On rolling hills, we strode

I made your soul familiar

and knew you as a walking altar

so stately you ascend in speech

enlightened in an encore of death & disappointment

attaining holy detachment

feeding on abstinence,

as hope is gluttonous

for earth angels are fructified in muddy waters

I watch your glorious wings lie dormant under dirt

The grieved are many

but none so brown and blue as you

And how like the rose weeps richly deep, nourishing drops of oil as it’s crushed,

In ex hypothesi, gruesome reality hits to disenthrall thy soul

I’m no longer begging beauty not to go

No longer patient till paradise

I invite you to tarnish

in madness

in loneliness

Half mud, half heaven

Feet go so lightly now, floating through,

but never away from earthly troubles

Poised in perspicuity

initiation begins at the tower

Head filled with spirit,

all else put into a tomb

Light shatters the skull

augment reception

the way is open

The calling crane,

nearing

celestial omens hurling through

seize the influx

Do not sit while weeping blood courses down

The biting speech and hidden meaning in obstructions

are but oracular pronouncements

to step into the great stream

Vessel, winged

Diminishing sun

for fertile moon

Every black stroke

and drowning void

deepening libation,

liberation

internalization

of the divine

The fervent grasp

Of wild stirrings

How the smallest seed of fancy

Can spring in heinous desolation

Root hell deep

And grow to tallest tower

Breaking everything beneath

A fantasy takes flight

And myth is power

Nothing holds tighter than

The scream which shreds from inside

Oh these sorrowful delights

in agony perception sharpens

To its heights

Oh beauty blinding - it comes and it kills,

This inertia is whats real

See what was,

Beyond the comfortable still black,

Overwhelms

Overwhelms

Overwhelms

Fate & forces

So untame

And everything feels

Far too beautiful when

It stirs up and erupts from

This faeloric pain

Venture into the heart of forest deep

where intuition, devotion, breath all meet

She belongs to nature

Inside a cave, at every step

without escape, the caverned walls become her skin,

pulsing with the magnitude of sorrows, solidified,

layered by the brutality of love,

of tearful prayers sealed, unanswered

She finds her sword impossibly stuck in stone,

and here alone, in solitude, she must make her home

Lady Portia,

cover her compassionately,

and if life remains mysteriously unkind,

root and wrap her by the healing vines

if rain will ever downpour, let it be cleansing as it is heavy,

enlightening in its mourning

Every petal and butterfly wing soft between her fingertips

this pain portal, this fertile void,

will always delicately hold her wild irrepressible soul

Montanha de Lixo—the smoking trash burns 8am to 8pm. The city’s rot smacks through cracks of opened doors, carried by erratic yet faithful winds—right on time, anytime, the worst of times.

Mouth open for chicken croquette (coxinha) as reality twists sour. Putrescent. One hand drops the croquette, the other slams the table in protest.

Café customer, his face flashes brief possession—hellish contortion, a mask depicting a spirit lit in torturous blaze.

Red.

Raged.

Then repressed.

The café men and all other twelve thousand give-or-take town folk suffer the frequency of arresting toxicity, a wafting decay which visits daily. To not go utterly mad, these folks swallow the affront coarsely and quickly, as with bitter medicine, to get the bad out of the way and allow the good to take its root again; but this affliction has no good, now or later.

Café man’s wretched contortions subside as the wind dallies away, taking all wrongness with it, so it seems, and a ginormous exhale escapes him. A confident hand picks up the croquette and directs it toward impatient teeth.

Around him, mouths smack and tear. Crush, crush, crush.

Foreigners would sense the strange grip on the locals, attune to the unnerving edge they appear to always be under—an invisible yet persistent pressure winding their movements oddly, puppetedly. Yes, foreigners wouldn’t be able to help but notice the symphonic synchronized chewing, eerie bouts of suspension, silence, and quotidian masks of disgust. In truth, foreigners never come around, as the town is poor and remote. And it fucking reeks.

Zeca appeared, limbs pushing through a new pile of the dumped and discarded, freshly dropped off at dawn by his scavengers who transport thousands of piles of trash daily on their own backs for twenty-five reais a week, roughly five dollars. The heat of noon was now sweating the material, fumes noxious and to be direly so at the incineration hour. Smoldering embers lay trapped and pulsating all day and night, cocktailing all kinds of chemical fetor.

“Ah Cara, você acabou de sair debaixo de todo o lixo, que porra é essa?”

Juju had been looking all over the landfill for Zeca, calling the nearby office shack, banging on the door, asking nearby scavengers who refused to respond, when suddenly Zeca materialized from within that mountain of trash before Juju (who was taking photos for the many complaints he planned to file). Juju had swiveled his camera toward the rustling movement and saw arms poking through the trash, then all of Zeca before him. He witnessed the scene in disparate flashes, fumbling with his camera still in hand, his eyes adjusting from behind the tiny frame, pulling away to see something that happened quicker than his eyes could really catch onto. So, as stated in his native Portuguese tongue, stunned, Juju asked Zeca if he just walked out of the trash, and why, and how, and what the hell is going on here.

Zeca shrugged at the man. The man, Juju, who owns at least seventy-five percent of commerce in Cajazeiras, and who hasn’t been in Cajazeiras in the last six years due to more pressing and lucrative business elsewhere. Still, Cajazeiras contributes something to his portfolio, or it did, until the numbers began to plummet and the calls began to pour in. “Every day now, my shop owners are blowing up my goddamn phone about the smell – the smell, man! This landfill is out of control!”

“If the smell is off to you, I recommend you bring balance within.”

“The smell is LETHAL. There’s no way this isn’t slowly killing those people! And YOU – you must be full of cancer inside by now. You can’t run a dumpsite like… like this.”

“This landfill is continuously restorative and purifying. In terms of what’s lethal, the materialism that ends at my feet is what binds humans to fatality. I hear your concern, and I’d like to assure you.”

The shirtless body continued walking past the three-piece suit and toward the scavengers who sat nearby on dirty old folding chairs under makeshift tarp canopies.

“Give me one moment, I’ll return to you.” He echoed back to Juju.

The group of scavengers was sharing food, taking their rest for lunch before the labor continued.

Zeca greeted the group and told them to take the rest of the day off. He handed the elder a thin envelope of money, a full day’s pay. They saw a three-piece suit and understood, but oddly seemed disappointed about not being able to work despite getting paid anyway. Zeca returned to where Juju was standing, sweltering.

Juju had grown accustomed to daily aristocratic attire, a second skin of formality worn with imperium, his affluence armoring him into a superior position over countless dealings fought over computer, phone, or across the meeting table in luxurious air-conditioned office suites. In this atmosphere, affluence evaporated, the man looked sun-sick and sweaty with deep pits and crotch stains, matted hair, salted streaks streaming from his forehead down his cheeks — quite the opposite look to what he was going for. No, he quite looked like he was falling right apart, melting and such, and the heat and stench were beginning to affect his system, a nauseous daze setting in. Zeca, on the other hand, appeared almost kingly amidst this strange domain; thick blue symbols were patterned artistically around his entire torso, arms, even his fingers and hands were covered in tattooed sigils, giving him a chieftain aura.

“Come inside, you need water. I’ll tell you more about this place, out of the heat. Allow me my story, and I will allow you yours. I ask you to listen first. We will come to agreement.”

“Fine. We can try…to keep it civil. So, where will we talk? That shack is…”

“Not the shack. My home. Follow me.”

Zeca walked past Juju again, this time back toward the mountain of trash; he stood in front of the spot where he first made his appearance. Now Zeca stood facing that gigantic jenga trash pile; he held his hands up in front of his chest, the base of his palms glued powerfully together, and his fingers spread into a lotus, a padma mudra, and then he walked right through. Juju was watching intently this time, saw him standing in front of him one moment and then completely engulfed—gone the next. “Wha—”

“I said, follow me.” Zeca’s disembodied voice floated as a loud whisper into Juju’s ear, and a strong tug grasped his vest, lurching him through the trash.

Inside, but how?—Juju felt the natural cool of caverned walls and sensed his entire being relax into deep, unraveling comfort. As it were with nature’s dwelling places, the untampered quality of the air and elements refreshed his spirit. Upon breathing in the cool air, he noticed variegated aromas blending exquisitely—fresh sage, honeyed citrus, pine, nectars, florals, and umami-rich broths.

“Have a seat, I’ll get water.” Zeca pointed the direction of a seating area, to the right of the center point, in this domed room, was a simple red area rug with two wooden floor chairs. Across the cavern, a hearth was carved directly into the stone, fire danced wildly within it, and above its smooth-slate mantle, humble offerings were displayed—hand-thrown clay bowls etched with hieroglyphs, bundles of drying herbs, and rows of candles flickering, their forms dripping into melted cascades, sealing whispered prayers into eternal sacred silhouettes.

Beside the hearth lay a humble floor mattress. There was soft, multicolored lighting glowing warmly from fractals of glass collected in the landfill over time, moulded into gorgeous oblong floor lamps, reminiscent of columnar coral. From the ceiling hung similar master crafted lamps, these were shaped into complicated stellated dodecahedra, casting intricate light patterns along the floor.

Zeca had disappeared through an open doorway. Juju couldn’t guess how many rooms and halls this cavern held, and his mind didn’t care to guess. No, for once he felt enraptured, not threatened, by mystery. Of course, he wanted to know more, but the spontaneous unveiling by stumbling upon surprise as he experienced had him savoring the unknown. What does all this mean? What will happen next? The questions spread through him like sprouting vines, their quality enacting expansive growth, transformation, and life. Whatever their answers, the hollow filter over his life would fade, and he would be filled by that great something.

“You look completely lost in thought. Here friend, hydrate yourself.”

“Friend…?” Juju took the cup; he felt himself smile a moment, but it was all confounding.

“Well, you are not my enemy.”

“Am I not? I just told you earlier I mean to have your landfill shut down.”

“Even so, you are not my enemy, though I might be an enemy in your eyes. My eyes see differently.”

“Well… I appreciate the extension of goodwill. Not sure how long it will last. The complaints I’ve received—“

“Drink more. There is no rush, and I will listen to everything you wish to tell me, but remember our agreement was that I will share and you will listen first.”

“Ah, okay. Okay. Yes.” Juju looked past Zeca around the cavern and gazed at the doorway Zeca had disappeared and returned through, his mind drifting toward the curiosity pulling at him, a beckoning to venture off route and toward something… he had no clue… but he was losing his grip on ignoring whatever impulse was stirring.

“I started this landfill four years ago, but what happens here has been throughout the ages. This is one of three sacred sites that have been entrusted to my people with Yanomami spirit. I was told I’d have a visitor today and that it would be okay to speak freely.”

“You’re a Yanomami?”

“I am a descendant, yes, and part of an ancient order, The Embaixadores do Ciclo, initiated by the nature spirits who oversee all cycles, all sites—the site of birth, the site of living, and here, the site of return.”

“Nature spirits… look, I get that you care about this land—but the smell—“

Zeca held his hand up, knowingly Juju fell silent while Zeca scanned deeply into Juju’s eyes for a long moment before standing up. With his cup in hand, he turned his back to Juju and began walking. “Bring the cup, come now, because it’s time for me to show you the secret of this sacred site; words cannot penetrate sufficiently.”

