A kiss in the chasteness summer, trying to be sure. I hardly remember 
if it was night or day, only that I had few words then 
and have abandoned all hope of finding them now. 

Deliberation calls into question what you had in store. A kiss to your ego, sure. 
This dance of seasons turning pages bearing ink-stains, two people finally not speaking at all. Still the buds blossom into something soft, the copper-toned leaves fall, snow dusts lampposts and the sun comes back to melt it all.

The moment nudged memory to say that you smelled nothing like before. Reality took its leave, the years ran with the stories, ending with a quiet death on my word. A plead to not leave, but total resignation when the hour came. 
And you couldn't answer why your words rang to my ear the glittering note of insincerity.

What to call but 'weakness' the sting in me that for long missed what was a perpetually half-formed thing? Oh, don't worry, it's not the same when we talk, more than a few things have changed; teenage angst has paid off well*. I wonder how it happened, I wonder if it was me...
it must have all been me. No responsibility necessary,
you'll be happy to hear.

* Borrowed from Kurt Cobain’s lyrics for “Serve the Servants”.

The old filling station, shattered shingles and cracked concrete.
Waiting with bated breath; a word that doesn’t come, 
a silence that always does. 
Hands shake with the bone-cold blows of snow - 
my fingers touch my wrists. A sting of ice. 
Your lips part - a hit of winter chill, still no getting used to.
The sun begs for a dance, time wisps by, marigolds ponder
an appropriate appearance. 
I don’t know what to tell them, the same questions beckon.
Are the answers too slick for you too? I try to grasp them - brisk,
biting, but they tear my skin with shards of glass. 
Predetermination handles itself lightly, we come and we go. 
A smoldering star carries us where we’re meant to be. 

Perhaps my favorite thing about him, and the one thing I forgot to mention in my eulogy, was that he did not hold your feelings towards another family member against you, nor did he go out of his way to try to change your mind about them. He let his connection live in its own world while simultaneously holding space for your feelings too. That’s a quality which we all could learn, myself included.

Hi, my name is Carlotta. I’m Shahpoor’s daughter. Thank you for allowing me to speak.

Grandpa Terry was one of the exemplary figures of what unconditional love looks like in its purest form: a verb. Love is an action word.

He never let you forget that being a recipient of his love meant that you were worthy of words of encouragement even in the face of misguided choices, good faith despite straying away, and trust in your character because he knew your value even when you didn’t. Still: he might clown on ya, clown on ya really good, but one thing about Terry is he did NOT judge.

I admittedly did not know Grandpa Terry all too well in his day-to-day life. I don’t know how he took his coffee (if at all. Might’ve been a tea guy, I don’t know!), or his favorite song. But what I can tell you is what I learned from him.
From my Grandpa, I learned the true values that create a real family. None of them include blood. Family is recognizing someone’s personhood and committing to its growth. It’s loyalty (something seriously lacking nowadays, but never with Grandpa Terry), honesty (which does not require harshness), and conscious choice.

On my 8 hour train ride here from Chicago (I would’ve travelled 18 to be here), I started re-reading The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who is my favorite author - (I love him dearly). I realize this book is a little too on the nose given where we are, but bear with me! This quote is in the third chapter, after we meet Gatsby for the first time. Nick says the following of Gatsby’s smile, and it reminded me all too well of Grandpa Terry:

"He smiled understandingly - much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced - or seemed to face - the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it held precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.”

Thank you.

Terrance ‘Terry’ Eugene Evans
November 28, 1954 - November 22, 2025
We love you, as you loved in us: always.
🩷

I’ve been in a profound writing, reading, all-things-creative slump, so I’m leaning on the age-old tactic Writers Without Inspiration™️ use to make themselves feel better: rifling through old journals for content. 
I’m joking here. Mostly. I do want to post, and I don't have a damn thing written except for my neuroticism-ridden journal entries. And so here they are, for public consumption. 

