Dreamscapes: A Face of Five Pointed Scars

 Panic…

…the need to run, my fight being flight, and the only sound is my breathing in staccato as I push my body to a speed it has no choice but to accept, the landscape a peripheral blur, the door an in focus goal…

…my left hand makes contact with the seasoned wood of the door, my right with the iron handle, what should be rhythmic is out of time —push down, push open— I refuse to look behind, instead I exhale and quietly ask for entrance, to which the door replies in kind…

…I slam it shut, surrounded by darkness, I feel towards the left of me, following the stone wall to an entrance, a cavernous darkness I allow to swallow me, where in wait I fear my breathing will give me away…

…the door opens with patience, slowly completing its swing, as it allows golden sunlight to softly touch the shadows, an incandescence that barely illuminates a full length mirror within the room I stand…

…a first step onto the stone floor, a second, the third brings his profile into view, he inhales and exhales with no sign of exertion, and he turns, looking directly at me, a face of five pointed scars, a pentagram of permanence carved into his flesh, a pentacle of protection…

…I forget myself, studying his visage, my mind overflowing with words and images, my body reading his energy, and him allowing me space to make sense of the bombardment…

…my mind finally slowing to the image of a pomegranate and an athame…my right hand beginning to ache and feel wet…I look to see blood slipping through my fingers, dripping upon the stone floor…

…I look back to him and then to the mirror, to which I approach, he slowly following at a safe distance, allowing me to feel secure and not flee like a doe into the thicket…

…I see his reflection, an apparition looming behind me, so I close my eyes and place both hands on the mirror, the blood thickening and slowing into small tear-shaped seeds that collect at my feet…

…I extend my right hand behind me, to which he approaches, his fingertips whisper atop mine, and then the pull forward through time’s fluidity, and when I open my eyes, I’m staring at him through the veil, his hand upon the mirror in confusion…

…what I’ve seen is prophetic, our minds are labyrinthine, with him running through mine, and I through his, and just when we think we’ve solved the mazes in both, a new ending begins, with only one at the finish line…

…we are inevitable, we are fated, we are lore, but only in our almosts…

…until that is, he picks the pomegranate seeds up from the floor, eating them one by one, and with each seed consumed, the veil waivers more and more, until the portal opens and he reaches his hand through…