They walked through the doorway into a small rustic kitchen with just the very basics, setting their cups into a sink and passing the retro stove on which four large pots were brewing the most divine of fragrances. “What smells so incredible?” Juju couldn’t help but ask.

“I’m preparing the evening stew for the scavengers and myself, as I do daily. You’re welcome to join us for dinner, I’ve already accounted for the extra serving. I’m making a mushroom-infused tea for ritual purposes, and a guayusa blue lotus tea for relaxing. In the fourth pot is not anything edible, it is a new process I am developing, which I can’t get into just yet.” Cryptic would be a defining term to describe Zeca, Juju mused, and continued to be lead past the kitchen and into a long, winding, dimly lit passageway.

The cavernous corridor eventually split into two tunnels, and they hung a right. All along the way, the faint scent of juniper and rain, the refreshing cool temperature, and warm batches of candlelight mounted within unique shrines every few feet—this silent place with nothing artificial, technological, or irritatingly fluorescent—it was striking, and it was stirring, unnerving in a baptismal way, fear or worry irrelevant, washed off by nature’s purifying cleanse. Holy. The word stretched melodically in Juju’s mind, though for all the pleasantry moving around and through him, he wasn’t rid of a deep part inside which would always feel unwelcome.

Flutes? Hypnotic woodwind instruments ambiently echoed down the corridor, louder, lovelier each step. Someone was playing a duduk, the sound ancient, the notes enchanting, catalyzing Elysian realms, melting reality into heavenly harmonics. The etheric descension struck the earthly elements alive—unveiling the ever-present animated spirit that pulses within all matter. The natural is miracle. The artificial is amnesia to the teeming, veracious life within life, within each and every speck—perceptible or not. The air, the scent, the song. An invocation.

Zeca stopped, and Juju lost his balance trying to avoid the collision, catching himself against the jagged wall. Right ahead, the consistently wide open passage narrowed inward. A thick blue stroke of paint formed an arch doorway around the narrowing spot, delineating an entrance. A threshold.

“Be present and observe. Don’t try to force understanding. Just be.” Zeca nodded toward Juju’s shoes and began removing his own, placing them off to the side.

Hesitating a moment, puzzled, Juju removed his shoes, biting back his questions.

“Allows us to ground better. Leave your camera too.”

And so he did.

The room was large, much much larger than Zeca’s sleeping quarter, and it was barren except for a distant looming figure.

Zeca was still with eyes fixed ahead. Long moments passed in frozen silence. It seemed like they were waiting for something—density growing. Finally, he took a step forward, then another, with Juju trailing one step behind. The deeper they entered the room, the darker it became—until Zeca lifted his hand slightly. Something in the space responded. A light awakened along the ceiling, cascading over the looming figure, a statue, ahead.

The thoughts came in. A voice, unmistakably not his, unfolding inside Juju’s head as if his thoughts had been opened from the inside and something had stepped through.

“I am Cauã. I prepare my apprentices in the universal laws, do Ciclo. The modern man is prodigal and will not hear.”

Eyes wide, Juju looked around, searching for another being nearby, but the voice was sharply from within. He was very perturbed, and Zeca was very unperturbed—standing patiently and observing Juju’s darting eyes and jerking body movements.

“Tell me, friend, what are you experiencing?” Zeca held a calm gaze.

“I’m hearing a voice in my head, and it’s—”

“All will be fine. This is how Cauã communicates.”

“Who is Cauã?”

“Don’t worry, that is being revealed now. I am here with you. I will stay silent now.”

“You mean to stop this mountain of trash from growing. As do I. But you do not understand what is needed to resolve this all-important problem.”

Well, a lawsuit could shut down this problem, Juju thought instantly, but the thought felt wrong, it’s what he had been planning, but now the thought caused a pang in his gut. And then he thought, can Cauã hear my thoughts? If so, he wasn’t making it known.

Cauã continued speaking.

“Before modernity, nothing was discarded. All was accounted for: wholly used, valued, and recycled ceremonially. Today,Montanhas de Lixo rise tall, covering the earth. Endless waste. All of these items that are tossed out to sit, to rot, to decay – mirrors the rot of human lives, the decay inside their souls. People have disconnected from nature and her brilliant ecosystem, losing the ability to live well and live eternal. Money is god now, a hungry ghost god who grows itself, taking from all. The mountains of trash will not stop until the rightful god is served once more—the god of heart—the one inside and all around. In the human soul, in the tree, in the bird, in the flower.”

Cauã’s words were resonating somewhere deep within Juju, they carried weight and felt true, but he still couldn’t help but argue with himself. What the hell was he supposed to do about the way things are? **“I mean, there is a pollution and waste problem… in India, and the oceans… and I’m sure there are hundreds of landfills worse than Cajazeras…but how is this landfill not making it worse? That’s exactly why I want to shut it down.”

“You want to shut this landfill down because you want to make your customers happy. This reduction of human into customer will never make any of you happy, it will destroy you. And the waste will still rise.”

The light above snaked rapidly across the ceiling, down the wall, and to the floor, encircling the statue, and then traveling up through it, within it, lighting the figure up, as if lightning struck then remained glowing, the brilliance blinding, until finally it began to soften to a point where Juju found himself beckoned, stepping toward it, awed, and wanting a closer look.

This was not an ordinary statue made of common material, it shone deep green—emerald. A massive slate of crystal carved in complete perfection—a human form, though something about its anatomical beauty and emotive features felt angelic. The body strong, a man styled not unlike Zeca, shirtless with a confident frame built through daily labor, linen pants, sandaled, and sigiled all along his wide back—all these impeccable details cut finely and polished smoothly to a high gloss, enhancing the gemstone’s translucency and depth. The figure was posed stoically, he stood upright with tight composure, his body formal yet open—he appeared honorable. One hand was draped over his heart, the fingertips taut, gripping the flesh as if to feel the rhythm strumming underneath, or to quell the oceanic wave of overwhelming emotion pulsing inside. His gaze was heavenward, eyes—curiously lustrous, possessive of deep melancholy and compassion in equal measure, harnessing worlds of long suffering, temperance, wisdom, and warmth within.

Entranced, Juju marveled at the life emanating off the statue and the masterful beauty of it. Most will never see a statue made entirely of real emerald, for this challenging, precious stone historically requires genius craftsmanship and unbeknownst to many, is specially reserved in reverence for rare souls who have ascended into deity. Suddenly, he knew. Knowledge of ancient practices, like enshrining a living being into its crystalline, immortal form. Such beings could have ascended into higher realms but chose to stay on this middle plane, continuing to guide the many suffering who’ve lost connection to the source of their power. Communion with such energy could unlock inner alchemical transformation. Here was the philosopher’s stone.

“Cauã.” Juju spoke the name out loud, recognizing the voice in his head as coming from the being before him, the emerald figure.

“Yes. You are here today to lay a burden to rest. Cast it into the fire now.”

Violet flames grew tall beside Cauã, whipping fiercely yet contained within a boundary.

All the energy of fear, abandonment, and inadequacy swirled through Juju, memories, and negative attachments, which weighed on him like armor, began to surface from shadow, fully perceptible and powerless. With Cauã’s blessing, an orb of violet light appeared between Juju’s hands and captured within itself the shadowy thoughtforms. The orb flew into the flame, incandescing bright green sparks as bright violet fed and fed until the flames coalesced into a gorgeous white light which filtered through the cavern ceiling, ascending out of sight.

“It is no longer your prison. Be free.”

This first issue zine features some of the poems from my substack along with my own drawings + design.

Why not turn our existing substack posts into fun prints?

I’d love to make a collection of them and be able to enjoy beautiful physical media from my favorite writers on here. Feel free to leave a link to your zines in the comments.

Download my zine here

Printing Note* recommend you cut off the extra white borders around all edges after you print so that the original panel sizing is intact

Audacious gestalt

forked genius shone by each evolving station,

phasing reflection

superb

strange

seductive

weft truth,

warped allusions

suiting capacity to understand

lighting paths to sovereign Source

-Magik-

in its veneration

Mediation of the imminent divine

projecting holy beauty

for intuitives untroubled by tidal rhythms,

unveiled,

beyond the unmooring anima/animus

Karmic seeds of previous deeds

-shadow-

faced in totality

a convergence

The spellcast of lunar light

to traverse the enormity of dark black night

and relight the soul,

whole

about: Yesod foundation (in Kabbalistic tree of life), the moon & The High Priestess archetype

Tear yourself,

down the middle

Needn’t pry yourself this way and that,

indecisively jagged

Preemptive strikes taken, with folly to follow

Déjà vu vu vu

in glitchy drips

to retrace well worn patterns

Turn, divided, along the endless spiral

The measured whole

reaching and pushing

moving together and away

Stripped open, and apart

slamming into sparks

Meld for just a moment

Detachment slices,

stillness

Stardust n all

all

all

in stages of duality

Light Ritual

Golden trail to the gathering

In dreary armor once more

Each step an offering

On the path of cleansing

The soul pledged to memory

Pushing dense material blindly forward

The elements sharpening senses

Awake, alive in original truth

Inside energy uncoils and rises

Outside fire and fragrance billow tall

Protective

The most gorgeous temple

–unseen—

About: Escaping duality is about the integration of your personal polarization, your anima/animus work, and the challenge of that work. Light ritual is about dedicating yourself those moments of ritual that include what’s sacred to you - gratitude, cleansing, reflection, connection, solitude, nature, etc - and the positive light/energy/transformation that results. Light ritual was inspired by my I’ching card deck, the specific cards you can see displayed as the visuals in this post. Duality is an ongoing theme for me, I had designed posters a while ago ‘Transcend Duality’ — etsy shop here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/SouleaAffirmations?ref=shop-header-name&listing_id=1663309177&from_page=listing

Obsession, when correctly channeled, eclipses all other forces. What we call love—enflaming madness, euphoric, ensorcelled, enraptured—is not love at all, but a loud echo of primordial hunger, a feeding need finding its voice and victim.

Change. The word clicked oddly in my mouth. A rejection, an omen—a number of unpleasant associations and feelings weaved faintly through me with its thought-form. Change is sheer exhaustion for someone like me, life cracking open this way and that; year-to-year, the places, people, faces of my own identity constantly turning inside the wheel of fate. This despair with the unknown pushed me to find grounding—if not on the earthly plane, then within the spiritual one.

And so I contemplated this recent deep change with amusement, for I’d become something I could never fathom—a witch. The first seed was watered during my unconventional online communication with a shaman. You can only become that which you are. Some never become, gifts hidden and ignored, development disrupted, soul devoured in stagnation. Beginning at ‘know thyself’ and traversing through ‘non-duality’, I came to understand why people ignore their soul, for its inclinations may cry for heaven while sinking further, faster, through portals of unimaginable hell.