10/14/25
Tuesday 

I’m at Luke’s house for the first time in a hot minute. Sleeping over, I mean. I’m pretty sure that I am, at least. 
I have a meeting tomorrow at my new job, to go over more paperwork stuff and then get my medical exam done. I’m hoping that I can do at least some relaxing after my more major tasks are done. I’m still quite nervous that I won’t be able to work more than one day per week at the coffee shop. I really do want to stay there part time & not even just because of the extra cash. I’m not entirely ready to stop being in the coffee world because I do really love and value quite a bit of what coffee entails, mainly the people aspect & the connections I’ve built. 
I’m going to sleep now, I think. 

10/15/25
Wednesday

* I mourn your death but you still don’t have a grave. *  

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree

- From Little Gidding by T.S. Eliot 

10/17/25
Friday

Today was okay, though I felt incredibly out of it all day & just generally have been feeling like I haven’t gotten enough time to myself which is kind of par for the course. I’ve had a pretty insane week and very little time to feel like I’ve spent enough hours with myself. I feel like a lot of things have been changing and the changes are good and desired  but also very overwhelming. I’m going though a pretty big growth season right now and I really do feel like God is holding my hand through it, but I also feel like I might be letting Him down. I’ve not been terribly kind & graceful in my stress. I have been feeling sorry for myself; and there’s the business of the former employer thing…
I wish I could say that I did it without much thinking but the truth is that I put too much thought and made the wrong decision, knowingly. But I should probably do my dishes before I get too sleepy. More in a bit. 

Who are you? they called out at the edge of the village. I am one of you, the poet called back. Though he was dressed like the wind, though he looked like a waterfall.  - Mary Oliver 

THINGS I AM:

Kind
Shy
Reclusive
Curious
Habitual 
Artsy
Loving
Smart
Brave
Appreciative 

THINGS I AM NOT:

Unfair
Unfeeling
Sporty
Clinical 
Disciplined
Crafty
Complacent 
Adventurous 
Brainy
Groveling

I believe everything you tell me, but I know that it will all turn out differently.
- Henry Miller

11/3/25
Monday
1:30 p.m.
 

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She goes into hysterics, asking why I’m still around. You feign ignorance but we both know I’m there because you were there too. ‘Love Me Tender’ on the turntable, back when your bed was lengthwise along the windows in your room; we dozed off at five a.m., you gave me your shitty leather bomber jacket and dropped me off at home with sleepy eyes and pin-drop sighs. (Back then you still had hope that you’d love me like you did Vanessa.) The new girl leaves beneath a ceiling of tears and it’s you and I in our room again. Made brand new, one thing leads to another, time stops - the English language demands that I call it ‘later’ - until you admit it again.

-

I’ve been in a bit of a writing slump lately. Sometimes transitional periods inspire profound creative streaks, but other times they result in stagnation. My journal hasn’t seen a poem in a long while. But one thing that I have been doing is an excessive amount of brain-dump journalling. As such, I thought I’d share what I’ve had on my mind as of recent, not through the way that I usually do on my website, but through my personal diary. I hope that’s okay.

7/20/25
Today’s Sunday and Luke and I have made a pact to have a good day and not stress about job / $$ stuff and instead let it go and worry about it tomorrow. I slept most of yesterday because I was so stressed + anxious and I really don’t want to do that again today. I want at least one day this week where I can not feel like I'm drowning. We’re going to the Paper & Pencil shop over in Andersonville today because I want to get extra paper for my journal and also grab some little odds and ends. I really want stickers, particularly the John Darian sticker book because it’s so insanely gorgeous and very much my aesthetic. Maybe I’ll also find something magical. I really would love to have something unexpected but good happen today. I welcome it even!

Undated
Prayer of St. Clare:
We become what we love 
and who we love shapes
what we become. 

If we love things 
we become a thing
If we love nothing 
we become nothing.

Imitation is not a literal 
mimicking of Christ
Rather it means becoming 
the image of the beloved.

An image disclosed through 
transformation.

This means we are to become
vessels of Gods compassionate 
love for others.  

Undated 
Come love, make me better than I was. Come teach me a kinder way to say my own name. 
- Andrea Gibson from ‘Good Light’. 

7/29/2025
I didn’t sleep particularly well last night but I feel good about my interview today regardless of that. I’m nervous, of course, but I trust my ability to channel that into charm instead. I love that about myself - my way of tuning nerves into something which can be used to my advantage instead. Not in a manipulative way though! But more in a ‘I’m an observer, not the one being observed’ sort of thing. Being a naturally shy + reserved person means having to find ways of channeling that into something more productive. 

