Time beats slow in Kentucky
I see her sitting at a pit stop in Kentucky. Her boots up, her wild whiskey grin. Laughing at the lot of us still trapped in this melancholy hell.
“I reckon you all have chills when I step up on you.”
Let me sink here in your tatted skin. “I’m not earthbound, anymore.”
Laughing at our bloodshot lives and wasted plans.
“I’m still here, somehow.”
Let my heart bleed out onto the kitchen floor
remembering her will
the pain of it.
”can you hear me?”
Her hopeless light of marigold
Her stubborn fight against the dying of the light.
”I’m with you, can you see me?”
Her death blowing a hole
straight through the universe
and shattering the moon.
”I love you all, I’m still here.”
We are stolen by her
memory
Our beloved
Shells
Her ghost forever
lives within those
of us who felt the
certain and sudden
drop
from
heaven
as her spirit
hit the sky
Rest now.
Shelley “Shells” Gilreath
May 18th 1981 - April 18th 2025
Abused
Just so ya know.
I was an abused child.
Let me clarify...
I was raised in the south during wich time if you were bad,you got whippings in school, you got whippings at home and you went to church at least three times a week if not more!
We drank straight out of the waterhose an lived to tell about it.
If a relative died, usually you inherrited somethin to remember them by, or many things. Weather you wanted to or not.
Our kinfolks saved everything to re-use later because the already lived through the great war then the deppression then the second world war and they werent gonna go without again! So we grew up learnin how to "hoard" stuff so we wouldnt be without it later. Ya know, just in case another war or deppression broke out.
I learned how to ride a bicycle on crushed oyster shells because thats what they used as gravel. Lets just say you learned how to ride a bicycle and not fall on those sharp shells real fast.
We cut our grass with a reel mower and rested in the shade of a Mimosa tree drinkin lemonaid.
I guess gettin spankins, gettin yelled at, growin up savin everything was child abuse.
I didnt think it was, but i was told a lil bit ago that because i did some of those things while he was young that he was abused. And now he has trauma. And that i had just continued the cycle of abuse.
Well sir, i really didnt know that was abuse since i grew up that way and didnt seem nothin wrong with me. I suppose everything i tried to do right was abuse.
Til Death Do Us Part
I buried my husband on a Tuesday, and by Wednesday morning, he was making coffee in our kitchen. It wasn’t a dream, I know what dreams feel like. Vague around the edges, smokey shapes, all that nonsense. But this was solid, tangible. The hiss of the kettle, the bitter smell of coffee grounds, and the low hum of his favorite record spinning in the background. James should’ve stayed dead. I made sure of it.
The police said it was an accident, a carbon monoxide leak from the garage. I nodded, cried at the acceptable times, wore black, and accepted casseroles. They never suspected that I had sealed the vents myself. He was never supposed to open his eyes again.
But there he was.
Wearing the same navy sweater he died in, still damp at the collar from where he always spilt his coffee. I stood frozen in the doorway, heart pounding as he turned around with that charming crooked smile.
“Morning, Clara. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. He kissed my cheek, warm and alive, and walked past me, humming the same off-key tune.
The next morning, his body was gone from his casket. The funeral home apologized profusely and said there must’ve been a mix-up at the morgue. I nodded again. Cried again.
But by Friday, I wasn’t the only one who had seen him.
The neighbor’s dog wouldn’t stop barking at the fence. Mrs. Bronte swore she saw James at the post office, holding a red umbrella. My best friend Jenna stopped answering my calls after I tried to tell her what was happening, thinking I must be seeing things in my bereaved state.
So I did what any rational woman would do.
I tried to kill him again.
This time, I used poison. Laced his evening tea with enough insulin to drop a horse. I watched him sip it. Watched him choke, stagger, and collapse. I didn’t flinch.
I buried him in the woods that night, far away from the prying eyes of neighbors and anyone else who happened to wander by. No headstone. No funeral.
And yet, this morning, he was back again.
Wearing that same damn navy sweater.
“Morning, love,” he said, grinning wider than ever. “Rough night?”
Now I‘ve locked myself in the bathroom. He's knocking on the door. Soft, steady.
“If you’re not careful,” he calls, “you’ll make me do something we’ll both regret.”
I think I married the devil.
And worse—
I think he still loves me.
All In a Row
My presence lowered the room’s median age by 30 years. Side-eye glares began once I entered. Judgmental early arrivals, who had separated into their cliques, were suspicious of this newcomer. Just looking to kill some time before reconvening with the bachelor party, I accepted my helot designation by sitting along the perimeter with the other outcasts. The lighting wasn’t ideal. I was in line with an AC vent. Such are the downfalls of the supposed downtrodden.
Settling in, I realized those nearby weren’t exchanging pleasantries to make my acquaintance. Although members of a lesser caste, these strangers weren’t friends I hadn’t met. They were out to gain a higher standing by beating someone on a lower rung. Winning sets you free. Expanding your social circle doesn’t. This was a cutthroat aggregate.
It quickly became apparent who the nobility were: Mrs. S and Reggie. I couldn’t figure out their relationship. Siblings? Married? Working as a team? But all exalted their names and acted interested in their retelling of past wins. Like royalty, the pair held court. Not meaning to, I made eye contact with Mrs. S. Out of politeness, I gave her a deferential nod and grin. She relegated me to being a subordinate by replying with a condescending sneer. Bitch. Game on.
