, when my family
was a young family, the 4 of us were tight, we had a big old queene anne victorian to tear around
in, a big old lawn wrapping around her, and a little peke-a-poo dog named buttons. its fur was like
the worst case of jerry curls when she was just a pup. my moms radiant joyfulness at having
all of us together singing hymns on sunday, well, it just filled us up, also. but my dad wasnt
really into it. so the kids werent either. so looking back its an aching kind of spirit i felt ...