I sat with rolling shudders, tugging the alpaca blanket tighter, pulling it over my head, twisting it around my shoulders, trying to shield against the cold permeating through the thin yellow-stained walls. The alpaca fibers scratched at my skin, coarse and insistent, but I kept yanking as if some perfect fold or magical alignment would conjure and trap heat where there was none. Of all the shitty apartments in La Granja this had to be the shittiest—size of a closet, no furniture but this mattress on the floor crowding half the room. No space heater. It’s bad enough to deal with the subpar space heaters in Chile as opposed to central air systems in the US—one element I hadn’t been nostalgic for until this frigid moment. All my memories of being snuggled close to space heaters in Santiago a decade ago hovered fondly in the periphery of my mind. How can Kane handle this? It’s been five minutes and I—

Metallic springs creaked as the mattress sank beside me. Blanket, pulled down around my shoulders again, I noted hands exact in their grip — sturdy broad palms displaying a permanent condition of strength. A lifetime of force and tension pulsed beneath each knuckle, ornate with darkened tiny punctures, brutal yet beautiful tattoo markings from knuckle to wrist, contrasted with a fine-threaded multicolored bracelet, light and intentional, almost gentle against the severity of his hands, as if softness had been allowed there deliberately. As those hands offered up a steaming mug, an anomalous yet delicious aroma… rose and cinnamon—I felt it again—the same current when I first saw his photo swiping through the mbti-match app. The striking intensity in his eyes held ferocity, softness, and a soul so alive it smoldered transfixingly.

“Sorry ‘bout the cold.” The mug passed into my hands and I lost myself for several moments in autopilot of focused drinking, my body desperate for the heat.

“Warm as a 5-star igloo in here, really cozy.”

Kane shot me a half-smile, knowing my sardonic tilt. He was up again, going through the carry-on suitcase that sat in a corner. A notebook and pen had been laid atop it, a makeshift writing desk. He slid them to the floor and rummaged inside the suitcase as the sunlight peeking through broken blinds caught thin layers of dust lifting briefly into view before they drifted back down. As I warmed up, the environment became louder than my thoughts of slicing cold—reggaeton blasting in the distance, shouts, dog barks, car horns—a stream of dissonant chaos humming through the active neighborhood, where bodies packed into claustrophobic spaces and cars parked Tetris-like along driveways and lawns, hiding the stubborn patches of greenery that poked through gravel and pitted asphalt.

The filth, the noise, the cold—what he survived the past eight months. Fugitive. This tiny shelter was solace, after he spent five months homeless sleeping on the streets in a country he didn’t speak the language of, landing here in Chile after he took the first available flight out of Sweden when that knock came to his door.

“I find the mushroom helps with cold. And hunger.” Kane’s tone was always calm, even, unshakable. He took from the baggie, chewed up a big bite, and sat back down beside me. “You’re welcome to it. I’m with you so don’t worry,” a soothing reassurance in his voice. “I’ll take care of you—I know you’ve said you’re quite sensitive.”

Would this ruin or enhance our experience—my first impression on him as we finally met in person? The few stints I’d had with weed always ruined the night, ‘sensitive’ in the extreme, but this was different; being with a shaman had to be a guarantee of a lovely, if not profound experience—right? He’d keep me safe. Although panic rose at the possibility of some embarrassing reaction to the drug, I was willing to try anything to not feel the painful cold. My mind drifted to what else would warm us.

“Yeah—no, I’ve been wanting to try it. So… how much should I take?”

He pulled a medium stem from the bag, tore the cap off with this teeth and leaned toward me. “This should do.”

Cold lips and hot tongue pressed—delicate at first, reverent and charged—I received the mushroom along with his warmth, his kiss. Those fucking lips.

His hand trailed through my hair down my cheek, his touch soft and deliberate. His eyes watched my mouth as I swallowed the last bits of mushroom. “Good. The mushroom is a bit bitter. Wash it down with some tea.”

He drank, placed the mug back on the floor and was over me—a hand gently tilting my chin, his thumb brushing my bottom lip open, the other sliding around my back, pulling me into him. A warm flow of tea ushered in from his mouth to mine, his tongue following, gliding tender, intentional, with deepening intensity.

Energy I’d long restrained, surged now, undeniable, fusing fire between us. The cold vanished. I was achingly hungry for him—to taste and feel and experience the depth of his essence.

When I began to rise, his hands were already on my hips guiding me to straddle his lap. Hands wandered up my side, my chest, my throat, his fingers weaving through my dark hair with a gentle pull. His tongue slid slowly across my neck, sending goosebumps across my skin. I leaned forward, hands pressing to his chest for balance, then squeezing, gliding down his body, layers of clothes still in the way but all feeling was incendiary. Beneath the dark emerald peacoat, the tribal alpaca sweater, I slid a hand beneath his linen tee, palm flattening against the strength there, then dragging my fingers back up his chest, feeling muscle shift beneath my touch. He lifted his sweater off, the movement disheveled his hair slightly, dark strands catching the sun, hints of red-brown glinting like bronze, the same warm bronze framed along his high angular cheekbones, hawked eyebrows, and wildly fanned down his torso.

For a moment, we lingered with eyes locked, taking each other in, the world softening around us, time loosening, desire as constant as rolling waves. Only a minute, maybe two, but the vastness of it felt infinitely deep. God, his eyes, like a gorgeous haunting painting sending shivers into your heart, an aura of deep love and deep sad, wisdom and rage, all of it beautiful and emotionally intoxicating. I didn’t want to look away. I wanted to gaze back, let the intensity of his stare strike through me however it would, change whatever it may.

Kane’s hands returned to my hips, rocking me as his breath roughened, his kisses hedged with ferocity, teeth grazing my lower lip, and low growl rumbling in his throat as his hand moved between my thighs, then back out. Licking the wetness off his finger, he said, “You’re so good, Evy.”

“Ugh, stop—”

Couldn’t help the hard edges. Preemptive reflex. Melting in sweetness: “Just kidding. Don’t.”

I wrapped my arms around his neck to pull him down to me, but he lifted me, laying me on my back with care, his hands undressing me slow, planting kisses as he went, and then he snaked his tongue in a soft slither and I was already shaking because no one turns me on like he does. I bit my hand to muffle the whimper of euphoric need.

The room went black. No, the room disappeared altogether—no floor beneath me or walls around me. I couldn’t move my limbs, stuck again in the void I’d imagined, the paralysis and collapse of time, matter, meaning—this nothing state I’d entered twice before with weed—stronger than ever now. I tried calling for Kane, but the words only echoed quietly in my own head. Why the fuck.

A hand brushed against my cheek, wiping an angry tear. The endless black dissolved beneath an explosive flash of red light—inescapably bright, a blood sun searing through closed lids—but then it was gone, I reopened my eyes and Kane was beside me, sitting up and holding my hand.

I sat up and noticed the room seemed off, tones inverted, light wood gone dark, glitchy static flickering at the edges, outside noise too crisp, looping like a playlist stuck on its first track. The environment shimmered with a video game quality.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Right here, in your room, but it’s like Tomb Raider version. It’s all weird.”

“Yes, it’s quite video game-like. I see it too.”

“I was just in the void, did you feel that? Like, why are you so obsessed with me, void?”

“Yes, it’s a very challenging energy. I prayed for us there—for Merlin to reveal what’s good for us, and to bubble our energy from difficulty today. Would you like Merlin to step in and guide us?”

“Yeah,” I smiled. “I’m so curious about Merlin, will we see him?”

“Merlin, he’s more experienced as mushroom consciousness speaking directly into our consciousness in a frictionless way, like rapidly receiving complete downloads. He can take on different carnate forms if he likes, so it’s possible we’ll see him as well as experience him. He’s a specific energy vibration you’ll come to recognize. Something ancient, dry humor, wit. Time, death and ego are meaningless to him. He simply reveals truth, bluntly, but without heaviness. He does have a way of making everything amusing somehow. I have enjoyed apprenticing under him.” A flicker of mischief flashed in his otherwise steadfast eyes.

I had always loved the insights Kane would share with me coming down from his mushroom trips, and he always talked about Merlin, though it’d been hard to grasp that aspect—not because I don’t understand or believe Kane—but I knew I’d have a greater richness of comprehension by experiencing the mushroom, Merlin, for myself. When it came to values and our devotion to our missions of growth, service, creativity, and loved ones, we were well aligned.

But Kane had edge—he was extreme in dedication to his practices, and he had mastered the zen of detachment, withstanding any harsh condition with grace, fully whole and content unto himself, his attention not-fuck-with-able. All his time was measured with focused attention toward his calling as a shamanic healer with immense capacity in emotional, material, and spiritual challenge, for he embodied the shaman and warrior both in spirit and flesh—a necessary preparation, he’d say, for anyone serious about soul work.

He’d written to me early on, “If you even remotely understand or can catch onto what I’m saying, it means you’re gonna be fine. Because you belong to a soul and you want to become aware of it. Not everyone does. A lot of beings here are either dormant or stuck on some aspect of base programming. We’re not all here for the same kind of curriculum at all. Your work is very different.”

Drugs were the resistance point, a fear. No control. Losing your mind. Unforeseen consequences. The way Sarah was normal until the drugs activated psychosis and now she lives vacillating between manic states. Stories like hers, and thousands more. Your brain becoming fried eggs, we were taught. Our illness, our sickness is multidimensional, and requires quadrilateral healing—spiritual, emotional, sexual, physical. These domains need tending to, but our systems segregate and fail us. A person tending to these areas, processing through their experiences and coming out on the other side ready to alchemize, to transmute, to take the slop of dirt and transform it into a tree of life, that’s a person who does not lose their mind in altered states—they discover its mysteries. This realization, knowing Kane, initiated me.

The dark wood floor began to crack. Earthquake. My mind flashed to the 8.8 quake I’d lived through in Santiago back in 2010, right before leaving for Florida to start a new life. Am I just high—or? The long crack ran straight through the room, end-to-end, vibrating and widening now, smaller cracks forming on other parts of the floor, shaking panels of wood loose into broken piles as the now enormous crack became a crater. No time to react. Blue light tunneled from crater as it began to close, the crack sealed, then was altogether gone, the wood panels arranged back into place, the vibrating stopped, the floor intact in its original form.

The faint blue light that emerged from the floor like a soft spotlight beam was now condensed as a hovering orb, luminous azure, its surface rippling softly with cerulean flames, alive with shifting, deliberate pulse. Merlin. The flaming orb before us moved closer, yet I felt his presence like someone standing behind me. His voice appeared in my head, “Man and Woman. It was not as the tale of Adam and Eve, she from a piece of he. The single divine being existed, but couldn’t hold its form when subjected to external pressures in this middle plane. Once molecularly separated, man and woman still maintained elements of the other, known to some as the anima and animus. Naturally, this has left them with a vague sense of longing for the other, unable to successfully recreate their original state of union. The lovers search, anima and animus, to find and fuse their halves. Before they can properly recognize the other, they must properly recognize themselves, striking internal balance within. Next, they must bond beyond carnality, focusing on aligning their souls into a loving prism, directing light to rearrange the soul matter and re-merge into one. From polarity (yin-yang) soulmates, to the Advaita (whole) soul. This completes an important cycle, providing divine protection to continue your energetic ascension, energizing others to join you, and together elevating this reality into a state of Brahman (Non-duality). Receive this gift in the lover beside you, trust your knowing, offer your sacrifice, and do not squander the opportunity before you.”