Undated
I love you on purpose. Every day, even when (especially when) the days are just another, I wake up and decide to love you. I fell in love through a force outside myself but stay in it deliberately. Why stay if not by choice? Complacency isn’t love, that’s what comfort is. Some find the two easy to conflate and I did at one time too, but I surely know the difference now.  

8/12/2025
Today is my last day before I start my new job, which I’m pretty anxious about, but feeling relieved that I’ll be on a payroll again + have the mental security of having a job in this wild economy. As for how I’m feeling…I don’t fully know how I feel. I guess part of me is melancholy because a brief era of my life is over and I’m always scared that I didn’t make the most of it. As for mine and Luke’s vacation, I had a pretty great time. I do still want to move to STL but I suppose I can appreciate OP/CHI and not feel quite as stuck. It’s true that moving doesn’t magically change who we are because you cannot ever run away from who you are or your past experiences. For better or for worse. 
Luke’s grandma and I had a pretty special moment when she was discussing her mother’s death + how her mother tried to be strong for her + kept saying that she ‘would be better in the spring’ and how Grandma B saw her mother not long before she died + how she just knew that was the last time she was going to see her alive. Which is also unfortunately very relatable. It was crazy to me (still is, really) how much I can have in common with a woman born in 1929! But it’s beautiful because it goes to show that humans (women especially) are the same at our core. It doesn’t matter how old or young. Time doesn’t change humanity. Doesn’t change the meaning of loss, love, grief, etc. Which is quite beautiful. But…I should probably start working on some chores. My apt is a mess + it is very much stressing me out. More later!

Another day, waking up to a scorching-hot morning;
sticky, damp skin - thick, water-drop-heavy air.
Recollections of summers with my Dad,
something eternal was spun into those wondrous days.
Strangers sometimes, we did our best;

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These lists aren’t consciously-created ones; instead they’re chosen by whatever force brought their compilers to the art in the first place. The included books are ones that have been read in the most specific of circumstances, which re-reading cannot replicate. They’re ones that are read repeatedly, over the course of one’s life. You might find them beaten and battered by their reader - coffee-stained, covered in black ink and faded highlighter colors, a tapestry of love. It’s something supernatural, it defies logic and reason.

A life-long devotee of the written word, I am lucky to have a handful of many such books. I don’t expect to adequately summarize what they mean to me; even if I could, I wouldn’t want to. The magic of art is far too sacred. All I have to say is that I hope to remind someone what the power of books can be - and what it is.

Needless to say, this will be multiple parts, and the books are in no particular order.

1. Flowers in the Attic, V.C. Andrews

   
   If you’re familiar with this book, you’re probably side-eyeing the inclusion of it on this list. I understand that reaction, but I implore you to stick with me. This book has been intricately wound into my soul for so long that I can hardly recall when I first met it. Did I see the 1987 film first, or was my introduction to the story through Andrews’ book? I cannot tell you. What I can say is that this story is far more than what culture has branded it as. It’s spell-binding in its realistic portrayal of a young girl, along with her three siblings, grappling with circumstances that would break down most others.

   

   Catherine Dollanganger, our protagonist and the one whose perspective we’re seeing through, is at the start incredibly petty and reactive. She’s spoiled and bratty. She’s largely unlikeable. But as we watch the degradation of the Dollanganger kids’ lives, we see her lose her instinct to lash out at the wrong people wane, and we accompany her as she turns that power into effective protest and protection. Cathy, to me, is both a soul-connection relationship and a little sister whose growth I recognize in my own story.
   
   Andrews’ prose is stunning in its ability to spin words of trauma and suffering into something beautiful. There is no question as to why this novel prevails so long after its release despite such stomach-churning content. It’s not because of the grotesque nature of the events, it’s because Andrews somehow makes them have wondrous appeal - however morbid.

   “Love . . . I put so much faith in it. Truth . . . I kept believing it falls always from the lips of the one you love and trust the most. Faith . . . it’s all bound up to love and trust. Where does one end and the other start, and how do you tell when love is the blindest of all?”

