fluffy white towels the kind you find in only the finest hotels

When all the bridges have been burned and all congeniality has been lost, looking at the river you will not feel the same as before, wondering how to cross it alone, wandering, then discover you can swim if you start by floating on your back, belly up,  staring up at the sky, even with horizon with the dying. You must continue on to farther shore, for there i await you, my child, with an oversized fluffy white towel the kind you find in only the finest hotels, to wrap around your dear self, and as you drip dry i will say nothing, just clasp my arms around your neck and lean into you so you can feel your strength and the beating of my heart with yours, in the valley, verdant of all that arise by the sun, solitary, captivated by the life.

Katya at home. 2015

Journal #05.08.15

The spirits of the deceased could be found all around. There is a child in a bird. Her tailfeathers have horizontal lines, markings, cream-colored. We are looking for her wooden tombstone, the only one left of hundreds now destroyed by the elements and time. A girl who died in 1893. The bird leaves the tree and shows us her tail feathers prominently. The cream lines. Our bird flies in an arc, in a direction, and then back to the tree. We follow our own path to the same destination. Dusty lines. We are spirits. Equals. In the same place and time. We are free in a nonlinear yet static context. Our lives are wooden, not stone. They will decorate these lands and these times. To be part of the great spirit. Creativity is a use it or lose it affair. And still we are creations. And will be destructions. And recreations. The context is there. Gravity holds us to land. The bird has its wings, to put spirits in flight. But there are other forces at work, greater forces beyond any concern of gravity. I wrap the food in napkins and place it in my bag. The sun has decimated my energies. The coffee has worn off and dehydration setting in. A couple of kids dressed in black and purple, bring new life into the cemetery. The wooden tombstone is hiding beneath some rose bushes. This is how it survived all this time. The inscription is impossible to make out. There are greater forces, beyond any need for inscription. Our lives are written across the sky. Death does not exist in this world of static flux. Context can be archived. Paradigms may shift. The earthquakes may help us toward the truth kept in the earth. Tornadoes cleaning skies. I will disappear into the dust. Then see me swimming with four fingers on my left hand. My legs become a fish tail. Dive down with me into our resurrections. One word at a time. The sun feels better, underwater.

let me warm your heart some

© Katya Mills

i died on a bus in a ditch on a mountain
my blood compelled to the ground
in a fountain

i came back
determined

i died when an eagle
plucked me up
in Alaska
and fed me to
children

i came back
defeated

i lived in a cave with a guardian
dragon. passing time
in liquid mineral

i died when a child fell asleep
in your arms. my fairy tale
ending

shut into darkness
placed back between bookends

i came back full of
vengeance

and bled out the nostrils
and eyes. a virus

how else could i live?
you tell me survival
i do what i
must

i know
i'm a nameless
burning atrocity
i know
how i die
on your lips
every day

i come back haunted
undaunted

i died with the death
of the quarantined
child

i died on the breath
of some irrigated
lung

i won't live again!
i swore on your life
we died in a car crash
you and your wife


now crystalline amber poison condensate
i drip from the radiator steam
in the fluttering light
of a dream

awaiting the bloodlines of unknown
future origin. particulate
matter

16th near J. photo by K

i splatter
my art on these walls
like its nothing

as darkest intention
disingenious
crawls
down the
spine like a vine

i died in the heart of a freshly made
widow. fomenting
my next evolution

i come back a cancer
the kind we all live with

i come back a sonic dionysian
boom
watch as i soak up the carpet
your room

then carefully will my way back
into your pores
cut down to half
the half daughters of
whores

taking your fancy
picking your pocket
Sid Vicious and Nancy

i came back the tormented life
i was given. the rain and
the cattle

driven and
driven

i died on a hill. overlooking a pasture
monet with his paintbrush
impressions to capture

i died on a gurgling mute
strangulation
my death living on
sycophant
indignation

i died with no purpose
no heart
and no soul

so that you could live
on just so you
know

daughter of darkness

i got a label on my life
this life by design
might be Francois Girbaud
maybe Calvin Klein

not really sure how I survived
the car crash. age fourteen
T-boned in an Audi
skin and bones and spleen

i guess i was supposed to
kick it on to college
blue jeans. straight up Levis made me
dreamy at eighteen

then was drug related
polysubstance codependent
waitress at a seafood joint
far from holy
faded

pulp fiction and nirvana
kept me up at night
tupac singing dear mama
now i wanna fight

got a number in my mind
i think it's seventeen
trying to unravel
Chicago's lean and mean

by twenty-eight. my Saturn
second coming round
i check my self
my widening gyre
and then self
intervene

not sure how it happened
the china got intense
wrote myself right off a page
somehow found a fence

maybe it was the pacific
California's rugged coast
stopped me from my crumbling self
catastrophy
burnt toast...

all i really know now
my life is by design
whose label soaked into my neck
reads 'enivid'
divine

who i am
inked my heart
who i'm supposed to be
where i been
tagged my soul
where i'm meant to go


i am survivor's sister now
daughter of the darkness
i laugh into the alleys narrow
and feel the love
rush back
god bless

years of certain darkness

In the eyes of angels
blackpool wells
swallow the
world

years of certain darkness
marked us all
for life

years of sullen sadness
lost another
smile

archived
file

years of watching death
swiftly steal the
stage

another leading man
embroiled in his
rage

another leading lady
frozen by her
fear

years of certain darkness
they really ran
their course

right here in sunny
California
our day of perpetual
anhedonia

dis of ease and
ability

turned angels
into devils
dying

angels into
devils into
angels back
again

into angels
fallen angels

into angels
once again