hard sell

I got him to go up the hill with me to the orchards. a hard sell but I did not want to go alone. hard cider & tv remote his thrill. once we hit the clean country air he thanked me profusely for getting him out of the city. we drove by a liquor store. he didn't even ask.

 #katyamills

rain.1

california. 4am
coffee rims the paper


six months searching
the sky headlights found rain


i turned down the radio
march of death by tally i
raised the windows 2 inhale
the breath of life

#katyamills

autumn thank god

who knows what would have happened and it's autumn thank god the summer has broken and we held it together so well

far past when holding it together was cool

fall.3

the moon. full tonight for all to see. we missed it. i was watching you and you me. we rose. for all and the moon. to see.

fall

fall rises in the system. hot coffee becomes special. essential. we need each other more to keep warm.

letter home

I wish I could call you and thank you for the yummy turkey and green bean casserole. I caught a bad cold so my voice is compromised. Hope you had a safe trip home and I miss you. If I'm well enough I plan to go see the family in Tahoe this weekend as Xmas falls on my day off. The last 3 months have been the hardest yet most exciting time in the past 5 years what with interviews and licensing demands and writing my book and training for my ultrarun in March. I'm taking this moment of rest to breathe (with inhalers 2 help!) and appreciate all that I'm trying to accomplish. None of it would have been possible without your help so I thank you. Love. K

swallowed

Some kinda store. Little Bit took off as much as she could chew. What was her purpose so to do. The red book back was broken and quite mostly paper-maiche. In look, not essence. Essentially a book and no longer readable. Tragic, were it not for the hope of recyclables. Postconsumer waste repurposed, like even after she got through mashin' the shit out of it, too! Who? Little Bit, pumpkin shopping in September, true true.

journal # 22 of april

the sunlight fell and we rose up
 to meet it everyone
 on the street

it burst into constellations
of broken glass
in the road

we stretched into lengths of newfound
lands verdant green were we

thin strips
followin the tracks
out to where grass prospered

here we forgot all those lives
in the newspapers they
stacked up against
 us

the rainy days
we missed them

yes

The quality of life changed, i could sleep at night and stay up all day. i found an exceptional colombian coffee which filled my thermos with a couple spoonfuls of brown sugar and cream, and lasted all day long. i was happily employed in the art of conversation, beneath the surface of dysfunctional meet and greets. spring was coming on strong and every other person with allergies. the cats found entertainment in the yards, after a long winter indoors. i replanted my plant and set it on the windowsill where it prospered. my boyfriend took me for pancakes early mornings, and then we hit the depot for large sacks of mulch, five for ten, and i helped him toss them into the bed of the truck. he took them to the Delta for the orchards.  -KatYa, 2017

netflixxx

the last episode of the last season pulled
all the feelings
outta me
 today

god it felt good

katya. 2016

Journal # 12.23.16

I met a friend for coffee this morning, I was not on much sleep, my days have been busy with writing,  work, finding gifts, reading, planning, talking, dreaming, walking. We caught up on our lives and he invited me back to his place to look at some original artwork of his, colorful and imaginative paintings, oils on canvas dating back fifteen years or more. He let me pick out seven of them, and the rest he says he is going to destroy. I gathered they served their purpose. I know better than to try and talk another creative soul out of destruction. I thanked him profusely as he rolled up the canvases and placed them in my arms. When I got home, I tacked every one to the white walls of my apartment, many of which needed some meaning. The counters and floors are now cluttered with holiday gifts which need be wrapped. The air smells of Sumatra I have been roasting for my brother and sister. Why would I call her a sister-in-law, when I can simply call her my sister? 

sunset at Walmart 

A storm is coming and the rain here will turn to snow in the Sierras, and I will be following its tail to Lake Tahoe, with all of these gifts for my nieces and nephew. Star Wars watches and piggy banks, Hard Candy makeup and alphabet stickers and bling, jump ropes and soccer balls, silly Xmas tee shirts. I really had fun shopping for the kids. Tomorrow I will remember how to wrap a gift properly. Today I will get on my bike, in the rain, and ride up north on the river. I am making a couple hours a day for my novel. I take my chances for naps, and find myself waking from strange dreams to my cats and the sound of the heater. The cats they curl up on the bed, and listen to me recount the stories of my dreams. Or else I stretch and I sing to them. I will kiss them and get out of bed. I cherish the lives alongside my own. 

force me through the holidays

I could take my happy freshly home-highlighted head on a smiling walk down the road, the street flanked by sycamore trees and not so many post office boxes anymore, throwing all their skinny winter arms into the empty sky asking for what? Ya I could on a head full of Peruvian Oro Verde.