Lizzie O. July 2025

Dreamscapes: Cemetery

The cemetery appears in my dreams at least once a month for the last year, always the same layout; plots of land that my mind registers as squares from an aerial perspective, a stone wall that stretches the perimeter, tall trees both deciduous and coniferous, shrubs that flower in spring and berry in winter, and the road that winds serpentine down hill and then will suddenly morph into harshly angular corners. I think it’s of value to note that this is not a cemetery I’m familiar with, nor is it an amalgamation of cemeteries I’ve been to, this is uniquely its own. I only enter and exit from one location, overgrown with vines and brambles, although I can see the other portal off in the distance, behind it acres of land pierced with large, white marble crosses. People who visit the cemetery will be carrying on their business, walking, visiting graves, driving through, without an acknowledgement of my presence. The seasons will change, sometimes it’s early autumn with the hint of color beginning to radiate from leaves, other times it’s winter and the trees are skeletal. I can hear the leaves rustle in breezes and I can feel the chill of shadows and the warmth of sun. I feel anxious in this cemetery. I fear crossing an invisible line that only I register. I know how far I can go, before I feel the anxiety grip me. I become seized with a terror before the unseen takes hold. I see the phantoms moving about, weaving between headstones and tree trunks, and they see me and keep me on their radar. I never reveal their existence to anyone accompanying me, I just study their behaviors and silently acknowledge they exist. In one iteration of the dream, I was a passenger in a gold sedan, the driver I couldn’t define, as they had a voice and a presence, but I was deaf to their words and they weren’t registering in my direct line of sight, just my periphery. They kept driving slowly toward the forbidden, as I begged for the windows to be up and the doors locked, a death grip on the arm rest. I felt all their eyes on me, dead stares, and their intentions to approach the passenger side of the car. I felt panic and noticed that as we drove deeper into my most feared section of the cemetery, the sun became eclipsed, and darkness and shadows of unsettling lengths and shades began to encapsulate the car. I finally yelled, “We need to go back!” The driver kept driving, their speed slowing. Chilled and incapable of regulating my breathing I yelled, “Turn around!” The driver cackled, stopped, and slowly turned the car around. We slowly left the unwelcoming section of the cemetery, the sun coming back at an angle of late afternoon, and I took note of the leaves fluttering in the breeze, the sun glinting off them like they were coated in silver, as if they were flashbulbs from cameras capturing my escape. The latest dream had me in a light blue car, slowly entering the cemetery and driving in my most feared direction. My vision became deprived, like wearing blinders, a tunneled view of horror. I whispered, “I can’t.” The car continued on the path. I said it firmer, “I can’t.” And then a voice, masculine and encouraging, “You’re safe.” The car then pulled into a small parking spot overlooking my terror. I went to speak, but a soft hand settled atop mine and those words again, “You’re safe.” The doors unlocked and the blinders fell away, my full vision returned, and then the sound of the driver side door opening and shutting, a shadow crossing in front of the car as I looked at the door handle. There was no rush. No door being opened for me. It was to be my choice, my doing. I finally mustered the strength to open the passenger door and step outside, closing the door and feeling the chill from overcast late fall weather. I looked upon the forbidden plots and then focused on my companion; a griffin. It walked to a small, two story Tudor caretaker’s house of stone, slate, and diamond latticed windows. It entered and turned to me, so I followed, unsure but willing. I turned and looked upon my terror, the dead walking their paths, and each time they would look up and towards me, their heads would fall loose on their necks, only allowing them to stare at the ground. I exhaled the breath I’d been holding and crossed the threshold, the door closing and latching, securing me inside. Red. The walls, the carpet, the fabric on furniture, all red. That masculine voice again, soft and sure, “You’re safe.” The griffin advanced towards and then up the stairs. I followed. The singular room had triple windows on every wall. I noticed that there was a bed, and I was struck by the realization that I needed to rest. I could lay down and face the windows that frame my nightmare, or I could lay down with my back to it. The griffin kept its eyes on me, but never rushing my decision. I finally laid down, my back to my nightmare, my eyes heavy with exhaustion, and the windows I faced a knotwork of English ivy. The griffin gently got up on the end of the bed, sitting guard at my feet, its eyes on the view to my nightmare, and as I drifted off to sleep, a sleep within a dream, that masculine voice again washed over me, “You did amazing.

Lizzie O. August 2025

 A sudden realization of coming to consciousness in darkness, surrounded by a screaming in all directions, that porcelains my flesh and concusses the back of my head, an audible ferocity of words in a language I can’t decipher

I feel bitten by his diablerie and spit out by his spleen

I make stories of the scenes that captivate hours in sun cast shadows and arachnid baiting, of vulture princes feasting on rot and viruses, and motes of dust fusing into amorphous beings phantoming a dance in the coastal breeze

I feel his stare like a stoning punishment

I want him to read the story of my lives, those living and dead, in retellings of flaws within my flesh, in the shallow and deep scars, the mutant stretch marks, in freckled constellations and portent tattoos

I won’t deny the longing and hunger for the sanguine spilled rug burns of the white room, with floor to ceiling windows that drench the wanting sex of feral psyches in sunlight

Your vulnerable neck in my grasp, your heart a delicacy to my palate, unbidden tears captivating crystal prophecies upon my hands

Solitary in form again, I watch from the window, the waves break and burn in sun phase hues, as the ghost of your voice widows at the shell of my ear, giving my head a haunting distant roar of loss and lust

I move to stand in the threshold of the door, in the realm of other, not in not out, and I star my limbs, suspended in the space of entranced or possible retreat

My celestial body becomes a wheel, slow spinning my metamorphic silk, a chrysalis of irritant effect, I take on a baroque pearl contour awaiting the splitting of life

Upon extraction of the bindings that happened my transmogrify, I haunt the house you built around thoughts of me and the wicked shape of my mouth, fevering the syllables of your name, the histrionics of your unbecoming