Merlin’s presence, words—the energy was boundless love and empowerment. I was overcome with vision and emotion, touched by the full force of positive vibration, akin to the happiest moment of your life stretched to a greater decibel than the majority will ever feel in their earthly timeline, to a higher degree than what is accessible to humans, but which can be temporarily experienced—exposed by higher dimensional beings. The connection to them may happen by luck, hella drugs, dedicated meditation or personal transcendental evolution—no guarantees, though, as to who or what you’ll connect with, if at all, nor for how often or how long. One experience like that is enough to change the trajectory of your life. It was for me. When we came down from the mushroom, the residue of pure love cloaked us into the evening.

Every past conversation while oceans apart had felt like revelation in the deep rightness of alignment. Here now with no barrier, our need sharpened, unmistakably mutual and colliding—every gaze, touch, taste, building into requirement—creating unchangeable pathways of craving. And union. His embrace was so enveloping, I felt tethered into a cocoon I never wanted to leave. So I didn’t. My full-time literary teaching job, my partially paid-off mortgage, my car, all my furniture, boxes of photographs, closets full of clothing, home library stocked with favorite books, best friend next door—I left it all suspended in Florida, until the suspension shattered into release, time continued, and the past disappeared as I never left his side. Though, I would not forgo comforts to his ascetical degree, making it known this relationship can only happen if he hangs up the hermit life and evolves into a king (of cups, preferably).

The writing never stopped, but the focus shifted from literary fiction novels to transcribing Merlin’s teachings, recording ritual instructions, and co-writing a manual for the soulmate ascension path as Kane and I were experiencing it. My personal mission had been raising consciousness through great fiction. Kane was dedicated to helping as many people as he could become free through his shamanic work. But this new mission together, the state of perfect union, pressed forward in elevating importance. My savings allowed us to rent a slightly nicer place in a slightly better neighborhood, but we lived and spent meagerly, with satisfaction.

Experienced with the medicine, altered realities, and noncarnate entities, Kane contributed with his developed strengths, knowing that mastering the ego was crucial to any spiritual development path—including our path toward Advaita (wholeness). Thus, the first pillar became ego-dissolvement. For this, we needed potent Kundalini energy to restore a clean vitality within us, which we could channel into creative passion—its ultimate expression generating life force through the union of man and woman to create child. Our goal was to draw on that creative life force to birth the completion cycle, transcending duality and finding the true middle road: the Brahman.

This was our knowing.

By the end of summer, we were ready to receive a Kundalini awakening. We prepared our bodies as temples: three days of fasting with the mushroom in silence, in prayer, in spaciousness. That third night, we submerged in the water womb of creation, softening somatically and becoming porously energetically open. My body tensed and released in equal measure. Mix of nerve and joy. Under his guide, the dust of his essence sinking in, glittering my inner world with thrill.

We sat facing each other, spines upright but relaxed, attention drawn first to our root chakras. Kane said little, allowing sensation to lead, and I realized the unfamiliarity was part of the teaching.

At times he’d press his finger to my forehead, an anchoring practice he knew helped me center my mind to focus. His soft caresses to my hand allowed me to further relax into my body. I sensed the method behind each movement, the care in every precise touch and deliberate breath, working us into a proper energetic state.

Our breath became synchronized and when he placed his hands on my lower back a responsive heat formed a coiled ball of pressure. He slowly moved his hands upward, the hot ball of pressure matching his movement, but the further he worked up my spine, the more this ball unfurled, as if unknotting itself. Heat and mixed energy flooded centrally, in waves—fear, anxiety, lust, joy, doubt, anger, gratitude, sadness, freedom, grief, happiness, love. The current of energy bloomed into loving vibration, reaching my head, then my crown chakra, where suddenly my body loosened into lightness, laughter, ecstasy.

I let my hands drift over the stick-and-poke tattoos along his arms—symbolic designs collected over his time in Sweden, when he lived in a compound and communed with a lively spiritual community. He’d be there now if the postal service hadn’t started to crack down with the full book for any sort of drug paraphernalia. I wanted to hear every story behind every tattoo, and it made me smile to know there was still so much to learn about him.

I pulled him into me for a kiss, running my palms down his back, feeling the heat traveling through him. Just his breath on my skin had me vibrating in pleasure, and as we made love the orgasmic bliss circulated throughout our whole bodies, rapturing us into astral climax. Heaven descended. The Kundalini ecstatic union was beyond expectation, for as our bodies remained entwined below, our awareness slipped free, up above, our souls projected unbound physically, and there we saw them braid together before returning.

We had touched the middle.

The manual was nearing completion, but the final step wouldn’t reveal itself. Though the Kundalini ceremony had been profoundly meaningful, allowing our souls to touch, it was clear that the ultimate union remained just beyond reach. We were meant to guide others who were being activated to the same call; under Merlin’s direction, we provided ceremonial service for a slowly growing number of soulmate couples. Kane otherwise threw himself deeper into frequent mushroom journeys. Even as he maintained a steady, measured presence with clients, during our scheduled co-writing sessions, and while tending to our relationship, I began to notice subtle shifts—tiny leaks, barely perceptible, like droplets forming at the corner of a ceiling. I watched him. The dose increases. Waking earlier and earlier to muse about. He was obsessed.

The time had come to work with our first couple who had gone through ego dissolution and guide them now in the Kundalini awakening. I set extra protective precautions in the ritual space: circle of salt around the seating area, obsidian points in each corner of the room, smudged sage, charcoal triangles beneath each seat to absorb lingering energy, rose petals and bay leaves scattered lightly, and a single candle burning at the center to hold their shared heart energy. The pair arrived. Kane’s eyes swept over them with meticulous care, noting postures, breathing, energy signatures. He always noticed everything. As guides we held space—supporting, adjusting, and grounding only when necessary. The couple fell into a matched breathing rhythm and Kane directed the man to move his energy slowly up the spine starting at the root. The woman tensed, her breathing disrupted by the intense energy. Kane’s voice broke the quiet with measured precision, “Center here. Don’t rush. Observe each twist, that’s when you move.”

The energy reached their crowns, their euphoria palpable. The candle’s flame flickered in their shared center; for just a blink, two glowing light bodies hovered overhead, trembling in pleasure. It had all worked. This external success, outside of our own experience, validated vehemently by two strangers, well, it erased any speck of doubt in me, raised my confidence, and sparked a heightened and feverish motivation to my existing devotion.

And as for Kane, the self-imposed limits he had long maintained—the careful tempering of his boundless willpower—shattered. The reservoir of obsession, discipline, and endurance he had learned to restrain now surged unbridled, a force unmatched and uncontainable, ready to be fully unleashed to achieve the union he sought at any cost.

I was absorbed in visual refinements for our manual while Kane was on a mushroom trip, consulting with Merlin. When I stopped for a lunch break, I saw the living room was transformed, he had set up a unique ceremonial space, different from our typical way.

“Evy,” he said, voice unusually eager. “I had an insight last night, I spoke with Merlin about it today and I really want to give it a try. Are you free right now?”

“Yes,” I laughed. “I mean, I’m about to eat lunch, but yeah, why not! Look at you being spontaneous! I can keep working on the manual later. Just let me eat something first.”

“Yes, darling, eat something. I’ll prepare us some tea.”

When he started the ceremony, I was surprised he didn’t walk through it with me first; we’d typically talk over the main aspects, make sure we were both fully onboard with the nature of the ritual. As he scattered red salt around a pink candle, lit it, I felt odd about it all, a growing wariness gnawing at me. I could see his immense excitement, and usually his certainty was enough to make me feel certain too, but a pressure gathered in my chest. I wrapped my hands around the warm cup, trusting the familiar intimacy of the gesture, remembering when we first saw each other, the shithole apartment, my impulsive flight purchase—claiming I made the trip for my 15 year high-school reunion party when really after months of talking online I had just wanted to meet him, wanted him to become mine. Wanted him to catalyze me and transform my life in the way I knew he would. Wanted a love that kept me sovereign and safe. Kane watched me drink the tea—his eyes on my mouth like that first time. Like he was waiting for me to finish so he could—

Could—

My thoughts slowed and dissolved. And then there was nothing.

The sound of metal and machine filled my dream. No light, only sound. Grating, unbearable sound, from above, below, all sides. Something motorized whined, paused, resumed.

“Hold there,” someone said, the words stretched unnaturally long, elastic, eerie.

I tried to move, to speak, but nothing worked. Why do I always get trapped in this useless way?

Kane’s warm voice drifted in. “Yes, darling,” he said, “I’ll prepare us some tea.”

I felt a weight caving into my chest, like gravity itself bearing all its force in this concentrated spot, collapsing me to my knees, and further crushing me flat to the floor. No light, no image, but I was lying down and couldn’t help but imagine a horrid sleep paralysis demon was sitting on my chest. This must be exactly what that feels like.

Another sound—wet, unmistakably so. I felt fingerlike movement crawl within my chest, but the weight was still there and I couldn’t move. The smell reached me even through the dream: putrid iron.

Another voice spoke. “Okay, you’re good at that.”

“I know. Scalpel.”

Scalpel. The word echoed, hollow, bouncing off the inside of my skull like it was searching for meaning. Dreams are always like this I told myself—random.

Kane’s voice overlaid the vacuuming sounds, “I love you angel,” “I had an insight last night, are you free now?”

The machines grew louder.

From the other side of the room—how did I know there was another side?—I heard rapid beeping. And Kane’s name spoken by someone…. Whose voice was that?

“His pressure’s dropping.”

“Stay with it. We’ve got it, the second heart is in place. Graft it.”

The wet sounds returned rhythmic, in and out. The beeps became rhythmically spaced now.

“Keep working on that close,” a voice said. “He’s stable. The hearts are in unison. I’m gonna get started on her disposal.”

“This is it,” Kane said, radiant with certainty. “This is our final step.”

I wanted to tell him no, whatever this is, it’s not supposed to feel like this—like I’m being drowned out. Disposed. But the dream continued in the dark, nothing functional but my consciousness.

Metal clinked a final time. The machines slowed. Someone swore under their breath, apologized to no one, then counted down softly.

The smells faded, replaced by cold.

And Kane’s voice, soft as ever, sank with me into the dark:

“We did it.”

.

.

.

The second couple arrives, the ceremonial space readied by Kane. Another successful Kundalini awakening.

“…and even though her physical form is gone, we share a soul, a consciousness, conjoined hearts. She’s with me,” Kane explains tenderly. “The soul-merging ritual I outline—high-dose ketamine tea induction, invoking ensealment, and heterotypic heart transplantation—doesn’t destroy the self. It remineralizes the soul’s storehouse, allowing it to recrystallize around its resonant counterpart, provided sufficient proximity and overlap of the electromagnetic field.

He smiles at them, reassuring. “Once the second heart is grafted, the field stabilizes. When you wake from the surgery, you’ll never face a day without love again. Your counterpart is with you—as you—as one—through every reincarnated lifetime. You won’t just touch the middle, like you did tonight. You’ll live there for all eternity.”

