Come Visit Me Here -S.of C.

Whosoever dared me not to live my life? 

The exit sign is finally up and running. Do you see it? 

Who has been looming in the shadows? Whose muttering can still be heard?

I know one is the echo of the philandering father with wandering hands that showed no love. 

Touch without love. Interpretations were made. I was made mother as a child by a man, a touch with no love, touch with no love. 

Then, a whisper,  “Your life is over."

You believed that a girl has to settle down, to live out her days in servitude because she had a child. You held a banquet of shame in my honor. 

Deep within your opaque abyss you passed the dishes in my direction. 

The feel of it scorched my hands. I still bear the scars, I do not feel the burn any longer. 

I stole the fork from your feast and I do not consume that poison any longer. 

I would rather starve us first. Can you see me clearly now? As a corpse man? Spirit man? 

You are dust and ash, once a living man, my father of the blood. Are you are already carbon daddy? 

I know you cry for what could have been, what you failed to do. I can feel your suffering. 

Tears you held in pride. They came out with violence and rage. Now you cry, I see you coiled up, a shamed snake writhing in regret and I shudder at the thought. 

You were born in 1945. Fleeting life of one’s father. 

I hold no meaning to your contribution of my existence. A love was never there, not even looming. Only shadows cast by my youthful light. I was a blank canvas. 

Soaking in the light of the sun only to reflect it back.

I am a time leaper. 
Look now, at the remedies in this reality. 

Come visit me here. Come as a brother, not a father. 

Other echoes can be heard. Do you hear her still?

The third woman you impregnated, a woman named Michele. 

The young woman who kept her money in her sock? 

The one with long brown hair who danced on the tops of pool tables in the tavern? 

Yes, that is my mother. Slender mother whose whispers can still be heard.

 “You’d better marry a rich man Mary Catherine!” because I had wanted things she seemed to believe were out of my reach, through not based on any limitation I had. Only the one she had set for herself. I do not believe that anymore either. 
A Falsehood has no power over me unless I give it as much.

 I know truth when I hear it. I will make my own money mommy. You were born in 1955. 
I do not bow to that dated happenstance. 

I am a time leaper. 

Look now, at the remedies in this reality.

 Come visit me here, be my sister not my mother. 

That was a sour truth you held onto. Spit it out! It was not meant to be mine, nor yours! 

Unlearning these lies will take time, the subconscious holds on tightly to that haunting misery. 

 I have opened the curtain on that dusty old attic and shrank back in revulsion at the blatant truth at first light. I scraped the jagged edges of collectables, with bleeding fingers and I measured their value, saw the damage. Most was submerged in tar. It had rained down on me for too long. I allowed it to immerse me almost completely. 

I believe I have found the power to be rid of the heavy coat. 

The mind floats in liquid. I wade through the waters and they are becoming clear, never festering. 

I have this device that acts like a filter. It is woven in gold. I see what is of value now. 

Time is an open question and time is the most relevant to the person who values it. 

I am a time leaper. 
Look now, at the remedies in this reality. 

Come visit me here, be a sister, not my mother. Be a brother, not my father. 

 Time is an open question.  One only you can answer.
 Time shifts, appears and vanishes in proportion to where you place it's value. 

Mary Catherine, Cowardice Queen

Life is what happens? - Memento as prose

John Lennon had said "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

I say that life is what happens to you while you are doomed in battle and you refuse to yield.

This is why.

 Walking out the door this afternoon and feeling the wind whirling around me was incredible. Hearing the crinkle of my boots as they impede upon the fresh yielding snow.  I steady myself as I slowly decline down the front steps. I keep indoors when I want to, but I do not want to today. 

 I want to brave the storm to go out and see who else is about 'that life'. My plan, though a loose one, was to pick up my Chobani Greek yogurt and granola bar from the Mulberry drugstore around the corner. Then to go a block west to the Broadway Starbucks and redeem my 12 star reward and write for a few hours. I't sounded pretty damn good, my loose little plan. 

