Her text said,

"You need to die."

I read it and shuddered.

I cried.

I wanted to die right then and there.

The sender was my best friend,

my confidant,

the one with whom I dared to share

my innermost thoughts and fears.

She knows the monsters that haunt me

and that I try daily to overcome:

Fear of missing out.

Fear of losing a friend.

Fear of losing her.

I trusted her to keep my secrets,

and tell me the truth in love,

especially when I needed to hear it.

My phone vibrated,

but I refused to look at the text.

I peeked and saw her name,

but turned away again.

I screamed, as if that

would make it disappear.

Through eyes awash in tears,

I finally brought myself to look.

The text said,

"Sorry about typo. Should say,

'You need to diet.'"

And I added another monster

to my list:

fear of texting.

I'm my own hero this very day

As I speak with a stone cold stare.

“No more, I beg. Please just go.

Love’s flame no longer glows.”

“Don’t make me,” he screamed.

“You’ll kill our dream.”

Dream? Farewell

Nightmare’s

Hell.

There is a fear that I will not succeed.

A fear that this world will get the better of me.

A guilt that knowing things too deep, is causing me to weep.

A hope that something may change.

Do I want it to anyway or is it just the dream of people who hate me anyway?

Is my constant anxiety something I solve with a pill?

I stare down

Is this real?

so I dare?

will I will?

I want this world to end

The dark that I've been living in.

But, in fighting do I become a hero or embrace the demons I've been living with?

How can I escape this phase?

Could I just turn the page?

Is it possible to escape or am I stuck in this cage of mistakes?

The screaming of normal talk

Is it the way that I walk?

Do you hear like me?

or is it just the TV?

Hope, help me get out of this cage.

I hope that I'll never fade

But I made some mistakes

that I cannot unmake

will I ever be the same?

They say the darkness, it never leaves.

It will always be a part of me.

Maybe there's a good side.

Maybe this terror could make me the hero.

Maybe it wasn't a mistake

maybe I shouldn't ever have been born in the first place.

No,

I was meant to be on this world

I'm not just some little girl

I can't remember

what makes me so bitter

Have I turned old like a cynical sinner?

Maybe it's not too late.

Maybe I made a mistake.

I hope that things will change.

I might be the hero someday.

my husband and I joke

that I'm not really

living this life right now

I'm not really

a wife and dog mom

in a deluxe house and town

I'm back in Berkeley

the place where we first met

where I spent the early stages

of the pandemic

I'm in lockdown

that has gone on

for four years without pause

my dog Ernest is a rabid raccoon

that I pet and have become sick from

my California house

and our vacations

are a calendar of images

I hang in up my closet

stroking each picture

I am talking to myself

convinced I've survived

when I'm only insane,

diseased, a ghost with nothing

tangible to touch

Today, I realized that I need to flip the monster - my monster - fear. It often takes a hero to just do some of the daily things: getting out of bed, facing traffic, work challenges, conflicts and people in general. The greatest monster, though, is the mind. My mind can tip over into the monster when inner fear rises and doubts emerge, buying a ticket on a train ride into an abyss of conjectures. This is a monster that can freeze me in an instant, making me doubt, second guess and endlessly run the odds. This is when courage comes in to halt the advancing shadow, causing me to yell, "Wait!" I realize, slowly, that I can flip the monster by flipping the perception. Just like tossing a coin - there's another side. I can shed light on the shadow. Then, instead of fighting, running or hiding, the monster and I can dance.

The Blockheads were stuffy. They were congested. Their sinuses were blocked, their ideas were stifled, and their loves were tentative. But their likes were easily posted with a keystroke.

The Blockheads lacked moral wherewithal.

What little moral wherewithal they had they squandered on petty peeves and oneupmanship against others. Sometimes they spent too much of their wherewithal — out of an abundance of caution until caution was no longer abundant. This was precisely why Blockheads repeated the same mistakes, over and over.

Rarely, each time one of the Blockheads matured a little, realized a truth or debunked some fallacy, it was wherewithal payday. The Blockheads who accrued the most wherewithal sat at the top of a block pyramid, where Maslow never looked. Way up there, they mastered fueling the rationalizations that bolstered their dominance.

Yet, shit still rolls downhill. As it does. In the wrong hands, riches can be squandered, luxuries drained, and necessities all spent. Caveats are lost in translation. And doom, like the mistakes, happens over and over.

The Blockheads pledged unwavering support to their hero — someone who was outrageous enough to have the most "likes," which was a fluid dynamic that defined the opioid of the masses. The cheapest demagogic trick in the book, the us-vs-them motif, created each hero du jour.

Blockheads lay down in homage to their hero — each hero, a day at a time. Being Blockheads, they fit together without the irregularities that made heads different. The more regular their heads, the better they were able to fall together into a wall of obstinacy.

Everyone had their wall.

They were the wall.

Such a wall lacked wherewithal. Or wisdom. Or compassion. Such a wall, without those things, stood strong because of those wants. Winds of change simply blew off of such a wall. Without erosion.