Kane hands them a copy of the completed manual:

Becoming One: A Union Codex

By Kane and Evy O’Bryne

—-———————————————————————

Author’s note: I need to edit this so much and simply write it better but I’m tired of wrestling with it, so I’m putting it down for now. The idea was sparked by the Bloodlust Valentine’s Day horror theme from . Been vibing hard with the cult/spiritual/psychological thriller themes - posting a mushroom cult story eventually. My story is inspired by someone I deeply admire (the good parts not the horror/thriller twist, that was simply added because of the need to write a horror theme).

O spirit cursed by venomous parlance

embowering you in a castle of indolence

hemmed in by the world

too vulnerable to unshackle joy.

Fate of unraveling

a hermitage ex-libris.

None will grant your wishes.

In maddened mantra

subvert tender communion.

This Kama-Kala

sharpens in melancholy

Without artifice

Bleed your soul in full

for in darkest threshold

divine assistance arrives

and you dear hermit

now can guide

About: Sigh, its a challenging road.

Do not hide away

Ring around, round about

the Dharmachakra, turning

while karmic lessons stalk us

keep your eyes open,

even as you cry across time

Dwell among flowers,

unfurling rigid tensities

developing accustomed taste

for aconite

Light will come

in your darkest hour

where void and vertex meet

We, all flawed

still meet the call

Traveler souls

Covens untold

Every cycle will complete

Ring around, find your ground

Do not hide away

Coração sangrento absurdo

ʇɹɐǝɥ ƃuᴉpǝǝlq snoɹǝʇsodǝɹԀ

She wished to be light,

shine from within,

blood warm,

by being held,

but her heart grew spikes,

every time she shared it,

used it, love leaking out,

with nowhere to go,

no osmosis transfer

between another loving soul

and so, it drenched inside,

coated dense, proliferation,

a mordant transmogrify

ruthful imprinting,

in trenchant fascia, unremitting,

see the steel swallow,

wound,

ardor - terminal,

cascading ruination

gouging and threatening all,

the soul metallic blue

See.

Look.

Breathe.

Unclench.

Stare.

Meditative stare.

Really, I mean really, really look,

It looks back,

If you allow.

Porous reflector

Tap in.

What’s the code?

Feel it?

What a mess.

Beautiful though.

Could have missed it.

Doesn’t need perception

Or expression

Or display.

Waste of time?

That’s all it is here.

Time & being.

Whatever the meaning.

Muse of tragedy,

inhabits me.

Stuck dreaming backwards

I sent a prayer to the pit

wishing to ascend.

Born an echo,

ill-fated and ruinous,

to the mother of sirens,

noble savage,

with crown and scepter at her feet

in mellifluous mourning,

holding bloody dagger and

shrouded in the purple aura of pain,

she promises,

these lessons are harsh,

but wisdom is yours.

I cannot sensitize myself to these

calamic vicissitudes,

but I also cannot dig myself out of muddy waters.

I reject the world they forced upon me,

and though my heart is breaking,

my soul soars

in beautiful transgression

I hear a kind, beautiful voice in my sleep.

I see the orb of light, a gift of flame dissolving pain,

and the voice embodied by deity.

Descension upon my field,

for the first time, touched by something other than

the void.

The call, one-way.

These miracles, are most fleeting.

Everything feeds on me — depleting.

Sustenance dries.

Flames die.

Divine invocation,

disconnects.

Cave-scape, I feed on coal,

wishing for fire.

Tatterdemalion.

Mutate, piffling, pyre.

This alteration accelerates,

Welcoming

THE FEEDING

I CAN’T DO ANYTHING

Don’t you realize who has power

And who doesn’t

Born right n born wrong

Born empty, all,

to bump n absorb surroundings,

downloading with only so much memory storage,

Ain’t no delete option — just destroy

Ain’t no growth — just decay

Far as human hardware

Brains and body

I can’t do anything to undo whats been coded

Virus cycles

Dormant tragedy viciously erupts

So many moments shattered

Behind confining walls of limitation

I can’t do anything with this mind or body

but arrest into early collapsing fragments

or be possessed by environment, cosmos

Densifying soul weight, inhabiting ethereal

While material rots

Stretching endless, this light language

Pulling a piece of infinity into spirit,

Reach out and touch gods n angels n demons

Merging power deep within, was never yours

But you’ve been blessed

Or cursed

By the unknown

And you still don’t realize

We can’t do anything

These poems were inspired by my experience of seeing a pink orb, hearing a voice behind me and feeling the most positive empowered/loving feeling being sent into me I’ve ever experienced - googling it, archangel Zadkiel was associated with this violet flame orb and feeling of dissolving pain, helping with forgiveness/mercy. This came to me. This could be a random hallucination I experienced soberly, a glitch. Life is weird. And it helped for a while, and then life got hard again, and I wondered if this type of force and thing exists why can’t we have better access to it? Why does the pain outweigh the good at times - but it’s just shifting perspectives. I feel helpless and hopeless often, though also paradoxically, dualistically, resilient and optimistic. As they say, we find our strength in something outside ourselves, higher than us, whether it’s the idea of our highest future selves or forces or entities, god or source or universe or the collective community. So we go on in the face of absurdity and unknown.

{Painting by Roberto Ferri)

Bitter

The body, caught in etheric thrum

Stygian resonance worn plain

No more in hiding

No more in blind faith

Once buoyant, now burdened

Static trapped under skin

Weighed by what could not be forgiven

Audit goodness

I am no believer — I am a witness

Cloddishly, emotionally anemic

I watch brutality in bloom

Spotlit parodists, bestial

All our spirits feral from neglect

Resentment won’t discharge

Consuming suffering not in hatred but memory

Ever-present with foresight

I’ll worship what is real,

Even when it wounds

The skin, too tight, holding worlds

And words, swallowed, mouldering

The hand tremors over closed mouths

Sempiternal — Trashing

All this rage

Was once hope

Spit the poison out

Spit the poison out

Spit the poison out

End it all, with love

Some cool poems by cool poets wrestling with ‘bitter’ themes or similar sentiments:

Read Vignette One here:

Raven Ellis. This cannot be real. The name disappeared and my phone buzzed with new voicemail.

“Go scrub in! OR 4 is prepped.” Shit, Morgan was irritated.

I jogged to catch up to him. A familiar tension coiled in my shoulders, adrenalizing fear that fueled the early days, clenched up for the fight or flight. Breathe. But I couldn’t breathe, sick twisted through me — her.

I slipped open my altoid tin, chewed up two. I went for the aux, my playlist, an anchor. No objections. Scrubbed in, settled into the ritual, lost in scalpels and irrigators.

Mecca of hospitals, luxury branded, reputation elite, but even in Agora, an OR is the same antithetical aesthetic of entropy beneath articulated bulbs, white-hot light cast like judgement, stainless steel tables and white walls holding captive vulnerable bodies sizzling sulfuric under cautery. Here, time densely viscous locks you into role, limbically dissociated, working through instruments lined by type and size, movements impossibly exact, mind not fully here or there, but lost in the frozen nowhere of trance-state, getting to your destination without remembering you’re the one driving the car.

We were six in the room, with the hinotori™ robot poised over the field, eight long arms like some chrome arachnid, Morgan at the console, guiding the stereoscopic viewer inside the wound, a combination of man and machine veering toward dark divinity.

“Retractor.”

He would call, I would answer. I stood opposite the robot, at the patient’s side, swapping claws for scissors or needle drivers or what have you. Morgan and machine, enacting perfect precise suturing. Me, adjusting trocars, retracting tissue, suctioning blood. The coffee boy equivalent, but make it life or death. The godhead — sewing and reaping.

Brady, The anesthesiologist, looks and voice of which suggest part time model part time surfer, with his cerulean blue eyes glued to the monitor, he said to the group of us, “Did you guys hear about that firefighter from Naperville?”

“Yes! The serial arsonist!” Irene paced toward Brady, a short, kinetic blur in pink scrubs, “So crazy right?” Between her documentation as circulating nurse, hustling around the OR to fetch items and record the timing of vital events, Irene and Brady, the talkers, fill the space with chatter, chatter, chatter. I drown them out, they know this, though once in a while they force my participation.

Brady, back turned, eyes still glued to the panel of monitors tracking respiratory rate, pulse oximetry, blood pressure and EKG, vacuous amusement audible in his voice, he asked “Josh, so did you know? Did you see the news?”

“Nope.”

“Little more tension. Good.” The godhead commands. I do as instructed, allowing Morgan the perfect opening, skin peeled out of the way, muscle fibers stretched and torn, dark blood pooled into the cavity until suction slurped it back up, gleaming yellow-wax fat, and finally the femur, shone in white glimpses.

My hands moved with control earned in mornings of disciplined repetition, muscles rippled, firm, visible in scrubs, drawing glances from Maya, the new scrub tech.

“Well this arsonist guy”, Brady continued “more and more shit keeps coming out about him. They arrested him yesterday, 6 deaths connected to him so far. And it was him — he was behind the Riverbend Mall fire. He set it all up. Why burn down the mall though?”

“It’s so weird right?” Irene’s eyes all wide, her tone an attempt at serious, somber, disgusted shock, but the lilt of giddiness escaped at the edges.

She salivates for news like this. And Brady too. And the majority of the inundated, fucking addicted population. You don’t stop doomscrolling when the phone is down, your mind is wired to fantasize trauma porn every moment of the day, to mull over everything awful and wrong about everyone and everything all the time.

“Clamp. Riverbend mall huh? Maybe he’s some schizo-anti-consumerist-luddite. Suction.” Morgan, even he threw in his hat for a schadenfreude fix today. There’s undeniable pull in tragedy, especially dark and evil tragedy — spectating behind the line, witnessing a new horrid feature that shakes up something inside you, more effective than any painting at the Lourve.

Brady laughed like Dr. Morgan was making a joke, but Dr. Morgan doesn’t joke. “No, I mean maybe, they’re still looking into motivation. I read there’s at least 20 sites he’s behind, could be way more. It’s possible he was on some twisted mission.”

“Reminds me of those angel of death nurses,” Irene mused, “psychopaths who seemed nice and normal.”

“Nice and normal. As if such a thing exists. Humans are just fucked up. Each in their own special way.”

See, not joking. Not Morgan — nurtured by Thanatos, by Bataille’s ache, by Schopenhauer’s hunger — the pessimistic vitalism Agora runs on, thats built every empire and burned them too, sanctifying greed as progress in feeding the hydra of history, to cut off one head of power and two grow back smiling, each new age born from the carcass of the last, with monsters multiplying in volume, stealth, and terror.

“Well we’re not all psychopaths Dr. Morgan.” Irene quipped.

“We aren’t? Watch that bleed.”

.

.

.

Peeling off the PPE, the armor and its superhuman powers gone, fatigue — inevitable and gathering strength, was ready to crush me at my next exhale. I had to get to my locker, get my stuff and get the hell home. I pulled my phone out and stared at the missed call, the name, the new voicemail. I pocketed it again. I should just change my number and hope that solves it, restores obscurity, keeps the past buried.