I was a barista for Starbucks for two different locations and I still adore them.  I must say that the star reward system they use is marketing genius. I'm on the Gold Level status, which earns me a sparkly golden card bearing my first and last name on the bottom, free refills on coffee and tea, special offers via email and obviously a free drink on my birthday. I could already taste the Green tea latte and see myself at the corner seat, my fingers darting across the keyboard rapid fire. I managed to purchase my yogurt and granola lunch with a the friendly cashier who had the misfortune of working today.

 I smiled and decided "Yes. Today will be lovely."

 Despite all the clamor and nervousness surrounding the storm. 

Then came my own tumult of the mental variety. 

It came to me in a guileful manner, like grey clouds coming together slowly...

"What the hell is all the fuss about? I endured several winters prior all over the East Village. I slept among rows of comrades in weather such as this and worse. It was only a little over a year ago under the scaffolding right there by Great Jones Street.  We bundled up in a zero degree sleeping bags with a warm pit bull and a "C'est la Vie" attitude." 

 Stop. No Mary Catherine. That was on a good day. I remind myself that those "C'est la vie" days were few and far between. I try and push the thought out. It is replaced with a shout of bewildered astonishment "How the fuck did I do that, and for so long!?" No. I think I would rather not. I like that I don't wake up  shaking violently, heart pounding and retching bile at four or five in the morning. Barely making it out of the god damn sleeping bag before the poison poured out of my mouth onto the sidewalk. There you go, that's more like it sweetheart. Don't even try and make shit cute. Don't fucking fool yourself. If you insist on reminiscing make sure you "Keep it one hundred."  

Strange the way I can romanticize the lifestyle that way, so suddenly, so creatively tactful, those damn whispers. I have to keep that ghost in check.. That's what I thinking about in between snapping photographs of the snow covered vicinity of NoHo. It's rarely silent inside my mind. 
That is why I love meditation. I can pull the thread back into alignment.

 I trudged through what was already about five inches of snow and walked into Starbucks about a quarter after one. I set up my lap top on the only table that was near an outlet, not ideal but it was going to have to work.

I grabbed my Gold card out of my wallet and ordered my latest favorite in a larger size with a non dairy version since it's free no matter how expensive the modification, I take full advantage of that. "Venti- Soy- five scoop Matcha- Green Tea Latte and I would like to redeem my free drink reward". 

I still remember the way we had to call the drinks out. That is one of the reasons I loved working for Starbucks. Every single thing we did was strategic, from the way we worded things, to the arrangement of the furniture, the lighting to calling out of the customers name. It was all a part of a masterful plan to keep them feeling as if they were in a home away from home, a work space outside of the office, always welcoming. I think I have a peculiar post partner loyalty. I allowed it to work on me. I think I even remember my partner numbers 1405903, I think that may be it. Man, they are good and I am a willing participant of this scheming establishment. It is no coincidence that the logo bears the legendary siren. This siren calls to my wallet and I dutifully hand over the card. I also never allow the balance to reach zero despite my impoverished state. 

Which I admit is a little insane, but not over the top bat shit crazy. 

After I sit down, I pull up my goal list and go over the week. I open up Microsoft word and stretch my neck and roll my shoulders. I pick up my drink and put my lips to the lid and blow. As I do this a gregarious and flamboyant partner is coming towards me, he stops at the girl at the table next to me and I see he is talking but I cant hear him, I'm still listening to Bowie. It has become an unintentional ritual since January tenth. I pull out my ear buds and hear him say that all Starbucks in the city must close by two pm and something about the mayor. I look at the time on my screen. 