I am makin' room for us so small in my head, I only have a cupboard left to rent  it's like New York City in there. Ya but I'll do it just to keep you. I could freeze and throw my arms up, too, and stand there until it's dark and a Ford Explorer with one headlight takes me out -- so how I feel is real --  I hurt the way you hate me, passively, denyin it all along like your some kinda saint cannot hate.

I love the way I remember us. I could continue, long past the ancient era of news and music and video on paper and tapes. Or I could shut the cupboard up and paint it, put the painting over it my friend just gave me. Something new, you know. Where love goes after a dead end. Left me stupid, left me dumb, left me empty at the end of a road, thanks a lot. Then told me keep going, right off the road. If I still loved you I could and you know I would.

 How much silence is left to dilute the poison in a media concentrated mind. Give me an ugly sweater, some pumpkin pie and a league of national football and force me through the holidays. Honey, I'm sorry, I don't mean to wake you...but... how much poison is left, is there enough to kill the silence?

No, no, fuck all that!

Gimme a broken home to fix.  I'll take my memories on multigrain, multiplatinum, put it on a wall, behind glass. Then one night in creative impulse, after he chases up my skirt and back down into a dream, I'll break the glass and pull the alarm, hover out on a hard drive's shiny disc, slicing through an mp3 made by you and me. I'll run away and then walk back. I'll love you in secret. I'll make love with a memory pulled out of a locket. I'll stab the knife into the socket. I'll pray for us in public. I'll stare into the eyes of the baby tigers.

time slapped me an hour

Halloween was over and I was feelin pretty dismal, cause I had gone to the store yesterday and bought ten whole candy bars which i put in the freezer for the kids or myself, depending on if i got any trick or treaters, and it was over and ten candy bars were still in my freezer. The funny thing is, some kids had come banging on up the stairs and knocking on my door. Sounded like a whole busload of them. But the timing was simply atrocious. I mean, I had woken up a half hour earlier from a nap, and it takes me at least forty-five minutes to really be awake, my meds have to kick in and all that, and for sure I'm not ready for visitors. 

Not only that, I had thrown a few egg rolls and a medley of frozen vegetables into the oven and was sitting down to dinner. Not only that, but the world series was on the radio and I was actually captivated, it was the bottom or top of the ninth inning, a couple of young studs on base, the closer on the mound, and electricity in the air or was that just static. Whatever the case, I had no mind to go answering the door for an entire schoolyard full of kids. All I had was ten bars, anyway. They were liable to ransack my place for more. Kids today do stuff like that. They're exposed to all that stuff on the internet, blogs and stuff; they're like little hardened pre-criminals just waiting for the crime!

My friend Rick told me there's fight and there's flight but they always leave out the other one, freeze. Well that's what I did. I froze like candy bars. It was hopeless. I would have to work up a smile, and that alone would take minutes. So I missed it. Halloween passed me by. Again. Last year I didn't get any kids (and thank god cause i didn't have any candy), and this year I did, but I blew it. I really blew it.