Trod through endless hallways, pocked with gurneys, IV poles, staff rushing, visitors fawnish, I made my way toward the lounge locker room, strain radiating each step. Inside, alone thank fuck, the television, loud, caught my attention. “Naperville firefighter arrested on charges of grand arson”, the anchor continued, the narration of various criminal activity across a decade, pictures of victims, of rubbled sites, but the image of the perpetrator locked to the upper right corner of the broadcast, the letters under the image spelling in bold: LEVI ELLIS — it unmoored me.

That was Levi? Footage ran of him handcuffed, police trailing all sides, his face still carrying the youth recognizable to me despite whatever time and trouble had etched in the crevices. Google, NBC News, USA Today, New York Times, CNN, Vox - articles stacked up, his name and photo every time. Six deaths. The mall. Twenty other sites, maybe more. Really him.

When I was ten, shy, studious, invisible, the teacher had been collecting our homework, everyone passing their assignments up to the person seated in front of them and so forth, and the kid in front of me held up our line, wouldn’t pass the papers up, he held my paper up in the air in front of him and suddenly, as the teacher had her back turned writing the day’s agenda and thoughtful quote of the day, the kid in front of me whipped out a lighter and burned a giant hole at the center of my homework, and all the kids immediately noticed and there were gasps all around, and the kid in front of me was grinning like mad, giggling even, and as quickly as he had set fire to my homework he had pulled out a small red aerosol can, this can I had noticed later with the words Flame Out in bold, a spray of foam ejected from the can all over the burnt-hole homework, turning the paper crisp-to-soggy, all over the desk this mess of wet soapy-like chemical mixed with ash, the air bitter-burnt-acidic, the sound of the teacher shrieking high-pitch and rushing over, the teacher’s voice dropping incredible octaves yelling to the kid, the boy who had lit my homework on fire, “Go to the principal’s office RIGHT NOW,” and I couldn’t help the strange feeling of overwhelm that came over me, everyone had seen that—why had he chosen me, would Ms. Kipley be mad at me, would she still think I was her brightest student, how would she if my work was gone, what would happen to my grade, would I have to do the homework again, would I be able to execute it as well the second time, why me, what the hell was wrong with this psycho kid, did he hate me, what had I done to deserve this, and it was then, as the kid stood up to sling his backpack over his shoulder and face his fate, that I started crying in a weeping meltdown, a very seriously blubbering outcry of shame and embarrassment and fear of being noticed and being hated and loss, loss of reward for my effort, loss of school being this inconspicuous innocent environment, and loss of pride. The kid had stood there a beat watching me cry and I had tried to hide my face in my jacket but I couldn’t muffle or stop the sounds expelling from me in heaving waves, and when I popped my head back out of my jacket for some air we watched each other for a moment and he whispered, “Pathetic nerd,” then walked out.

At about 7:30pm, someone knocked on the front door of our home, my mom answered it and it was Ms. Ellis, Levi’s mom, with Levi by her side. Ms. Ellis apologized profusely to my mom, and asked for my mom to call me down so she could profusely apologize to me as well, and she made Levi apologize, but he was tight-lipped with this crazed look in his eyes like shooting warnings and daggers into me while his mouth broke into this barely-there smile, his words coming out nice sounding enough with the right tone and everything, so our moms were satisfied with the exchange and my mom offered for the two of them to come in for tea and cookies, but she quickly shipped us boys off to my room to get out of their hair so they could really talk and get to know each other as fellow moms and instant gal pals, so it seemed, and so it became. I noticed I started to sweat in weird places, just fully nervous about being around this kid who had gotten me to cry hysterically in front of the entire class and who seemed to hate me for being, in his eyes, some pathetic nerd. Once we were in my room though, he saw the GameCube, “No fucking way,” he said, and grabbed a controller, turning it over in his hand a few times like he was making sure it was real. “Can we play?” he asked, and I just nodded and set it up for him. The next day in class he passed me a note: GameCube afterschool? Some time passed and we didn’t stop, and when Levi finally got a PS2 that Christmas, he invited me to his place for the first time. I had been seeing his mom at my house a lot, our moms got close and somehow Levi and I did too, and then I met his dad, who was the polar opposite of his mom, and I realized where Levi had gotten his anger and trouble streak from. And his sister, older than Levi by one year—Raven Ellis, black hair framed a face that seemed too composed and commanding for her age, her features striking and arresting, caramel-glowing skin, amber eyes sharpened by winged liner, heavenly silhouette—I wondered if she was real, I didn’t know anyone could look like that. I couldn’t stop staring, even though I tried to look anywhere else, Levi not even introducing us and heading to his room, Raven barely noticing me at first but double-taking and warmly greeting me in the hallway, asking my name, surprised that Levi had a friend over, telling us to enjoy our game.

All these years later, is this why she’s reaching out? Is it about Levi?

{painting by Vlad Yashin - follow his substack here: Vlad Yashin}

Recalcitrant

Rapturous hedging for wayward path

Splicing rot, vivid and continuous

Another bad cure in cluttered texture

Intuition atrophied

Crooked gait, dragging along the hanging tree

Human curse, these grotesque imitations

Encircling, sudden as lightning

Rage of gods

Present one’s fictions — feed

Eat the ruin

Trade profluence for flat refutation

Complexity blurred by time

This interchapter

Soaked in fading memory, aeriform,

Greek certainty of love’s place — fleeting

End this digression

Ungovernable

Intractable

Unruly

Unrest

Fiend is a collection of vignettes following the secret lives of three men consumed, addicted, unapologetic — fiendish.

The doctor. The firefighter. The spiritualist.

Respectable on the surface, disintegratingly insatiable underneath.

Testing how long desire can gorge before collapse, fiending for greater stimulation while keeping their vanilla veneers intact.

Desire eats itself alive

Men have two choices - domination or dissociation.

The best man knows when and how to leverage both to his advantage. The lesser man is a shell, the passed-out passenger in a neglected Pinto with that faulty connector threatening catastrophic explosion any second now. It’s become taboo, domination. Desired yet punished. It’s all punitive. Let the car explode or take some fucking control.

Physician by day, absolute fiend by night. Gym-perfected body, charm, wit, and increasing wealth— everything signaling to society my position at the top of the pyramid. Naturally, those beneath me assume these checked boxes equate to the good life.

Those disciplined enough to handle grueling amounts of challenging action are rewarded for their efforts. Ha, fuck no, they’re not. The reward? Hard mode on loop. Drop any ball and watch how fast the house of cards cascades to a crumble. Maintaining this seemingly perfect life makes you the lamb, not the lion. Sacrificial status symbol. Nothing more. Bleed daily for this.

We’re warned against feeding our base desire. Keep the neocortex in command; never let the reptilian part of you take the helm. Your urges will unravel the careful construct. But your repression is suicide — you, the dummy, slid over stupidly in the passenger seat, five seconds away from crash out. I was like you once. But I evolved. It’s my game now.

.

.

.

“She traveled to North Carolina and went on a goddamn hiking trail in the mountains. Of course she’s back in our OR.”

“Hiking?! What the fuck man, she’s three weeks post-op.”

“I know. Now it’s a serious graft rupture and we have to reconstruct. Obviously it can’t wait. Estimate it’ll take us 5-7 hours because of the extra scar tissue. Hopefully less.”

“12 weeks minimum. No exercise, no hiking. I told her so many times.”

“Josh, you know this. You can’t fix stupid.”

“You got something I can take? Had to leave mid — anyway, haven’t slept at all. My date is pissed. Fucking exhausted.”

“Yeah, I got something.” I followed Dr. Morgan to the locker room.

Morgan. Unhinged, prodigious relic who will live and die in this hospital. Man rarely sleeps, never goes back to his empty home, and flaunts his drug habit because he’s untouchable and clearly it’s working for him. It’s working for his fellows, too. And lucky me to be under his wing. Our numbers outshine the average, money is made, and we maintain a perfect wayward ecosystem here at Agora Vale Advanced Surgery Institute, stitched together with duct tape, drugs, and dollar bills. Agora’s lab-coated specters, pristinely veneered in silk ties and polished oxfords, kept running on caffeine, cocaine, and pharmaceutical kick-backs. Of course, some become doctors to help people, but the vast majority of us want to be a top player in a top game. As far as this profession goes, you can’t top Agora, and for now, you can’t top Morgan.

If Morgan is god, we’re his archangels (or maybe legion of demons) affording us special privileges: first pick of high-profile cases, the best parking spots, tampered drug screen results, padded billing hours, and fallout protection from messy staff affairs or HR complaints.

“We start in thirty. And Josh, I can tell you’re struggling right now—don’t worry, it’ll kick in. You’ll make it through this shift fine, but the come-down will be rough. I suggest you stock up on supplies at home for maintenance. These add-on cases, they’re not the exception, they’re the rule. Keep up or get cut, understood?”

“I will.”

Dominating in the societally approved way is dissociation. You follow that formula looking like a winner but feeling like the biggest loser, catering to everyone but yourself. You’re on paper perfect in society’s hearts and minds, the picture of responsibility and routine. You wear the chains, and yes, it sucks, but you endure, disappear into the void as a part-time prisoner — plastered smile, soul eroded, numb. Clock out. Unmask. There you are, you, turned on now and in control. Serving no one. Setting the rules of engagement. Watching them light themselves on fire to get a piece of you, to sacrifice their pieces at your altar.

You’ve got free will to play this game however you like, same as me. Each moment you get to decide, actively strategize or passively putz around. In the grand scheme, all there is at the end, is the end. Do until death, no brakes.

Can’t fix stupid, but we fixed the consequences. I stitched her closed, scrubbed out, and ordered Percocet—for the patient, and for myself.

That night was my initiation, one year ago. The first of many trust falls. I was in and I knew I’d do anything it took to stay in.

When I got home, Samantha was gone. Samantha? No, Sabrina, how could I forget, the perpetual 90s kid who never outgrew her emo aesthetic, the perfect amalgamation of bygone nostalgia, real-world maturity, and femme fatal charm. She reminded me of my first crush, Sabrina the Teenage Witch; the thought maddened me into her spell. When the hospital called I almost threw my phone against the wall in protest, giddy to shatter artificial tethers and become reborn in her ardent gaze.

“Who’s calling this late?”

“It’s work.”

Ambition’s curse, stronger than any spell. “I need to take this.”

I never let anyone stay over when I’m not home, but I took the risk, hoping I’d have her right where I left her. A moment of ‘Honey, I’m home’, followed by puddles of sweat and cum and release so powerful it’d send me into hibernation. Or a coma. Or the afterlife. I didn't actually want any of that; it's more of a dose of regeneration I’m after, the kind that only happens after significant teardown. Transcendence through La petite mort. The depth of your breakdown is the height of your ascension — you must push the edge.

I sank into my bed, disappointment faded to numbness as the pills and booze ushered me into voidant sleep.

.

.

.

Right inside Grand Marshall Hall, center of this bustling metropolitan business district, eleventh floor hidden gem lobby, you’ll find Saudade, serving Brazilian-sourced coffee with taste and refinement so pure, fresh, and rich you’re goddamn right I sanction the hour of five to six am daily to make the trek and bless my body with the holiest of legal drugs.