Great. Twenty minutes. I think I began to pout. I tried to think of what I was going to do now. I thought, I will finish the novel I'm reading, or at least put a dent in it. I'll clean out all my drawers and organize everything so I am more prepared when my move out date arrives. I could dye my hair, my blonde roots are starting to betray me again. I'll work on the short story I'm writing for my children, I'm about halfway through. I'll be okay. I do not like it when things suddenly do not go my way, I can feel my attitude beginning to sour. I wasted my free drink just to be asked to leave! I ordered the  Venti size and brought my lunch because I had planned on writing here inside Starbucks for at least two or three hours! I check my email. I read that the event I was invited to attend at the Tompkins Square Library today has been cancelled and she is sorry and we should get together soon. It has been rescheduled for the thirtieth. "Well no shit it's cancelled." As I check off the tiny box then click on the trash icon.I take a deep breath and check out the word of the day which is "Selenology" and I do not see it as a vital part of my lexicon, but then again you never know. I check what the weather predicts for tonight, maybe I could make it to West Houston later on this evening as I usually do. Nope, not going to happen. Blizzard winds at twenty five miles an hour and ninety eight percent precipitation. I'll be alright. I will be better then alright. 

I left ten minutes after two and I tried to think of nothing other then how beautiful the streets looked. 

So immaculate and pure, as if the sins the city streets and I once shared have been polished away. 

Then I remind myself what the street will look like when this too passes. 

 After the fresh snow is gone and the city wakes from it's slumber.

Filthy muck that taints every piece of you it touches. 

No, the sins remain dear girl. 

Never forget, lest you digress and that would be worse, far worse then your death.

I stopped resisting everything.  I smiled as I once again decided to just enjoy snow while it lasts.

I purposefully placed my boots down in the snow where there were no prints and watch them sink. 

I forgive you but you must never forget.

Mary Catherine, Cowardice Queen

A Subtle Atmospheric Difference - Journal entries

Outside on the balcony in the cold. 

Holding my thin coat together with one arm,  the other is balanced on top. 
A cigarette between my fingers. 
Eyes follow the runnel of smoke upward.

I see snowfall for the first time this winter. 

God.
 That is so,
 beautiful.
My eyes swell slightly with tears.

I shake my head in the discomfort of this new self that is forming. How different I am will occur to me every now. 
 Moments such as this.

Several winters on the concrete, squat, floors rooftops cells hospital beds;
Equal in cold indifference. 

Freezing, shivering and buried in my winter mind.
Where choice was just another luxury not afforded me. 

Perhaps I will die in my sleep. 
A blessing and the most I could hope for.

Cursing a god I wasn't even sure existed. 
What it looked like or felt like, for having abandoning me to this. 

Denying the existence of all that I couldn't put to my lips or into a vein. 
The comort of purpose and simplicity.

My predicament, my existential dilemma, the great drama of my insignificant, wasted life. 

Now, I think of the one's I care for that are out there right now. 

Friends are dead and gone forever, killing themselves or caged in some other way.
Yet I can't be around them.
My life in jeopardy, the sliver of hope I cling to so tightly, could disappear in an instant.
 No, I can only be an example at best; I can be there if they ever want help.

Just the thought of them my heart breaks a little each time.
I know that pain so well.
Yet, I never thought I could know compassion so strongly. 
I can not show them. They must find it, I know how it would be received.

For I had thought the exact same way.

Nothing can be done if it is not done of one's own accord.

Even if my body could take the booze,  I want nothing to do with it. 
Nietzsche Approves.
But how welcome a warm and fleeting shot of Lethe can become. 
That terrifies me and it should
Here I am with a rational fear, and snowfall.

 I will end up among the best of the lot. 

The seekers that listen to what is said and notice what isn't. 

The seekers that are earnest and humble. 

Those that live out what that revolution speaks of in action.

Perception and understanding shifts:

 Age six:

"Mary Catherine you believe in God don't you?"

"You mean the one at church? They said that Jesus is his son and he died for our sins."

Age fifteen:

"Mary Don't you believe in God?!"

"Oh Fuck off Bitch!"

Age eighteen:

"Mary you believe in god or what? What's your H.P?