   

   2. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
   
   This book came into my life through my soulmate-songwriter Kurt Cobain, who treated it as something holy too. Perfume inspired the Nirvana song ‘Scentless Apprentice’, which relentlessly thrashes and wails on its listeners - deeply ironic considering its inspiration’s stunning prose.

   
   A profoundly lonely teenager, I was at once desperate for belonging and unwilling to buy into the ‘American teenager’ facade that would have delivered it to me. Thus, this story of an outcast of a man who becomes revolted by humans, and chooses to remove himself from society entirely, spoke to me to an extent that was both pitiful and freeing.

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille’s aversion to humankind turns dark and twisted, but his innate sadness is undeniable. Süskind’s writing compels us to see the humanity in a person who, for most of the story, is utterly contemptible. Our heart breaks for the circumstances that he is brought up in, culminating in a crescendo of a finale penned with sheer beauty. I read this book over and over as a young teenager. At one point, I was forced to put it on my teachers’ desks during class, as my addiction to it was beyond reason.

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Still, while Grenouille’s social revulsion is no longer relatable (growing older means falling in love with humanity), a part of my heart remains attached to this book. I see Grenouille not as a victim of circumstance, but rather a tragic figure who never clung to something worth holding, not truly. Do not mistake these for being the same things. Grenouille’s circumstances were against him, but the real tragedy was his lack of an ability to deem something worthwhile. It was there within his grasp so many times, but he could never move past hatred and tend to it with love. I see Grenouille now as a cautionary tale, one where an unfortunate upbringing can be someone’s downfall, years after it’s an excuse.

“With each new day, he would bottle up inside himself the energies of his defiance and contumacy and expend them solely to survive the impending ice age in his tick-like way. Tough, uncomplaining, inconspicuous, he tended the light of life’s hopes as a very small, but carefully nourished flame.”

3. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald <3

Again I beg: stay with me!

You probably were forced to read this in high school, and you may have even screened the 1974 film starring a dashing Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby. Hearing the name ‘Gatsby’ likely conjures up memories of CliffsNotes and supressed metaphors about the green light. I get it! But this story is so much more than that, particularly to me, a proud hoarder of six copies of this book.

For us relentless, hopeless romantics, The Great Gatsby is the Twentieth Century’s definitive take on the ‘lost love’ trope, falling in step with Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and Dante’s La Vita Nuova. Fitzgerald doesn’t ask us to scrounge for every possible metaphor, nor does he ask us to painstakingly analyze each paragraph. Rather, he asks us to use Nick Carraway as a vessel for ourselves. Nick takes us into a world so eerily similar to our own, where one will find sentences that feel like receiving a lost letter from younger years. Fitzgerald doesn’t ask us to resonate with the humanity in Gatsby, or Daisy, or even Nick - he asks us to cling to the humanity in ourselves. This, because Fitzgerald knew better than most how easily the broader society could corrupt, possess, and erode us.

The Great Gatsby irrevocably changed my life when I first read it at age 16. I, like most, initially met Gatsby in my high school English class. As I wasn’t in a traditional high school, my liaison with the book wasn’t so either. Jay Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan, Nick Carraway and I all communicated via secret notes back and forth - them through their text and me through my assignments. How quickly I fell in love with them. With Gatsby’s pervasive melancholy, Daisy’s girlish sentiments, and Nick’s natural proclivity for being an outsider. I didn’t have a room full of other students to discuss the book with, or even a teacher to guide me through what I ‘should’ take from it. Unlike many, I was granted the gift of entering Nick’s head without preconceived ideas of what was to come. I urge you to try to do the same. Open this book, forget about your high school reading of it, and instead remember what it meant to feel awkward and heartbroken, with ennui clouding your vision like rose-tinted glasses. Cast aside the green light and everything you’re made to feel that you must understand, and read it for yourself. I promise, it won’t disappoint.

“But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night. A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the wash-stand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor. Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with an oblivious embrace. For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing.”

Thank you for stepping into my inner world for a little while. I can’t wait to do it again.

♡

Run-down dive bar bathroom, I've been awake 15 hours and aim to add 9 more. 
It's July, the sun is blistering, and my world has fallen splendidly apart. 
One bit after the next, the month of June is white noise static in my mind. Too many drinks later and I'm on my knees in front of Circle Inn, praying for reprieve.