Long after the kids left empty-handed, I felt so bad I went out to the street to see if I could fish any stragglers off the sidewalk, lure them to my place so I could give out a candy bar. But they were all gone, why? I went inside and looked at the clock. It was 4am. No wonder. Halloween was over. I was feelin' pretty dismal, and went to the freezer for a candy bar. The chocolate started to cheer me up a little, and then some guy on the radio was kind enough to remind me to set my clock back. Wow! Time just slapped me an hour. The day after Halloween already was shaping up pretty well. Old man time must have felt bad for someone like me. There's tons of stuff you can do in an hour. Hell, I just wrote you a letter and I still have a boatload of minutes to play with.

milky ways last forever

Here comes the full moon. Our street probably won't get any kids on Halloween, we never do. There's only one side of the street with houses, the other side is a park and a school. It's a raw deal to walk down a street with only half as many houses as the other streets, you're liable to get only half as many treats. I don't blame them at all, hell, if I was a kid I would avoid our street like the plague. Most of the kids around here, the ones who really know what's going on, go up to the Fabulous 40s on Halloween. The people live up there are all politicians, doctors and lawyers, CEOs and stuff. I mean money. They probably drop a K on Halloween decorations like it's nothing. Gimme that giant spider there. That drone, I want that witch ona drone. Can you gimme all the mummies you got in the back, please? They need a goddam assistant to open the warehouse doors in the back by the alley, just to unload all that crap into the SUV. Mummies coming out the sunroof! Amazing. Will you take a personal check? They probably have stamps for signatures they write so many checks up there in the fab forties. Ya, if I was a kid I would hit that for sure. Bring a Macy's bag or something, cause they're liable to drop the kitchen sink. Don't bother coming around my block. My neighbor says he still has candy from last year he's planning to use, just in case anyone shows. Maybe two years old now, he can't remember. Snickers bars don't go bad, anyway, all those damn preservatives. Milky ways last forever.

me and my pumpkin

I ate a pumpkin seed whole without chewing and a pumpkin grew off of the vine that pushed out of my navel. I was very surprised but not shocked because of the season. The pumpkin turned orange and I had to drink a ton of water to get it that color. I really felt dehydrated and drained but my pumpkin looked grand so I felt better though I looked terrible. The people who used to be my friends wouldn't talk to me no more or go to the clubs with me looking like that, dragging my pumpkin behind me. Cars got really angry, well their drivers did, they made their cars honk at me and my pumpkin crossing the streets. We were in the crosswalk, okay, so exercise a little patience, people. Only the children seemed to really like me anymore, and they followed me and kicked it with my pumpkin. After Halloween my pumpkin and I sat sorrowful at the dinner table, as I prayed for guidance. My pumpkin spoke to me through the vine, I swear, it told me it was okay. I know you think I'm crazy but you all stopped coming by anyway, so what would I care what you thought anymore? And don't even try. When the kids circle round, we will celebrate the season and eat pumpkin pie. You won't be invited and that's why.

searching

I was looking for you, after the rains came, searching for you in the mist, a cool night in the early hours of the morning. No one knew what year it was. No one cared. You had a smoke somewhere with a stranger, you stood high and carelessly tall. All I knew was it was Fall and some day I will stop searching. I did not know what day it was, in the middle of the night, the leaves were still on the trees where they could play with the light and bend to make shadows on the streets below. I was caught inside a maple, walking with a staple in my stomach. I don't know how it got there, but I had worked in an office too long. There would be no children. The roosters started out from the backs of their skinny throats, it was never too early. I thought I was awake, but when I woke up I realized I was not awake before, and I wondered if I could wake up from this. Life would be easy on your own. No one knew the time. Neither did I. The stranger, he didn't know a goddam thing, he didn't know anything at all. The day I stop searching is the day I die. Hell. Everybody knows that.

a memory of winter in New England

 I remember a crisp winter day after the snow turned to rain and froze over. We broke through on the way to school. We wore those blonde workboots with the hard rubber heels and the laces like snakes crisscrossing their way up past your ankle. The trees were sparkling with frozen rain. Everything was still except the birds and the cars and the smoke coming out from the stacks. And the earth was moving but we couldn't tell. Not without any wind. And when the warming trend came to end, it got cold once again, and the radiators started hissing and clanking all through the night. You could see your breath and know for sure you were alive. Funny how that works. In the dying seasons.