"I don't 'not' believe in God, if that answers your Question."

Age twenty three:

"You don't believe in any kind of a god Mary?"

"I don't know. I used to, I wanted to. But whatever I thought might be there is gone. If there is one, it has left me. I am responsible for my life and finding a purpose. I think that's all there may be."

Age twenty eight:

"You believe in God now Mary?"

"Yes. I don't know how to describe it. I know there is something."

Age twenty nine:

So, what is your higher power? Do you believe there is a God?"

"Yes. I do. It is a word for an all loving, peaceful, comforting powerful presence that is within me and around me. This god of mine has nothing to do with the misunderstanding's I heard about in a dogmatic 'place of god' when I was a child. This God is is within me and always has been. It never left me, I had shut it out. Shot it down. I pray now. Words like 'Thy will, not mine be done.' means to me the removal of all my walls, brick by brick and allowing my god out. She and I are bound in a golden loose knot. Threads that can become very delicate if I do not keep vigilant. She is wild this secret god of mine and now she is free. A word- God. A word- Rose. Call it what you like. It will speak to you in a way you will understand, just stop blockading your truth. This is what I have come to believe and now understand."

Vivre Sa Vie?

Existentialism?

Carpe mother fucking Diem!

Use your gift.

Come to.

I have a secret god. 

I have dug for so long. I found it! 

Secret is....

She was there the whole time.

This god is running now my show.

Where's yours? Start looking, couldn't have gone far. 

In times time. 

Then.... 

Came to....

Dear Ayn Rand, Papa Nietzsche my and beloved Sartre, 

I thought to tell you first, since you were my teachers. I know you had some cerebral disputes regarding a man idea of a god, this word god, this golden incomprehensible force of love is within you and worked through you. Those many fits of intellectual madness that you claimed sole responsibility for. The seeking of truths, that inevitably lead to more truths was you letting god out. Thank you conduits. 

I love you and so does my secret god. I just read you with a different understanding now. 

I truly thought I was lost, damned and forgotten. 

How wrong I had been. 

My golden thread. 

I do not know why it took me so long to retrieve this knowledge. 

That I am a part of something that is whole and complete. 

I  had never ever thought I would say that. To say I have a God and mean exactly that. 

To understand what that is to me. 

To authentically believe it and keep believing now matter what.

Here's to Never, we golden infinite snowflakes. To the unfathomable becoming tangible. 

Mary Catherine, Cowardice Queen

Fear For a Child- Memoir Excerpt

Enough!

I'm ripping it out. It's putrid. I'm suffocating. 

Here it is.

You must have  known they would start to put two and two together eventually.

You are the mirror for mediocrity and you are not even an ignorantly blissful breed of mediocre, a miserable  mediocre.

I should have had my friend tattoo "I Strive for Mediocrity" on your back instead. 

You were such a worm about it, letting me talk you into it when you didn't even like tattoos!
I hope you look at that everyday and cringe in shame. I loathed you before long before that though. Content with his shit job, and shit car and shit apartment. No hobbies, no interests in learning or challenging yourself. No ambitions. No clue as to what sort of gifts were within this girl.

You tried to keep me from my passions. You tried to keep the children from their blood. 
You preyed upun the wrong juvenile old man.

The fool still believes me the to be the one that scorned him.

 He forgets what he was long before I came around. But I did not.

Oh yes...Your little pill habit for opiate wimps. Your beer and your Pot smoking. 

Lethargic and useless slug. All day, every day. This was to be the way I was to live my late teens?

Hey there man! I'm a sweet sixteen and can be your own wet dream! 
A car, a limitless amount of cigarettes, someone lonely enough to buy me anything he could afford.  Looks like freedom to a cast out, institutionalized, runaway with daddy issues.
 Did you ever happen to mention to my children that the night we met?
How my wrists were still wrapped in gauze? I didn't think so, not the kind of love story you tell a kid about how there parents meet. 