A little too close to the end, I was there 3 months before - a rare night when I'd had enough. Americans were stuck to their TV sets, eager to see if a man whose actions set the country on fire would be sent to prison; the bar and I were vacant. Dodging questions about him, chain-smoking Marlboro menthols; I gave my number to a junkie with an attentive smile and didn't feel so bad about it. He’d been sleeping with Vanessa on his mind the whole time and I knew it, 
but I was tired of her taking my spot in our bed.

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Time-travelled to the mossy green tree stumps of my childhood yesterday, when crunchy leaves, shallow creeks and brisk silence were enough. Pink Converse high-tops, a composition notebook with a yellow #2 pencil, and my best friend were my whole world. 
It was you and I against everything, sifting through nature for something unassuming yet life-changing; foraging for a single four-leaf clover, planning for eighteen when we were going to move to California together.
I knew nothing about life there, just that I’d have you. So what’s the big deal about a cross-country move? 
Only one year between us but you held the knowledge of many lifetimes in your kid-sized hands. How badly I wanted to be more like you, how badly I still do. 

Single-digits-years-old, late night watching a movie about a grief-stricken girl. Big, heaving sobs and my small body shaking, you held me with no hesitation until I fell asleep. You didn’t have to ask any questions, you weren’t scared. You sat there with the potent solemnity of someone thrice your age. 
Twenty years later, words still aren’t so necessary - whatever I feel, whatever I think, you tell me it’s okay and I know that it is. Not a bit of concern because you somehow know that I’ll be okay, long before I ever do.
It’s just a moment. It always is. 
I told you once that you taught me what love is. That still remains true.
I love you for always, T. 💜

It’s sweet to think that I was convinced it was a perfect secret, like I’d made myself small enough to seem indecipherable and mysterious.

That could never have been the case, but how was I to know?
Backsliding takes one small slip; a bad week, or desire for burn-inducing nostalgia, along with needing to remember that I used to be someone else. Someone trusting and brand new.
Back when I could tell you that I was writing about you, instead of stealing lines from the sky by dark moonlight.
When you were my ‘dusk ‘til dawn’.
When all of my journals knew about the curve of your eyelashes
and imagined the exact scenario that played out so far into the future.

Call me a prophetess or a girl on the precipice of having too much of something, I don’t care. But don’t call me ‘almost’.

I know that ripping off the bandaid and poking at 
yesterdays wounds, repeatedly / incessantly,
only serves to incite infection - you fester
underneath my skin and rot me from the inside out.

My wish is that you’ve received the same sentence, 
that your dreams are haunted by 
the voice of the girl who 
wrote you love letters, (jabbed to the back of
our bottom drawer), 
like the ones you had about her ‘every night’;
the same girl who was scared that you’d discover
what she’d stumbled upon: 
capital-H her corsage, (daintily settled on the 
top shelf of our closet), the years showing no wear
on those pretty, fake flowers. 

It’s hard not to imagine you holding her with the same delicacy;
an idea in mind that she was something fragile, 
sacred - a treasured possession. You held me like that 
once, after our first date, when I was 
still granted input on how to spend our evening. We turned 
on Titanic and I stumbled into sleep. 
I rested on your chest, half-conscious, nervous 
that you’d see me too close-up. 
(’You don’t know how beautiful you are’, you said. 
You had no clue that I’d heard you.) 
We lounged in your bed all of the following day, 
whispering, giggling, learning; your family let us be. Out of 
respect for our privacy, or simply disinterest, I’d never know. 

Even when it was good, we both knew 
that it wasn’t. It was merely us murmuring half-truths 
in the other ones ear. A good day rarely meant anything more.
Who was it an act for? I can’t help but 
feel that it was yourself that you were trying to fool. Wanting 
to immerse yourself in another other girl, one who was
supposedly so different. Someone who you played-pretend 
desire towards, seeing only the precise, clean shots she made
instead of the trigger-happy stray bullets. 
Did you ever look inward long enough to realize that you secretly loved
her chaos? It takes no effort to see that she made you 
feel like you were far more special than you actually are. 
How embarrassing that I fell for your insecurity-driven obsession 
with outlandish personas, like: 
emotionally sound guy with divinely bestowed chivalry; or: 
man who embodies codes of justice and virtue that no one his age 
has the tools to decipher.