It’s a fine house you’ve crafted for me to haunt, bathed in dark actualization, that I decorate with tasseomancy finery and slipping candle wax, taxidermied nocturnals and minuscule houses constructed of leaves, whistling rust and framed whispers of your self-reproach

E. A. O'Connell. May 7, 2022.

{Excerpt}

The cherry trees line the stone wall of the graveyard. Within the curtain of ceaseless pink petals in ethereal flurry, azaleas in mind warping hues trumpet an electrifying aura that draws my eyes in a hummingbird frenzy. Lichen mist and moss velvet. Patinaed bronze and sangria maples. All is quiet. All is serene. Upon this landscape with a setting sun that opalesces the evening sky and imparts a glow to the new green unfurling, Death is holding his arms open in a gesture of kind…look at how time has allowed your grief to bloom…

E. A. O'Connell. May 2, 2022.

 a near kiss, framed within a coffee ring distress

and a moon phase ambush of cold saturation

a hand pushes to the glass

the world ignorant to its existence

but it pleads with me

—return my touch—

a fright of creation in monstrous hours

i breathe within the atmosphere of dream

but come to my consciousness

as a single finger taps atop my spine

a smile surfaces as my belly blooms a warmth

and in whisper i ask what kept them so long

E. A. O'Connell. April 29,. 2022

Morning Mindfulness

I think I may have befriended a sparrow…a tall and lean, brown sparrow. Whenever he perches atop the deck railing, he always does so with his back straight, making him taller than the other sparrows that I see perch all squat and plump atop overhead wires and picket fences. His lanky build calls to mind Jimmy Stewart, so perhaps there’s a name in relation that will suit him and come to voice.

So this little winged friend…I say friend, but in all reality I could be sadly mistaken, as he may very well dislike my presence on the deck and see me as an interloper who has suddenly begun invading his space…my work does keep me from fully enjoying the deck during day hours for a better part of the year, and I imagine he’s grown quite comfortable during his uninterrupted time…nevertheless, this little sparrow is not fearful of my human presence on the deck, rather he’s curious and ever so vocal. If I go outside to sit for a spell, enjoying a coffee and a book, he’ll fly above my head and land on the railing a few feet to the left of the Adirondack chair, staring at me and chirping incessantly. However, Tuesday afternoon, as I was reading a book, he flew right in front of my face…so close I could feel the breeze off his wing. He then landed on the railing, staring me down and chirping. I looked for signs of a nest or of hatchlings, but nothing to support the idea he was being territorial due to parental instincts. A crow sitting atop a shaded branch in the maple located in the yard across from the deck, hopped out onto a sunny branch and cawed thrice, causing my sparrow guest to go silent and fly away. His absence was short lived, always returning to investigate why a human is present, busying herself with prepping the deck for gardens or sweeping away leaves and pollen that collect in corners and under the bench pillows.

This morning he returned as usual, only I had opted to drink my coffee and read a book at the dining room table, my back to the open French doors that lead onto the deck…the temperate weather and cool breeze that was blowing through my home, scented with sun warmed hyacinth, tulips, and new green was too blissful to ignore…but there it was, his boisterous chirping, so I rose and stood at the door listening to him from his perch atop the frame for the ambient cafe lights. I bid him good morning, he looked in at me for a few minutes more, and then flew off. I decided in that moment to leave him blueberries for breakfast.

It’s midday and he hasn’t returned for his blueberries, but I’m hoping to find that they were enjoyed when I check on them later today. The question is, will it be the sparrow to taste of their sweetness, or Chunk Norris, the stout squirrel that daily visits the deck, leaving behind tell-tale signs of his presence, and who bides his time until summer, when he blatantly ravishes the vegetables and fruits grown in containers, only to leave in their place half-chewed peanuts still in the shell and poorly buried black walnuts.

Spring always brings with it a great many promises and possibilities that tend to carry straight through into summer. Nature and the Universe communicate in symbols, synchronicities, and parallels…and with recent events in my life bearing a weight I need to unload…I’m mindful to the sparrow’s sudden appearance and familiarity being more than just a coincidence.