Here's a little anecdote.

It's really quite funny, it goes something like this. It's okay to laugh. Just pretend it's not true.

 "A sixteen year old girl with her wrists all hacked up and bandaged, walks into an A.A meeting from some foster home. She goes in just wanting to bum a cigarette.  
There is only one other person in the room, the Chairperson! (Ha!) The poor girl see's he has a this NIN logo on the hat he is wearing and it reminds her of someone else. Then she ends up pregnant three months later by this 27 year old moron! " 

"We prefer attraction not promotion."

I think you might have misinterpreted that slogan.

Model of principle you are not.

How goddamn typical.

How god damned like me to have been so foolish.

It was you who contaminated me with your shame and your misery! 

You did. I was still free, I still had a choice! Who were and are you to take from me. 
I could have found another way.  But not you, deplorable you and your pathetic life, thought that you finally found a purpose. When you planted your seed in a young girl. 
So you thought I would feel the same? 
Are you a neanderthal? I was sixteen. 10 plus six. Get it!
You, I think It will take some kind of miracle for me to forgive.

I was so damn young that I thought a parasite was inside me. I never told you that. 

I was terrified of this growth inside me, what it felt like, what it meant inside your delusional mind! 
 Happily ever after! How differently I had felt. I can understand self delusion.
It's the other action's I can not wrap my head around yet.
 After he was born, I was in constant fear. 
I was always aware of the magnitude of my great responsibility, 

What man nearing thirty would even think of a sixteen year old in a sexual way?
Did you know that there is no statue of limitation for sex crimes in the state you caged me?

 A Pedophile? A sexual predator?
Or someone that was so desperate he had to cling to what made him feel like his existence mattered.

"Will you Marry me?!!" 

That was your response when I told you I was pregnant.

Pathetic. 

Of course I said yes. 

Through gritted teeth and a painfully forced smile. I labored the smile as I held my truth. 
 It was a great effort to pull on my cheek muscles like that. 

I had wanted you to to look concerned and horrified by the thought.  

Like a boy my own age would and should be. With  news like that like I was.

but you were nowhere near that age. You were not that boy with a Nine inch Nailed soul that I had fallen in love with a year prior. I should have stopped hanging around your apartment, smoking your cigarettes and accepting your money when I saw that you were nothing like him. 
Did I ever tell you that I was about to break it off right before that pregnancy test?

I was a child in the eyes of the law and in my naive decisions but my body disagreed.
 I was foolish enough to think I had been invincible!

The Great I am. 

(None of us are immune to that.)

"Really Jay, you got to be kidding me? What kind of a God would give me a kid!" 
I had said to my foster sister after she insisted that I take the test she bought me.  
You took them from me in 2006 when I feel in love.  
Someone my own age with passion's and ambition. 
I had told you time and time again that I did not want to be with you since before my daughter was conceived. I even tried to move out with my first born son and realized I couldn't afford childcare. I thought if the cage door opened I would fly. I didn't consider that I was trapped inside during the time I should have been learning about wings. 
I was stuck with you, my new warden .

 I asked for a divorce many times. Your reply was always the same, 
"If you want the divorce you can pay for it." 
I told you I loved my children but I did not love you. So you took them from me as soon as you finally understood that I meant it. 
You knew I had nothing and no one and I was to be utterly dependent on my young fickle love.  
You went to your big sister and told a tale of a disloyal wife. 
She believed you and thinks of me as an adulteress at best. 
I might feel something like that for my brother if he told me that lie too. 
The difference is that I know that contempt prior to investigation is .... fill in the blank.  
 I wanted a chance to blossom, to grow into the woman I am becoming. 
Because I wanted a life outside of the cage you built for me.
I wanted the thing's every sixteen year old in America wanted in 2002. 
You took my freedom and my youth. Then you took what had become left of the life I once had. 
The two children I carried in my womb for nine months. Two separate births.  Two years apart.
Sacrifice's that should be made out of selflessness out love and in maturity. I had neither at that age. Two beautiful children that carry my blood in their veins. 
Two children who now live in a situation they never asked for and deserve so much better. 
Without their mother all these years because I did not love you and refused to pretend. 
Living with a father who feeds them lies to hide his shame. 
You must be so fearful of the day that they fully realize what you did.
They will make up their own minds about you without me having to utter a single word. 
Unlike you I have facts on my side and nothing to hide. 
I do not impede upon others freedom to choose, unlike you.
I will forgive you if only for my own peace and my children's.
Even if that will me take another 10 years.
Until then, I choose to be civil at best.
Keep this in mind warden, when they ask me a question I will never lie to them.
Changes are heading your way. You cant hide forever.