It’s hard to conceptualize the depths of your heartlessness; asking
me into your home, sleeping undisturbed next to my 
shivering body, watching me atrophy (fading color, wasting life) -
and never feeling the spirit of contrition. Refusing ownership
for holding the knowledge that it was never going to be me,
but keeping it up regardless. Yes, I know that 
our relationship was doomed from the start, that it 
was paralyzing far more than it was energizing; yet I still
see the person who I shared Jeff Buckley with 
the first time we hung out together. (Against my better
judgement). I’ve refused to rush sharing anything ever since.

I suppose that I’m still learning to forgive myself, instead of
forcing the practice of mercy upon your memory. (I don’t owe you
that courtesy. You siphoned enough of it before we were over.)
Now, in learning to hold myself gently, I’m choosing to 
recognize the error of my ways. Giving myself grace and 
forgiving that girl for trying to love someone into 
being a better version of themselves. How beautiful 
that I now know the love of someone whose core warms my 
own, even when my soul feels stuck out in
the cold. I'm cradled, recognized, known, maintained.
Safe. At ease.

I guess it’s time to admit that I still ponder where you are; how you’re doing, if you finally decided to live for yourself, if you ever stop to consider how I might be. 

Why? Well, would it not make me as bad as you if I didn’t? 

I could say that my curiosity has been snuffed out wholly, but that would be a lie and dishonesty is unbecoming. Then again, we never had the same standards of virtue. 

Hindsight holds no surprise that I was forthright to a fault, until your baggage buckled me up too. Lost somewhere between martyrdom and sanctification, I retreated so far inwards that I became a conundrum of symbolic self-immolation - wanting to preserve myself, yet destroying that girl with far more fervor instead. 

It’s true that you commanded me to let you cope on your own, but you never could acknowledge that love is an action word, and occasionally looks like shouldering a heavier attaché. The present now pleads with me to understand that you never wanted me to carry yours because reciprocity was incomprehensible for a mind so resigned. A thirsting flower would still result in wilting petals if being watered came with scoffs.

Understanding beckons with a promise of maturing; knowing that a feverish kind of love isn’t love in purity, and I can make peace with knowing that I loved myself eminently all the while. What you were was what I chose, for better or worse. Cards in my hands, finger on the trigger. Who’s to say if you’ve ever thought that deeply about any of it; history would shake its head in disappointment, and so would anyone else that took you for a wise man.

As I grew older, I began to find gratification from learning about the artists who influenced the ones that I felt a connection to. That led me back to ASOUE, which I remembered overflowing with references that undoubtedly would enlighten me in some way. What I found, after endless scrolling on various websites, was a multi-page list of references that fellow ASOUE fans had found within the book series. The first one on the list was, of course, the surname of the three main characters themselves; Baudelaire, a direct reference to Charles Baudelaire, a favorite poet of Daniel Handler’s.

Despite being a life-long poet myself, only in the past year did I start to approach poetry with a particularly intentional eye, taking the time to read it first as a human, and then as a writer. I had never truly dissected poetry , or made it a priority to consciously seek out curating my taste in it. Even still, it’s true that the first poet I fell in love with was Edgar Allan Poe, the same year that I discovered ASOUE. Poe spoke to the macabre inclinations that I didn’t know I possessed. I was utterly infatuated with the images he invoked within my young brain, (of ‘kingdoms by the sea’ and hearts in boxes under floorboards), but didn’t think I could find anything that gave me quite the same feelings. But then, Daniel Handler further cemented that love for the dark and mysterious, adding in a narrative voice that was as equally melancholy as it was comforting. Mysterious yet familiar. Pompous but approachable. It was no wonder that I’d end up completely enamored by the poet who took such hold of Handler that he’d be the original bearer of the name which gave the Baudelaire children theirs.

I cannot say which poem of Charles Baudelaire’s I read first. It was probably one of his shorter ones as I’ve never been one for long poems, even in my twenties. Whatever the poem, his style and spirit awoke something in me that only Edgar Allan Poe had before. How funny that Baudelaire had a near life-long spiritual kinship with Poe, having translated many of his works, assisting in Poe’s rise in notoriety in Europe. Baudelaire considered Poe a ‘sacred soul.’