E. A. O'Connell. April 14, 2022.

 A pentagon of gilded perimeter lit the hollow at the back of my eyes, a vow in the language of sacred geometry, a visual representation of the longing that emanates from my being…I hadn’t remembered falling asleep…I swear I had merely blinked…it’s usually in those moments of quiet darkness, when my world is lit by two headlights, the head on collision that doesn’t even make me flinch, I accept the crux of matter, and I escape as particles of energy and encompass a realm of parallel self…I revisit that headspace and find a phosphene hued door, the most simplistic of outlines, with the most daring of depths framed within…portals often hint at promises that may not be kept, but this one has a darkness that reaches back at me in covenant…a Möbius strip of risk and ricocheting recordings of the ambient infinite

E. A. O'Connell. March 15, 2022.

 Intermittent raindrops tap an unsteady rhythm on the skylight, pulling my focus to the grey expanse, where it lazes and melds, unveiling…

My bones are old, some days they chant war songs and steel instead of splinter, other times they hum vesper light and radiate ancestor guidance, lately they constant an unearthly echo of language absent from tongues for centuries…

I’m unheard of, with peddles engaged and released, my fingers in play, my voice a whisper exhaling incantations in phantom rings, as the shadows existing beneath the same roof, shift and shape in a melodious dance, their presence a comfort when life proves to wear heavier than their afterlife…

We conduct ourselves as strangers in all hours, but three, where a singular tear falls upon the column and bow of my lip, a baptism of virus upon host, he can’t help himself, because god goes where he wants, and I taste his apology…

I’m aware daily of the ache that’s wracked my body, and of the hurt that reminds my heart to win, and that it’s when I’m lost to the odyssey that my being happens upon the most beauty.

E. A. O'Connell. February 7, 2022.

 The sky held a promise of snow, the unphasing gray of backlit clouds, and the still of cold, that penetrates the knuckles, until the age of my storied flesh cracked, blood as red as the Japanese maple I stood beneath, trickled like blood from the hunt in a fjord of inked permanence…the maple leaves, delicate in their size, severe in their edges, a stellar inferno that captivated my mind with memories of my babies, hours old and hands star-made in my vantablack void, the rivulets of my blood that painted me feral and infected all that was bleached in my ferocity…a gilded anomaly awaits my remembrance, tucked at the back of my left ear, an errant forsythia bloom in November dormancy, a supernova of temporal echoes…dawn, in the comfort of my home’s shadows, and the haunting lure of starling murmuration, stepping outside the French doors, an infinitesimal existence beneath the astronomical undulations of hundreds of wings, life sensations devoid of breath and pulse, my eyes shut in the terror and wonder of such sound, like beholding an angel that states, Be Not Afraid, while mesmerizing me with its ghastly form…love is celestial murmuration, is sore afraid, is blood stain permanence in my Winter lobe reminiscence…

E. A. O'Connell. November 30, 2021

 Autumn declines a solar invitation of seasonal commune

Temperatures dip with the rise of winds, low lying cyclones that discard leaves to hollows

Stalks still standing at attention, continue to haunt my vision with ghosts of where their kaleidoscopic color and honey bee ecstasy reigned supreme

While vines wither, rigor, and rattle their future generations in a haphazard scatter of regeneration

I can’t get out of my head the sycamore leaves that collapse and fold in on themselves, but never let loose from their tree

Is that strength in willpower? Strength in promise? Or mere punishment?

Death should be freeing…it should be freedom…the release and the free flow…

Or is it that the sycamore isn’t ready to let go? Not ready to free itself of the old to make room for the new? An element of fear of the what if?