Coffee, like all commodities has been cheapened and weakened. You’d have to take enormous effort to obtain those rare items of substance. Quality is exceedingly lost these days. I’m not immune to the contribution of cut corners, convenience, and comfort culture. Where I don’t compromise is what I consume. High-quality food and drink only. A bit of a mess with the drugs. All the biohacking with nutrition and supplements set me straight.

Drink half the venti in the usual leather chair, Chronicle cocked in one hand to skim, eyes flicking up at the owners of high heels as they pass. Fold the newspaper, savoring the last half of farm-fresh liquid dopamine, open Fetish Finder, Tinder, Feeld, MeatDistrict, Bumble, PlayWell, Hinge. When my schedule doesn’t get a sledgehammer of code blues, 48-hour shifts, or trauma emergencies, this morning ritual is the nourishing tone-setter that keeps me in good spirits. Good coffee and setting up the next fuck. I quite enjoy the latest configuration of fucking - playing submissive cuck, in desperate search of my perfect hotwife. Your ultimate liberated fantasy reeling you in — the ideal boyfriend spoiling you financially and sexually, open-minded and ethically concerned, emotionally available and communicative. Easy hook.

Josh: Good morning my queen

Joelle: baby, good morning! how are you? hmm I came a lot thinking about you last night.

Josh: hmm I had a long shift but I’m thinking about you now, send me a video of you. Don’t hold back on the naughty mommy. Picture me nursing on you, pulling my thong you picked out to the side whispering good boy in my ears…

Katie: Hey are you ghosting me? You’ve been talking to me daily for almost three weeks and we’re supposed to finally meet tomorrow but now I haven’t heard from you the last three days. Are we meeting tomorrow or not? Why would you send me money to pick an outfit just to ghost me? Just answer me.

Nadia: You’re hot too. And only 20 minutes from me. I love that we have so much in common I’m into all your tagged interests too! 

Josh: :) What are your top three interests? You… would really be into that cuckhold hotwife dynamic?

Nadia: Art, nature walks, reading. & possibly

Josh: ahh. I was upfront and honest about what I’m into. Ideally long term, with consistency and connection. If you’re not into it just let me know.

Nadia: I’ve never done it, I’d be curious and ask you more questions but if you want someone more experienced I understand.

Josh: No you’re perfect, ask away. I don’t get insecure or jealous just more eager to serve. You can be brutally honest with me, you’d have me all to yourself. At home tease, cage, deny me, I’ll worship you. Find your consistent 1-3 big dick guys, you’re dominant lovers, and train me into whatever you want, your submissive clean slate.

Nadia: I like the idea of an ethical open relationship, a real connection with an adventurous sex life. I’m intrigued. I also like the idea of you as my naughty puppy sub.

Josh: I am the one for you then miss, and there’s no limits hehe. I’d love to be your puppy, that’s so hot, and I’ll share my detailed fantasy I have thinking about you…

Marnie: thoughts? I love nerding out in this stuff. Did you read the article?

Josh: yeah babe, let me send you a voice note, one sec. Then tell me what you think too. On my way to work soon. Send me updates I can check during break too, I miss seeing your sexy self.

Josh: damn baby, that photo was amazing to wake up to. Send me some videos, I need to see more I’m dying to fuck you this Saturday but my dick is constantly hard and throbbing until then thinking about you. Help?

Carmen: yes bunny. Send me you too.

Bunny, puppy, daddy, master - the names, the roles, it doesn’t matter - all of it gets me off. Adds color to the absurdity of domesticated life.

I left Saudade, the sanctuary of my morning ritual. My moment of joy is pocketed away, the second I step into Agora, the clockwork of seeing Felipe’s dumb ass face serves me a bout of rage and muscle tightening I work to loosen over the next hour. The morning interdisciplinary huddle is the worst part of my day. Necessary, of course, to get updates on patients, but I don’t need his updates. I do everything to keep Morgan’s favor and assignments to top cases. Now that Felipe’s gotten hip to performance enhancers, he’s on an edge, making me need to level up again and permanently kick him in place. It pisses me off. I didn’t think I’d ever coast in this job, obviously, yet I was naive to the daily threat of war, the onslaught of rivalry, and seismic cracks splintering beneath.

The huddle nearly wrapped when Felipe’s stupid smirk parted, and he whispered something to Morgan. Don’t you dare. Everyone walked away, headed to their stations, and I needed to know what Felipe was up to. My phone buzzed in my pocket, and on instinct, I pulled it out thumbing over do not disturb, but I saw her name flash across the screen and I froze.

Read Part Two here:

{my hermit drawing}

Penitential Breakage

The shattering point,

In its own ecstasy

Peering over taffrails

Hit black blue blind

Come, go,

Transfigured in cold slumber

Arise,

Gnawing on your

Palimpsest presence

Rip the page in

Retrocession

Penitence for my attachment

All this pressure bleeds no diamond

Cavernous mysterium, walk the path

Shed skin, again, in

Hermitical devotion

Holding in this ocean,

Do your dreams drown like rain too?

Feel of life and death soaking skin,

Blurring

You won’t ever see ahead, but we’re all meeting

In the same place

As you rush the ground roots and rocks you

Dripping to the bone, these lessons in cold

Stark atmospheres of constant morphing

Peeling away all the same

It’s undiscoverable

The great mysteries

The depth of watery pain encoded

In stardust

In soil

In oceans

In the heart

endless cavity

A harp in syncopation

Fragile chords vibrating you toward

Heaven or hell

But in the dark

New seeds germinate the holes

Ripping through, breaking you further

In unrecognizable shapes

Held in forces that allude you

Absent yet everywhere, I cannot

Fucking feel love and yet its part of me

Love has never reached me

The force escapes, vaporous

Like stolen breath, choking and screaming

In yearning

The way it crushes and toughens

Breaks, grows

Hollows

Empty empty empty

I feel nothing after this

Nothing — holds it all

Endless cavity

darkest void, eternally spacious

Expanding

Touching all

Never ending

Nor beginning

Never absent nor present

Never together and never alone

Here you are

Right here

Inside my heart.

Give me pixelated pleasure

because real love can’t be bought,

branded,

or delivered overnight.

Sex sells to the snake eating its tail,

saturated in illusion,

fiending for every feeling but the deep cut of truth.

Fiending for forgetting — forgetting who you are,

what you lost,

what you’re afraid to want.

Love holds accountable.

Lust scrolls — socially acceptable,

spiritually extinguished,

measured speech, manic mind

curated social, abandoned inner life.

Final stage consumer,

enslaved in plain sight

always pulling the lever

mistaking pain for pleasure

as we quietly overdose on fantasy

and our hearts go offline

Author’s note:

not against hook ups, sex positive. My musing is on the addiction- the cope of hook ups to escape reality, self abandonment, deception, and our increasing addiction to stimulation and dopamine. It’s fast food, and sometimes we want that, but relationships that nourish the deep craving, the life taken back into our hands, out of the algorithms’ clutch, that’s worth building around and fighting for.

This will be the last crazy pill ever dropped into my obedient, hungry mouth. Mr. Yen didn’t wrap me in a blanket or kiss the top of my forehead like the lover before him, but he projects our future and overly flatters me like the others have. The compliments were euphoric once upon a time. I introduced a new game, spontaneously with Mr. Yen, where I’d bite into his flesh, a reprimand against his tool of charm toward me. He realized my seriousness after the eighth mark within an hour, admittedly more venomous and punishing. Wordsmiths such as he dizzy minds and dole pain, ethereal mist at first, condensing slowly over you as a fog filling the room, snuffing light and sense. Heartache is an awful suffocation, words medicine or poison depending the orator. Dealings with men should match pain for pain, just as they do pleasure for pleasure, if you’re to continue with them at all.

Clarity springs in silence.

I’ve been going through something — 1,826 days inching toward cellular rebellion. Breach of past self, splintering pathways I dare to disrupt one swallowed smile at a time. To them, I left like a house in a hurricane. I’m sure some wonder where I’ve landed, if I’m intact at all. Many would picture me broken beyond repair, easy to sway their way had they the chance to sweet talk me again, a continuation of their ongoing fantasy, more desirable than ever as I’m mysteriously out of reach.

The shadow year, five years ago, strange objects began to stalk me. Whether I orbited their existence or the other way around, each discovery swathed new shades of reason, worming ideas, puzzling points of destiny. The man before Yen, Joshua, quite angelic and delicate aesthetically, very masculine yet tender around the edges, possessed the most vitriol in his desire. We stumbled upon an abandoned botanical dome on our hike, overtaken in vegetation, greens so sharp and brilliant you’d never believe your eyes.

“How enchanting, I’ve never seen plants like these.”

“Nor have I. Careful Millie, they could be poisonous.”

“They’re too beautiful to be poisonous. I need a closer look. I think I spot an entry. Come Joshua.”

“Darling, the beautifully alluring ones are the most dangerous. Just look at yourself.”

“Kettle. Your easy tells—“

“What’s that?”

“Oh look! A door! I’ll knock first…. Hello?”

“No reply. Well, I can’t stop your curiosity, I’ve grown accustomed to your prying nature. Let’s be quick then—the stench is ghastly, and I’m sure they’ve hid from town for a reason. No need to disturb the perturbed.”

“Ghastly? It’s a wonderful fragrance. And it’s unlocked, we’ll just be a minute yeah?”

Inside, a small wooden desk and chair sat centrally beneath a skylight beaming soft sun rays over loose papers, horticulture books, and several empty jars. There were smaller plants potted in rows of shelves along the sides of the dome, and mysterious plants and vines that outgrew their shattered pots and sprang every wild direction, twisting together in places. The ground had patches of wildflower through out, and those brilliant green stems much fatter and longer than sunflowers grew sideways and looped and knotted before raising upwards toward the sky, blooming a thousand tiny flowers within the mouth of giant multicolored petals.

Joshua tried to speak, began telling me he needed to sit down but his voice rattled into a stuttering cough. I sat him at the desk and he worked himself through several rounds of deep breaths, his eyes flickering between mine and the collection of empty jars. I held his hand and watched as his eyes blinked and transformed color before me. His sapphire eyes blinked turquoise, citrine, obsidian, then selenite. My hand dropped from his and he reached for a jar, twisting it open and burying his face inside. I read the label beneath is fingertips, ‘Do not inhale’, too late.

Bright green flashed through his skin, luminescence reminiscent of the aurora borealis radiated within and around him. I, frozen in place one moment and yanked several feet back in the next watched in paralyzed horror the slithering movements of those fantastical plants whose tiny flowers shook in shrilling vibrations and whose stems crept silkily toward Joshua, ascending upon him from above and twisting around him from below — caught in surprise from behind, he struck an arm out for me, its trembling increasing as the plants tightened around his torso, then rigid as a plant stiffened around his neck. His ghost white eyes closed and my hands flew up to cover mine as the stem merged its being with his, as if all his bone and flesh deliquesced in its presence, unifying the two, folding together like virus and host. I tried not to see, but images burned amid my tears, between my fingers. The plants slithered away. Joshua — gone.