Perhaps this is a core reason why I fell in love with Baudelaire’s command of language. Baudelaire, like Poe, is able to turn the dark and hellish into something resembling beauty. Beautiful because of its wickedness, or beautiful because of its acknowledgment of the disturbing - it’s up to you to decide. But here is an example of just what I’m attempting to convey. Read this, the first two stanzas of his poem ‘A Carcass’ from his most famous collection: Les Fleurs du Mal:

“My love, do you recall the object which we saw,
That fair, sweet, summer morn!
At a turn in the path a foul carcass
On a gravel strewn bed,

Its legs raised in the air, like a lustful woman,
Burning and dripping with poisons,
Displayed in a shameless, nonchalant way
Its belly, swollen with gases.”

- “A Carcass”, Charles Baudelaire
Translated by William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

Reading further down, one wonders how these stanzas, the last two, can be from the same poem:

“Yes! thus will you be, queen of the Graces,
After the last sacraments,
When you go beneath grass and luxuriant flowers,
To molder among the bones of the dead.

Then, O my beauty! say to the worms who will
Devour you with kisses,
That I have kept the form and the divine essence
Of my decomposed love!”

Rare is the poet who can combine words like ‘sweet’ in the same stanza as words like ‘carcass’; or ‘kisses’ and ‘decomposed.’

There is no doubt that Baudelaire sees in his subject a beauty as commanding in its radiance as this carcass is in its rottenness. I ask: how do you not fall in love with a mind that could conjure up such vivid imagery and passion? How do you read something like that and then move on?

We have the words of a man tormented by his love, likening it to something utterly repugnant. We see a pained soul, our Baudelaire; one of the pivotal, novel poets arising from Europe who branded into our minds the image of the l’artiste maudit - the tortured artist. The early F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Cobain, and the character of Lemony Snicket in A Series of Unfortunate Events. The specific archetype of Artist that we all, at some point, fall for.

I won't keep you here too much longer; I think I’ve held you long enough. Still, I'll leave you with this, a quote from Charles Baudelaire himself, about Edgar Allan Poe:

“Why should I not admit that what sustained my will was the pleasure of introducing them [the French] to a man [Poe] who resembled me a little, in some respects; that is to say, a part of myself?”

‘Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
and if I die before I ‘wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.’ 

Sometime in childhood, I decided that my favorite prayer was this one: an early example of my persistent affection for all things macabre. 
I wonder now if that began with an actuality I’ve been living with always - dreams where I’m in some uniquely blood-stopping scenario, unable to open my eyes and escape, knowing all the while that I could stop it if my mind wasn't petrified, stone-still. It’s an almost comically-cliche horror plot. 
When I finally pull myself out, all I can manage is to lie there, heart drumming, spine tingling, waiting for the thing in the shadows to materialize - how dare I want to close my eyes!
I find that those nights are the ones I reprise that little prayer the most, like turning over a worry stone, pleading for God to make the last line come to pass. I know, it’s approaching too taboo to confess, but you have to believe me when I say that it’s less because I want to die, and more because I want to be saved. 
Surely if there’s something that can cause such fear, there must be something that can resolve it too. Resigned, I give myself over to the understanding that maybe that ‘something’ isn’t me. 

It’s hard to conceptualize how unlearned we are at that age; I understand now how half-grown young adulthood sees us. And yet, I see her photograph, perfect brunette curls and ambiguous doe eyes, and I feel awful for using her pain to put my own into perspective.

Imagining the situations that led to her death is an effortless endeavor. In a city so sweeping, with long-established pockets of transgression, there seems to be boundless opportunities for fate to manifest its tragic ending. Still, I wonder: Was she an archetypal victim of someone’s crime of opportunity? Or did she tumble into trouble, thinking it would end when she said so, just for it to turn into something permanent?