Mary Catherine, Cowardice Queen.

The World Fell Down

It was 11:32 pm on January 10th 2016 and I see his name. Bixbee is on my caller ID and I realize by an abrupt inward tug that inside this woman's body their still lives an innocent and lost little girl. She is cowering somewhere behind my rib cage, peeking through bones, clutching them tight.  I pick up the phone.  I know what my intentions were when I decided to try to get back in contact with him . I wanted to understand who he was fifteen years ago when our lives collided and he was crashed into a curious and introverted fourteen-year-old me. 
A girl with an Army green Jansport that said 
"David Bowie Is My Man!"  in white- out on the front pocket. A girl who was sadder then she thought she ought to be. 
A boy with eyes that whispered answers. 
A lonely girl who wanted someone to give her all those intangible, indescribable promises;
 she thought she was robbed of.

until she had seen Micah's eyes. 
All she saw was someone who would teach her how to live with a sadness that she didn't even know how to describe. Her brain simply said "Him." and her body followed.
 A girl that felt no love, only a yearning and a head full of questions that no one had an answer for. 

An angry girl who was always told to smile.

A girl that disappeared behind a door that this boy (man?) ever so seductively opened for her.  
 She remained in that darkness long after he disappeared. 

I wanted to understand why he treated me the way he did. 
To understand why he said what he said and why certain things remained unsaid. 


 I am writing the story of my life as I come to understand it. 
The key word is "as" in that statement.
I want truth and meaning in anything that I write.
 As I grow spiritually and emotionally 
my perspective changes.
 Less error and more truth. 
A more clear understanding is constantly to be found. 
The more questions I ask myself the more the story evolves. 
Like drawing out a little bit of poison in your soul with each question. 
I understand now that no one is a complete villain,
not in any honest story. 
There is always a backstory. 
There is always another view. 
Micah is a human being who was also young then.
 Suffering in his own way as all mortals do. 
Some more than others.
 That is a riddle to ponder indefinitely.
I only wanted a fair perspective on this collision of ours. 
I want a truth in my life and in my memory. 
A truth that reads like a crescendo of the mind and lingers long after.
 I wanted to give him Micah a chance to help me do that. 
He had a very large impact on my life and my childish mind came to pretty severe and damaging conclusions.  

While speaking to him, I had to remind myself, over and over again, that I am not fourteen anymore.
I am listening to the voice who of a grown up Bixbee.
 I have not heard his voice for nearly half of my life span. 
It is amazing to me how strong the emotions I am feeling are. I thought this wasn't going to be as difficult as it is.  
It seems this little girl must have been listening to his voice for a while; She is furious. 
This little girl is quite adamant that she is still trapped and thinks this boy was going to be her teacher. 
Her father? 
Her lover? 
What did I think all those years ago?
That little girl was hurting. 
Particularly when he asked,
"what's your worst memory of me". 
A thousand images raced past the back of my eyes. 
It was beyond difficult to answer, he said I did not have to.
(I think and do not say because I do not know if this thought is mine or the girl's thought)
"It is all bad memories, everything I can remember, is a series of brutally painful disappointments, misunderstanding and  humiliations."
I did not say it out loud. 
I couldn't see any reason because I'd forgiven him already.
 Then he asked what the best memory of him was. 
I was silent as I closed my eyes and tried to calm the girl. 
I asked my secret god for truth and no error. 