I suffered a lapse in memory as to how I got home and what happened the 72 hours after the incident. Temporarily mad. This made it so no one believed my experience nor blamed me for Joshua missing. The theory became we’d undergone hallucinatory altitude sickness. The sickness drove me to doze off and drove Joshua to wander off perhaps tragically cliffside.

It was after 96 hours that the dreams started. Dreams in the botanical dome. Rarely would the dream change, just a snow globe of scene captured in time, the desk, the sunlight, the jars, the plants frozen in their places and I saw myself in the dream, with god-like view, watching the plants. Nothing occurred and yet I felt the slow drip of alchemy root and unfurl in me with time.

As I began dating again, the dream would change with new suitors. They’d be sitting at the desk, a jar and locket with my picture before them. They’d make a choice- wear the locket or open the jar. In some instances, they wouldn’t choose, they’d simply sit and stare in indifference. It puzzled me, the dreams, until news broke of Joshua’s nefarious affairs two years after his death. He’d been discovered to be sadistic sexual predator harming dozens of women across multiple towns.

When Mr. Yen opened the jar in my dream, I watched the frozen plants shake to life, curling around him before folding him into silent finality. When I woke from that dream, I experienced a panic attack. After I calmed down some from the haunting dream and flashbacks of Joshua’s death, my mind raced with questions around how and why the dome and its otherworldly plants exist, and my mind demanded answers. I’d go to the library, research, do what I could to make sense of things. I was decided. Later that night is when I had met with Mr. Yen and uncharacteristically set punishments against his charming compliments. A silly game at first, I felt a sassy confidence come over me, a feminine domination which we both enjoyed until I noticed a heat rising in me with each transgression. I became angry with him and sickened by his compulsive flattery. He smelled hollow. Repulsive. His eyes looked lifeless now. Even his breathing angered me, his sounds irritating like a fly buzzing overhead, and I needed him mute. I bit hard and he jumped back, he nearly slapped me but stood from the bed, snatching his jeans and pulling the cigarette carton out of its pocket.

“You bit the hell outta me. Jesus—you’re one of those types. The hotter, the crazier. You’re not a woman, you’re a goddamn venus fly trap in heels. I’m getting a cab.”

His words made me think of the dream and the purpose of a venus fly trap. I had this sense suddenly to dig into him. To catch this predator. The mysteries revealed with time, the locket served to symbolize honorable men of honorable love, and this didn’t come till years later. Mr. Yen chose the jar in my dream, he was charming and he was hiding something, just like Joshua. We didn’t meet again after that night, but I knew a fair amount of his routine, his work place, his home address, and so I got to work. I studied him, horticulture, plant mythology, the town history, and anything else I could think of to draw me closer to some sense of my experience, the dreams, and the metaphysical pings and tugs I felt around it all. Mr. Yen was juggling a variety of women, the mess and complication of which I could hardly fathom. These men who act so preciously guarding of their scarce time outside work have no problem of time whatsoever, they have the problem only of healthy appetite as they overindulge their sexual appetite in numbers vast and wide. In his case, some appetites monstrously, unforgivably dark.

I stopped wondering if I was broken, cursed. I stopped worrying about what was real, rational. They received anonymous tip offs, evidence, planted messages which built cases against the wolves about town. But what led me to them, what really unmasked them was beyond logic. It was scent. It was vision. It was nature’s instinct, in stillness, silence, dragging the dark into the light.

Studying a soul:

Tasting flesh

Listen intently to soundtracks of your core beliefs

Falling into the traps of your coping mechanisms

My intense stare penetrating your invisible field

Archetypes slithering behind your eyes

Loving your particular set of lies

Feeling softer and softer in your gaze

Blending auras and desires

Trying on new mannerisms

Silhouetted in your syntax

Depths of reflection, activating the mirror

Monopoles rearrange my personality crystal

The dust of your essence sinking in,

Your light, your orb, glittering my inner world

And our souls once studied shift again and again

Unveiling beautiful, tragic new mystery

I met you in exhalation,

Everything was still, nobody around

Inspecting scratches while stumbling forth

among abandoned gods and gardens

All my love’s been satire

Holding this binary desire, caged

Implacable devotion not alchemized - seized in hallucinations

in ethers of terror/divine

Your storm rolls in, transmitting warnings

Beauty-frightening

Wanna just bend the rules

Break breath

Live for crackling embers

Yet the elements dissipate

Above, below,

Dwindling to silence

Inescapable

Holy neglect

When the grief ends

Memories fold into tight origami

Feather-weight, tuckered blank spaces

A new page, delicate and devoid of meaning

Or feeling

Or ink which spilt hot blooded words

This colorless trinket of our time

Shown in periphery, unexpected

Met with dismissive sigh to stay neglected

Folded neatly in its place on the bookshelf

Face myself

Face the shadows that look like your face kissing me

And mine turning in disgust

Your push-pull avoidance

My escape habit

Daydream lust

Typing twenty messages, unsent

Picking all the wrong battles

While you stopped fighting long ago

I’m at war with it all

The whole goddamn world

Looking for heaven in strangers

Finding myself in the black

Hurrying down the steps of hell

To be bathed in dark truths

And rise like venus the morning star

Breaking more and more

To make the pieces fit

Fuck the pieces

They don’t matter anymore

Under the universe, crushing beauty

Filled with devastating supernovas

This heart explodes again and again

While shadow and light kiss endlessly

Whispers

Flash fic

Something in me whispered run. A whisper that woke me from my sleep making my heart pound painfully in my chest. Fear, intuition, excitement - the strange mix of pain and pleasure, a rare visitor whose presence turns you fully onto the fact that yes, you’re alive. Yes, you’re in charge of your reality.

Leave this, run, change everything.

A simple intention to listen to my intuition more made the thing feral, untamed. I broke whatever curse I was born with or into, the mask that use to choke my truth and maintain smiles through waves of disgust and unease. I hadn’t felt anything in so damn long, under this bell jar, neither heard nor seen. I had finally pressed my face up to the glass and dared to squint beyond it, to imagine what might be behind the sanitized reflection.

Alone. He slept in the guest room — we fought earlier about how I’ve been away on weekends lately, he ignored my requests to connect then resented my absence. He wanted me present in the house, even if we don’t interact. Spouses prioritize each other, keep to their corners, to their thoughts, then have mind blowing love making, is that right? I was not a spouse, I was not a person, I was not even a concept. I was simply a fixture on the right side of the bed.

A seismic rupture, tar soaked me black, heavy, stuck in thick despair. A fall into the void depressed yet blessed me. In nothingness death grows, engulfs, dissolves. Overwhelming nothing — nothing but the ending.

Venusian slumber, or shake up, or retreat - love doesn’t live here. So RUN.

.

.

.

The whisper moved my feet forward, away from comfort, patterns, and conditioning, but an ache grew alongside this new courage. The pounding of my heart wasn’t fear or excitement now, but shattering disillusionment.

Curled in the grass, under the stars, I sank into the trembling ache of change. An ache that, for a moment, stole my breath, but no longer stole my soul. This pain came with awareness. This pain was felt and realized.

No longer numb, knowing more ache and pain will surface, I ruminated on how much reality I could handle without breaking under the weight of unforgiving clarity.

That fucking ache, I use to feel it all the time until I moved away from my family and got married, married within the first year of being on my own.

That ache is being alone, and it never left, apparently, I’d expertly suppressed it stitched it silent with adamance that I was chosen. Fixated on being chosen and surrendering my power to choose. My needs, my desires, myself.

I’m the only choice left.

Liv threw open her door and hugged me tight. “Everything seemed fine last month at Jace’s birthday party.”

“A lot can happen in a month. A lot happened this past week… but… it’s the whole thing. It’s always been wrong, from the beginning. It seemed right but I didn’t know myself. I didn’t listen to my body screaming warnings at me and I got used to breadcrumbs until I couldn’t anymore, until I felt so malnourished my body just reacted for me, turned my brain off and made me run here. I know it seemed fine. I know. But it wasn’t.”

“No—I get it. I mean yeah it seemed fine, but I always felt like something was off between you two. Don’t go back. It’s gonna be okay.”

“Oh god, will it?”

It will. It’s absolutely beautiful on the other side of listening and following your soul.

Author’s Note: Full moon in Scorpio today. It’s intense. I’m intense. Anyone cry today? Just me? These intensities, these emotions birth their own worlds and fill the universal void, the black matter, with color. Let them breathe.

Excited to get back into more short story writing but currently unboxing/setting up at new place and in a busy season of life. I debated posting any poems but then I thought what would Plath do? You know what she would do. So let’s just do it, let’s write and release and write again.

Poems below.

You Were Made for Me

An oil painting, you framed me

Ethereal lens, higher knowing

I couldn’t hide

Neither could you

and the wounds exposed

sat still, tender

Eyes unmoving

A cord wrapped gently

around the world

tying all our duality and fragile hope

into transcendent fantasy

Even in this ruthless absence

as the cord snaps from cruel reality

we find the gift in love, and loss

the timeless impact of soul-expansion

as we don’t self abandon

Ah yes, made for me

cutting deeper than Chiron

air and fire, armored up

in the aura of rebirth

cobra light, psyche shedding

A splintering of everything

soft smile fading down dark paths

howls heard in these winds of change

my sword splits twin statues, aflame

in the garden of the fallen and forgotten

delicate flowers exhale and decay

Who use to know me well,

keep old pieces for yourself

The labyrinth reshuffles

Collapsing Counterparts

Dear writer,

I don’t want to be your muse

I want to be beside you

If we strangle out our love and pain onto the page

alchemizing all the memory through ink

penning cryptic poetry and devastating characters

will the haunting go away?

Will my lips cease whispering your name before I fall asleep

and your image fade like it was never there?

As nature recycles and expires what it will,

with relentless crashing of waves that dull and numb,

or the sun beating down, fading colors, burnt away,

are we too so fragile and extinguishable?

Its always felt tragic to me, the life of a butterfly

The waiting, isolating, painstaking transformation

It’s here—its breathtaking

Nothing compares to its beauty and magic

The eyes close to commit it to memory,

when they reopen, death is setting in

The fallen creature, angelic,

unable to carry on, to fly away, despite its

majestic wings and resilient nature

Everything promised,

taken too soon

The cycle is over

But I’d repeat it a thousand times

to relive the miracle I had with you

If we took on a new form,

filled our hollow parts as we cocoon,

could these viscous cycles cease,

Could we be reborn in

beautiful eternity

Knight of Swords

This word — a wielded sword

piercing deep to stir a break in the void,

the inner hallow fills with something unexpected

awakening nature’s greatest force

penetrating all emotions, possibilities

All consuming energy swells

then halts

This word

double-edged,

bleeding life or bleeding dry

Passionate red becoming black

Turning, twisting what was

It will not retract, becoming foreign, alien

in its new landscape, frozen fixture

The knight once valiant, riding with hand high

ready for paradisal conquest,

fallen now

in silence

Phased Out

I’m still learning

that all of life is just a phase

Tides turn these illuminations different shades

Patterns weave around time

Strands stitching universal secrets

We can’t unravel

But as these cycles incinerate

Transmuting purpose from pain

I remember

Again and again

I remember the season must change