Every day, I drag myself past her photograph, feeling everything one does in their twenties: the untethered distress of adolescent heartbreak, tumbling back into love yet again, wondering if my life really held any consequence… sometimes I question why I’m still here, when this girl, undoubtedly younger than me, was taken. It’s evident how loved she is, her flowers and candles eternally, flawlessly arranged. It seems as though someone comes around just to stand her offerings straight, cradling her memory in safe hands even if her body is somewhere untouchable.

I wonder who might do that for me. Will anyone feel so compelled as to hold me in high regard, casting goodwill onto me beyond the cloak of death? What if I fade away, my essence being wiped from the memories of all who knew me? What if I never have an impact on those I wish to?

Maybe she asked herself the same things. Maybe she knew that someone would care.

Eventually, my family left the church and began living ‘in the world’. I rejoiced at this, because I could stop hiding to my parents that I didn’t truly believe. Even as a child, I was acutely aware that there was a lack of honesty on my end towards my parents, and I really didn’t like it. I wanted to come clean and tell the truth of what I was going through internally, but I was afraid that if I admitted it, my fate as a non-believer would be sealed, and mean that I was doomed for hell.

As I got into my teens, I started to wholeheartedly revolt against religion, God, and everything even incongruently related. I started to discover the works of Nietzsche and Anton LaVey, and proudly told my mother that I knew there was no God. Chalk it up to teenage rebellion or whatever you may, but I believe it was largely a response to having been deeply traumatized by not only the content of my particular religion, but the social aspect of it too. The unspoken hierarchy masked by a supposed equal playing field, the deep-rooted misogyny and the demeaning rules that it inspired, and the pervasive notion that any Biblical work done was never enough. Never enough Bible reading or praying, more church-going, fellowship, etc...non-stop. All of it damaged my relationship to faith nearly irreparably.

However, the past year has seen me falling into faith in the way that I’d always hoped when I was a girl. I’ve found a quiet peace in my faith, even without fully knowing what it is that I believe. I have The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis to thank for opening the (wardrobe) door for me to step into the love and grace of God through.

It started this past January, when I decided to read more books from my childhood in order to gently begin what I hoped to become a fruitful year of reading, which it certainly has been. I’d always known the Chronicles of Narnia to be influenced by the Bible and Lewis’ faith, but never took care to read the book and understand for myself the swath of Godly inspiration Lewis interpolated. Once I did, I found myself feeling the embrace of God in a way that I almost never have before. One might call it the power of moving literature, and that surely is part of it, but as a lifelong devout reader, I can honestly say that I have never before had quite the same experience as I did while reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The depiction of Aslan as Christ is how I’ve always felt him to be, contrary to what I’ve been told he is. He is just as loving to our wide-eyed Lucy Pevensie as he is to the spiteful Edmund. He is full of love, grace, and comfort. He leads you sometimes silently, when you may not know He’s there. He exempts you from things you may not be ready to know, and is there to comfort when you are. He isn’t solely a wrathful being, or a vengeful one. I know him first and foremost as a God who will give to you what you look for.

Altogether, this was confirmed by the Word, in the first book of the Bible that I chose to read on my own, as the sole decision maker.:

John 1:47–48
[47] Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!”
[48] Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?”
Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.”

What struck me most about this passage was the explicit mention of the fig tree. A timeless symbol of blessing and prosperity, and conversely, one of judgement; this tree also could represent faith. Nathanael, in the book of John, stood under a fig tree, seemingly looking for a sign from God that He was there, and did not see Him. Unbeknownst to him, Jesus was stood nearby, watching him. Even when we have no outwardly sign that God is there, He is. This passage is the kind of God that I wished for him to be when I was a child, the God that I found in The Chronicles of Narnia, and the one confirmed by scripture itself.

I can’t claim to have my faith-situation figured out. The religious trauma I’ve experienced is by no means forgotten, much less forgiven, but I’m learning how to cope with it and allow myself to experience faith to a depth that works for me. I’m discovering that don’t need to justify my faith to anyone, or force myself to adopt a denomination. By no means am I perfect at either of those things, but what’s different now, in comparison to my younger years, is that I want to figure it out. I wish to no longer have an aspect of my humanness - faith/spirituality - that I’m too scared to approach. In this endeavor, I’m finding a tool that is helping me to cultivate a healthy, balanced path for my life; one that allows me to be less angry and tense. I’m endlessly grateful for that.

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