Resurrection shouldn’t be a novel concept to nature…rebirth is the perennial mantra…

…but ahhh, a misdirected human attribute…I repent the error of my thought…and silence my mind…shuttering my eyes…enveloping myself in the blue hour…each dead leaf releasing from my body…

…I can feel the quickening of the flourish that’s awaiting me in the distance…

E. A. O'Connell. November 14, 2021.

 The ceaseless state of survival that clamps my jaw in bite, burdens my hands into fists

The damning weariness of wearing my guard, day in and day out,

A strength of fight and a weighted ache

…that makes an anomaly of my being

…that veils my clarity

…that cleaves my heart

I still dream, at least once a week, that my silence extends to my screams

The adrenaline ill suited to my greying flesh, and the backdrop of black velvet void,

…proximity of elements frictions a static

…a combustion of white sparks

…and collapsing, silver stars

Quiet moments of mind in synch with body, ease survival into existence, of the here and the now,

…where my hands extend in release,

…and I exhale tomes,

…as hope alights atop my palms

I may never know peace in multitudes, but I finally defined home

E. A. O'Connell. November 13, 2021.

 Blood sun at my back,

like a suspended king protea bloom,

that illumines hellfire in it’s waning,

saturating the world in silhouette.

The horizon awash in periwinkle,

sends forth white capped waves,

that whisper their destruction,

in a clashing of existence,

with secreted artifacts,

and primordial remnants,

that the tidal pull reclaims,

to keep mankind uncertain,

and helpless to feeling unreal.

E. A. O'Connell. July 31, 2021.

Afternoon Meditations

 3:00pm haze prevents the sky from revealing its depths of blue. But in that haze wheels an eagle, and a blue heron flying it’s straight line path. Tree swallows thread patterns overhead, while songbird tunes carry in the sweet breeze. Two cicadas fly past as dragonflies hover and dart, and a cabbage moth flutters in warm white. A tiger bee fly has decided I’m friend not foe, while a wasp seeks out sustenance in the form of swallowtail caterpillars…fortunately, all have grown and vacated the fennel and dill, as it’s their time to form chrysalides.

From time-to-time the sun is swathed in clouds, barely decipherable in that hazy sky, but the reprieve is welcomed on my shoulders. In the distance I can here my kids and their friends playing wiffle ball; laughing, singing, and arguing plays, while a charcoal grill somewhere is burning that nostalgic scent of lighter fluid soaked briquettes. In some ways summer afternoons like this are familiar…like an old memory I revisit…in other ways they are a first, giving me opportunity to experience them anew.

Afternoon Meditations. E. A. O'Connell. July 20, 2021.

Salt air and morning fog,

that rolls out to sea in fugue,

Bougainvillea

in a hue my mind can’t fathom,

against a cloudless sky of such blue,

that the interruption of a single contrail

could slice it,

coating the vista in a sanguine rain,

that transmutes the landscape

into a split pomegranate,

giving glorious new understanding

to the turn of phrase,

Hell on Earth

E. A. O'Connell. July 19, 2021

Morning Observations

 Cicada thrum in a tidal pull, carried towards me atop the verdant maples,

the ache of want born from a singular caress of the rare July breeze,

the low morning light still radiating gold through the humid haze,

where dragonfly messages are scrawled in contrails of iridescence,

I let the serenity of the moment lull my eyes shut,

a smile of morning glory to bloom upon my face

E. A. O'Connell. July 7, 2021

In the cessation of sound, amidst solar flares and encapsulating humidity, I still —I seek, closing off for vulnerability, my bindings loosen, raw edges allow escape, my feral soul and foul heart —the steeple crucifies the sky, the only pains I see through, stained glass geometry in mortal red, the weathered stone facade, cold in shallow —my memories a dagger clasped in hand, a path of union winds beneath shade trees, a canopy of complications —a threshold of innocence or interrogation? So much hate and love for the weeping willow, the gallivanting widow —I’m overfull with swallowed screams, I’m overcrowded with threads that knot maps, nothing resonates in this earthly scene, time keeps close watch, it’s face a resounding no —I bow my head to stitch my flesh anew, to keep myself in, to keep all others out…the grass in tall routine waves, stutters and leans in polar opposite, breaching for a portent of ebon feathers, his presence simultaneously a memory and new, he studies the church with an intent and purpose in kind, shattering the silence with screams, shrill and growing in intensity, cast at the facade, the foundation, the framing —exhausted, I’ve finally made room to exhale

E. A. O'Connell. June 30, 2021.

 Have you ever found yourself in the company of others and you realize that the only way their existence can be properly classified is as the herpes on humanity?