“Everyone ready?” was the only announcement needed for people to affix their concentration. As expected, the action was fast paced. Players remained focused. You’d hear the attempted witty comment randomly interjected by Reggie. Done more to throw off others than for entertainment purposes. The unfortunate ones who were distracted by this maneuver ended up on the wayside.
I kept a low-profile the first few rounds. My strategy was to act obtuse, then strike when the stakes were higher. Reggie had already notched four wins while his femme fatale had six. They were dominating and knew it. However, they didn’t grasp that any congratulatory acknowledgment from the almost rans was insincere.
Once the big jackpot came up, I decided to make my move. I’d bolster the 70% luck and the 25% skill needed with my 5% determination. The first thirty seconds put me behind. My hand barely moved as others’ feverishly bobbed up and down. Then my rally began. G Forty-eight. Need it. B Fifteen. Need it. I Thirty. Need it. And then, as if hearing it slowed down to 33 RPMs: OOOO Sevvvventyyyyy Onnnnnne. Dabbing the blank square with my ink marker, I held my card high and exclaimed “BINGO,” before partially rising from my seat.
With gloating intentions, I scanned for Mrs. S. Her back remained turned to me. She was, no doubt, engaging Reggie in some contemptuous discussion involving “beginner’s luck” or “even a busted clock is right twice a day.” I reveled in the fact Her Highness and Prince Uncharming were temporarily deposed.
Victory was financially sweet and hierarchically advancing. I departed $250 richer. But more importantly, I discarded my status as a bottom rung serf.
A Buoy and a Girl
They were lovers. It had sounded so romantic, alone overnight on his sailboat. Anchored for the night, all was cozy in the cabin, replete with a wide bunk of silk sheets.
He was a generous lover, but he wasn't working alone: the subtle rocking and list made for rhythmic sways and lurches that were magical.
That was before the sudden storm.
Sometimes even seasoned sailors are taken by surprise. Sometimes anchor chains snap. Sometimes two people are left hanging on a buoy in choppy waters.
At night.
Now, the rocking and list made for rhythmic sways and lurches that were not magical, but lethal.
It was a small buoy, and each of them held on desperately. Hand-over-hand—his hands over hers, hers over his—panic meant there was neither patience nor room for two of one’s hands to secure attachment.
If there had been just one of them—just her, she realized—she could drape over the top of it and rest.
Rest.
She needed rest. This was too hard, too exhausting. And much too crowded. It was two people trying to save themselves with a one-girl buoy. She felt guilt for an instant in thinking like this. After all, he had been her lover. The one? Who knew?
Any life-saving effective grasp proved elusive, their hands in a hand-stacking game where there could only be one winner. Was he a winner?
Was he the one? she wondered again. Again, who knew?
She would never know, because he lost his grasp after a particularly hostile wave flipped them—buoy and all—landing it back upright, bobbing, but without him.
She couldn't see anything in the dark, but she suspected where his pleading, receding hand might be. She could splash at it, perhaps aimlessly, for purchase, but that would mean holding onto the buoy with just one hand—a tentative struggle at best. And a waste of a whole lifetime's opportunity.
Her conscience made her consider it, but her instinct for survival had her consider it for too long a time to be opportune.
Existential struggles between conscience and instinct take time. Instinct makes snap judgments based on stress and fear of a consortium of conspiring dangers; conscience makes determinations more slowly. Instinct requires adrenaline; conscience requires guilt to buoy the sense of right and wrong.
That was a decade, a husband, and two children ago: after the tragedy, new shores meant new horizons and a new life. She saved herself—for another and for others. Yet, to this day, she often has a private, secret, and darkly sinking feeling, well below the surface where a storm still rages in her.
Tempest-tossed
His hand moved with lightning speed. She had tried to subtly move to the side, but he had studied the way that she moved. As soon as she tried to jerk herself free, he had managed to pin her down, and land a hard hit across her face.
The marks burned, and left a print— a quick message- reminding her that whatever she would try to do his hand would rain down with power over her~ for what felt like all eternity. She felt a fire burning inside of her.
The images of her ancestors appeared before her like a burst of dark stormy clouds. ‘‘Every storm runs out of rain.’’ Their voices thundered.
She rose to her feet after lying on the ground for a while- feeling all drained. But one thing she had learned now was not to be afraid of rainy days. Now it was time she learned how to dance through the pain even when dark clouds approached in the horizon.
Later that night, after a long hunt. She had prepared a bowl of something nice, and hot. She served it, and stepped to the side…watching..and waiting. Then once the meal had been completely devoured, she smiled, and tsked. ‘Hope you enjoyed that dish. May it be one that you remember even in the next life.’
The only thing he managed to call out with his final breath was her first name:
-Morgana.
#Tempest-tossed.
4.4.2025 Friyay.
undead
it takes over a year to decompose myself. my gorgeous decay is interrupted and, when pulled out from the ground by a fleshy hand, i arise groaning. i climb six feet towards the heavens, leaving sparse footprints and claw marks on my dirt path upwards. when i return to green grass and breathing people, i am handed a bouquet. is this an apology? are you guilty? is it gratitude? a thank you? the rose thorns do not puncture the skin on my palms. i do not bleed anymore. the red petals fall through my bony fingers. he loves me not.