strawberry. a reaching

Strawberry season. I try to get my teeth to cut in and meet just below the stalk, so none will be wasted. The taste is so refreshing, so full of cool water and sugar. Always cool in the middle. The spectrum of red in the flesh is sweet to the eye. Eye candy. And the flavor hits so many spots on the tongue. I can't take it! Now look closely and touch the surface of the berry. The seeds are spaced quite evenly apart, yet one is lucky to draw a straight line through them. Run your finger slowly across with your eyes closed, and you will feel how they protrude from the flesh. The forensics told the tale, and the strawberry was there at the crime scene. The imprint matched a particular berry patch in Solano County. Some berries had gone missing, a farmer testified, and they were known to run wild! i was invited to investigate this case. i took a cross section of the strawberry. i was supposed to use an exacto knife, but (please keep my confidence) i used my front teeth to slice through the tender berry sample they gave me. so delicious! then i examined the cross section as indicated. amazing what i found! all the seeds you see patterning the outer reaches of the berry, pressing out from the corps, are actually attached to white tendrils which connect to the heart of the berry. in its evolution, the strawberry has literally shot its seeds out from the center! and around the clear paths, the white tails and trails, the transparent flesh has formed, and calcified in the center. the strawberry looks to be full of a network of straws! the straws end at the reach of the seed. the strawberry, i determined, is not a berry at all! it is a reaching! a striving! toward destiny!

pollen

State Capitol, California

Yellow dust was everywhere. you could find it in the unlikeliest of places. mixed with the oil threaded into the ball bearings. lining the cell walls inside your kidneys. speckling the setting white sun at the base of a nail bed. it was as though a star had exploded and now we all wore it on us. glitter was second to something finally, for the models all lined their eyelids with pollen. the loratadine that was dissolved into their sparkling water took care of any potential unfashionable reactions, in most cases. the photographs of course, came out spotted in development, even the most obsessive compulsive photographer could not capture every grain. pollinated-selfies thus turned a corner and trended on twitter, and were particularly cherished if the subject could deliver the exalted clearing of sinuses, instantaneously, on camera.

Journal. 'Planted'

Yes. Something is stirring! What? Do I too bud and blossom like the spring? Can this be? I went to shake a man's hand and left him holding flower petals. I left my home and a vine traced my path all the way to the store. I was hoping to buy a quart of milk, stick of butter, and something I forgot? Heavens! I walked out of there with only a twenty pound sack of planting soil and plant food. My vine got chopped off by the electric doors, and it HURT! My fingernail beds were turning green. When I reached the train tracks, still two blocks from home, I stopped dead in my tracks. OH THE SUN! Suddenly filling me with such passion I cannot describe! I turned my head and heart up to face it, and I swear my spine arched like a bow, against the pull! I became lighter. My eyes went blind in the looking! My pores opened and my skin turned to oil. My feet became locked to the earth to keep me from floating away. I could no longer see or hear. I could no longer move! I did not care. I stood there and the sack of soil rolled off my back and broke open at my roots, I mean feet? The plant food I had already digested walking home, I could not wait. Something was rising up my esophagus now, I know not what? I can feel what feels like leaves and things scratching and bending up through the passage. I try to speak but no words come out! Oh my god! What is happening? My thoughts are upon the feeling, only the feeling of warmth of the sun and a wish for rain. Please rain. Please rain. Please rain. OH THE SUN! Oh my god! I am breathing out but it's like the deepest inhalation. How, how, how? I inhaled the toxic shock of your world. It grumbles in my tummy. I give you a purer stream, OH! Is it me? Is it really me? I see you walking by, my friend, but you cannot see me. I try and wave but only rustle in your breeze. PLEASE! See me? I love you. I will always love you. You kick on by, all careless like, and I just watch but not with eyes... and wait, is there? Is there really? The way I know you now, verily so, my love, the way you know me so, my sweet, is by the shade I cast upon to cool your skin... the fresh delightful taste unseen...you drink my blood in air... my heart in misty kelly green i share... inhale me, love, and stay a while... you need not go so soon! Come rest by me, your giving tree, on this the day so fair, breeze lifting through your lightest hair. How wondrous! Shall I never leave this resting place... my home.