But the wall did what it did best, whether that be holding other heads in or keeping the other heads out. The more "liked" the heros, the taller the wall of Blockheads grew. Tall enough, and such a construct is divisive. For everything.

"My way" means the "might way"; otherwise, it's the highway. The highway just over the wall. But mind the razorwire.

Monsters are necessary to fight to the end. What might they look like? Big sharp teeth, skin matted with blood, towering over you.

But I have a more permanent monster looming over me. Every time I hang out with friends, or leaving the house to get groceries. Just looking in the mirror everyday I see it behind me, in my eyes and in myself.

I can't slay this monster. I simple coexist with it.

I am in danger and I know it because I am counting carnations.

I am thinking of all the colors a flower can be, of crossbreeds, and animal crossing

I am lying in my sleeping bag with a flashlight in one hand and a knife in the other.

I know I am in danger because the sun is setting and there are sixteen strange men shrieking around me

And they’re drunk to all hell and twice as high and stalking around the tent

I am texting my best friend with one bar and the crescendo of a snapping heartbeat (they keep on shining their lights thru! / lord, lay me down to sleep like my brother and my father please, they both sleep so gently)

Because I am thinking of carnations, I am thinking of mantras

I am whispering to myself without words, move fast, move accurately,

be quiet, be still, that’s it, you are asleep, as far as they are concerned you are dead, you are the pink and red carnations over a grave that doesn’t exist at this elevation,

I am danger because half of them are buck naked and coked out and high on MDMA and civilization is four miles away in the deep downhill dark

I am watching their flashlights, three feet away, angry, ‘they’re taking up like four fucking miles of camping space’

The word for what they are doing is tormenting

They are pressing their hands against the tent, they are surrounding us with the bulk of them, they are rummaging through our things and they are whispering faintly, so close to me, they see me sitting and they are waiting for me to fall asleep, they are messing with my damp clothes outside, and they are shining their flashlights inside, and they are slurring and shouting and screaming

I am in danger because I am watching dancing shadows and I am just a girl with a knife and a flashlight and shoes outside

And carnations come in white and pink and red and yellow and sometimes purple

I am counting because there’s fuck else to do and we’re in a lake basin and they’re yelling so i’m listening to their echoing

I am placing names to voices—Chaz, Joshua, T-Bone—I am counting yards between the campsites behind us and 9 feet away from us

Move fast, move accurately,

I feel the fear in my teeth

I am counting

I am counting footsteps and people and I am counting campsites and wisping flashes of light and counting my phone battery at 21% and as each guy in the tent to the left drifts asleep

When you’re in enough danger, your body buzzes, your body buzzes and you don’t realize it,

you’re hijacked by impulses—

Sibling and father, now aware,

We’ve got one chance, be quiet, no light, don’t use any light, we’re surrounded by all sides,

Put your shoes on, no—not the flip flops, grab your sleeping bag, put your clothes on, no, don’t take your backpack, grab the car keys,

I’m not tying my shoes fast enough and why are they wet and i am shaking with fear and rage

I am pushing my brother forwards, down towards the lake,

I am thinking of the ground and the pine needles and carnations as we walk so carefully so quickly away

And we stumble like deer over driftwood and fallen logs

And we are in the dark, crawling over the lake like refugees, hoping, praying, that there will be no tripping

Don’t slip, walk carefully, walk slowly

We are moving fast now, we are on the other side of the lake and we are darting through trees,

We are moving fast because we have to

I am ducking beneath and I am used to the dark because there’s no choice not to be

Climbing up to the rock on the far side of the lake, closest to the island sitting in the center, what should’ve been our campsite to be, a place to see everything,

We are whispering

From up here we will surely see them coming

My phone is at 18% and I am sending GPS coordinates to my best friend and telling them that if I don’t contact them by 4 am to

CALL 911

I am crouching low and hiding behind a tree because there can be no light, we cannot let them see, we cannot let them see where we might be,

No light, no light, say it over to yourself until you feel it

I am in danger and I am clutching onto the thought of carnations

I am standing watch while my brother and father are sleeping

I will see them coming,

I will see their lights bouncing

And I will hear them moving

God knows they understand fuck all about subtlety

You reach a point of such quiet,

where you aren’t breathing, your lungs are moving and there’s oxygen reaching, but it’s soft and insistent

like summer rain or anger

I am seething and it’s so quiet I’m listening to individual ripples in the water

I am staring at the sky and the faint cloudy bands of the milky way, because it is dark but I still can see their dying light this far away

And the stars are beautiful and everything is cold and awful

I am aligning the stars with the horizon line,

when that one dips an hour has passed

look that one’s gone and that means it’s 1 am

go back to sleep, now,

I know the rocks and the dirt hurt, brother,

both of you go back to bed

The stars are falling

And I am watching

I will watch until the morning, I promise you,

I won’t let anything

bad happen.