E. A. O'Connell. June 25, 2021.

There’s a settle amongst the grey, a forgotten down of sleep and a weight of spun thought, wherein I cover my eyes with secreted hands, losing all direction in a reeling freedom. What mars flesh in the syncopated breaths of a treacherous commute, within and without unaccompanied hours, is the very source of reward in the wisps of dream that escape the flue of desire.

I often wonder if we were to make reality of our words, if we were to give them permission for growth, taking place amongst man, amorphous and fitting well in, would intention be mistaken for chaos, gratitude for direction lost, would we absentmindedly proffer kindness, and in doing so, stumble upon love?

Why should it all be a myth, an enlightened society, a dreamlike state of consciousness…why can’t we heal our souls and steal into another’s with a simple touch of humanity. Why can’t we?

Why must hate and an unreasonable need to be right, a loud sonic clash of intolerance and refusal of growth stand in the way of pure existence, unadulterated rawness…the greatest warriors I’ve known were compassionate, independent thinkers who outwardly looked to be designed by Anger itself…who proffered me a path of safety and never revealed where my mortal flesh peered from my armor, who had patience enough to wait for me to reveal in my own time…

I’m still safest in my dreams, I dare say, even my nightmares…accepting, willing, expecting…I’m most alive in my words…immortal, inexplicable, feral…the more ink I wear in my flesh, the more I welcome the sun to touch my existence…

E. A. O'Connell. June 10, 2021.

 Do not broach me, I’m neither a subject to be dissected, nor a thing to be crossed, I rival any concept of evil you’ve conjured in nightmares, and I fear no mortal, nor death...I escaped the multitude of lies and hands, I lived to see the sunrise beyond the barrel of the gun at my forehead, I walked from the ring of dead eyes corralling me in a basement...I am fury and fire, a bastard child of pensive silence and tenacious fight...I’ve no time for a life that reduces me to a question or corners me for safe keeping...I can identify empty words with pretty facades by the lack of action that follows, and I pity the lie and quit the liar...I often need to escape into nature, to balance and heal, I feel the crawl beneath my skin, the need to commune with mountains and conjure storms, to fight the urge to fly from ledges, to halt my steps as I take shelter, admiring the bolts of lightning that resonate within my rib cage...I write my name in earth and ash and blood, I welcome the confusion of masses unable to define my origins, incapable of classifying my existence...I laugh freely, weep secretly, howl continuously...chants sound in faint whispers at my back, ephemeral voices lure me towards understanding, and there’s simply no turning back from what the rabbit foretold, from the words branded upon me at the birth rite...{lusus naturae}

E. A. O'Connell. November 2019.

 In the fade of dusk, a shadow slight in size, like the pitch of a scream, toils at its craft, multi-jointed spindles, meticulous intricate and delicate, spinning an aria of filament and feelings

I consider the fear that has driven spikes through my nerves, the minuscule stature of my lifelong terror, and I circle to the central flaw, so much finality in the unjustified, a seed of irrational ignorance implanted at beholding 8 hydraulic legs mystifying in creep and extraordinary in creation

It was when I acknowledged it’s existence was no less significant than mine, on that fateful morning with a wolf spider and first light, that I gave pause to study to wonder to honour the plenty of its being, and to grow towards peace of mind within our shared environment

As my 42nd year commences, so has the arachnid prominence and my meditation on spider resilience and existence

The tensile strength of a single spider silk, of the beauty in gossamer Kevlar, how it wears the finery of moisture and frost, how it phantoms in daylight, a wave of prism in the peripheral, how it stands out in fog and illumines beneath the moon

A full circle in eight points and design, a dalliance with the linear of life the intimacy with the transmutation of death and the sacred symmetry with the boundlessness of existence, and to be accepting of nature’s laws without a hint of reservation

This is a year to further nurture my journey of enlightenment with the inclusion of arachnid philosophy: in my creating my manifesting my being

E. A. O'Connell. May 17, 2021.