I took a deep breath and gave the most honest
 answer that I could give.
 An adult Mary Catherine was running the show, (her secret god pulling her strings) and she held the child tight within her and said
"The one and only good memory I have is when I first saw you."

I hold my head in my hands and tense every muscle in my body and think;

"When I heard promises that were never even said."

 The two hundred and seven minute phone call ended. 
Not devastating;
 It was difficult, enlightening but a risky thing to do. 

After a few laughs and a civilized conversation, I knew that a misunderstanding of a long past error between a broken girl is at peace with a boy named Micah.
I am about to go upstairs to and get ready for bed, I need sleep. I am at a loss as to where the time went. I looked at my phone after we hung up it was twenty minutes to three in morning. 
I stopped to talk about Micah to another woman for a little longer than I normally talk to her. 
Trying to process the whole conversation. 
Certain things that remained unsaid. 
She said that most men are like that. 
Nothing helpful. It didn't matter. What are two words?
When suddenly she insults his name by pronouncing David Bowie as if it was a foreign language. 
"Dave- vid Bow-eee?... Dead at..."
Heart stops.

"Wait... What ? 
No, What did you just say?!"
"Who is Davvviid Bow-ee?"
She give's me a genuinely curious expression. 
This infuriates me.
What did you say! 

Death?! 
Dead! 
"Is. He.  Dead?" 
I'm yelling more than actually asking.

"It says's here David Bowie died peacefully...."
 she is reading across her iPhone.

Not ready for this.

"Is this one of those gag sites? 
What website are you on? 
Check again!
This better not be some kind of joke!" 

as If I have the ability to rip the throat out of whoever wrote such a thing. 
If it were to be untrue.

Then.
"CNN.com. says it... (she scrolls down) it's all over the web.


She looked up at me.
 "Mary, who is David Bowie..."

I say nothing; Thoughts race.
My father, my fucking father. 
More of a father then I had ever known. 
The only one that saw what I saw. 
He sang it to me since I was a baby, 1986. 
Not the David Bowie that promised 'me' he would be with 'me' when the world fell down. 
The man that held my hands in my imagination when I would sink into myself at night; lonely, sad, frightened. 
The father I choose since he first sung to me. 
The only one that recognized the sad love in 'my' eyes. 
Not Him because he said that he said he would be there and he always has been.

I felt a breeze move through me.
 I reached up for my chest. 

"No. "

As if the universe just might be bold enough to take something so precious!
My heart literally felt knocked the fuck out of my body.
I covered my mouth to escape whatever was about to come out.

I was awake till nearly five in the morning.
I took a very long warm shower, thinking.
I had another cup of lavender tea, thinking.
 I thought about Micah and just how much I had liked him, it was too much. 
I thought of Jareth, David's character from the movie I escaped into as a child a thousand times or more.
Then,  for the first time, I saw the similarities between the two.

The infantile idea of romantic love that I had formed. 
I see my mistake. 
My mistake.
The human mind is incredible

The synchronicity is enough for me not to doubt anything further.
 I do what I am compelled to do. 
I imagine Bowie as Jareth with that part of me now keeping all those promises. I am not carrying her suffering. He has her little hands. He holds her now. 
I see them spin in gold, whirling in stardust. 
Only love and no such thing as suffering in an infinite golden ballroom that lives between the stars. 

The imagery I meditated on created brought some comfort. 
It made just enough sense for the adult Mary Catherine. 

My heart is bleeding for a beautifully strange little girl. The father she had to imagine was hers.
 A boy named Micah she thought was supposed to 
"Place the moon within her heart"

 As if any mortal could fill that void?

My Mistake.
Two words.

Mary Catherine, Cowardice Queen