{Excerpt}

…I paced the perimeter of a deteriorating cell, animal-like, walls of rough edged stone awoke, cracking knuckles of fingers formulated by calcified history, extending for my flesh, hooking the slightest bit on my epidermis, tearing open my arms and back, like a thin cotton skirt snagged and torn on a barb, jumping a fence for freedom’s sake…my blood in rivulets, running a serenity and smearing a deficiency, reanimated my body in goosebumps, with each dip in temperature, stacking the chills, until my nipples were left in permanent tense, aching for warmth to supple, to ease, reviving my humanity…from the center of the floor, shadows began to form, to morph in a one dimensional Rorschach demise of clarity, not a one in shape of sanity, until the splatter welled and rose, as a contained mass of mercury, forming a mirrored humanoid hull, bound to a chair, reflecting my captivity…my movements of ire-infused curiosity, designed a Möbius strip of force about the unsuspecting intruder, slowing me at its broad back, my visage of feminine ferocity reflecting at me, and with the harnessing of my blood-bathed wrath, I spoke a singular word that slit its throat, my hands snapping its neck back, to open a bloodless gaping wound, a fissure broadening into a canyon, revealing a nesting doll core fashioned from the wood of varying sacred trees, and at the very center, an infant conceived of a mycorrhizal network long dismantled for the pursuit of craft…I cradled her to me, skin-to-skin, her own flesh the design of each of the tree’s recordings of natural events, her first gasp an arrowhead to my womb, bleeding me out a November sugared crimson, my breasts full and leaking the sun inflamed gold of ginkgo… …I had achieved an enlightenment in that world, be it as a captive of my mind and heart, or the wild of my soul-self, I persisted, not out of a vengeful rage, but out of a vital, vulnerable love…I had found peace in that cell…

E.A. O'Connell. November 2018

{Excerpt}

In the inevitable night, where upon the habitual ritual of desire pulsates many a bed over, a primordial pulmonary malfunction of design, sets me in a counterclockwise wind…I slow my breathing, shallow and extending in a pattern of gradual demise, and I ignite in a visceral realization, my body wrenching in a celloid coil, my only transparency, the sheen of deja vu overlaying my eyes…a fish in a fit of survival, batters itself in instinct, to find its source of thrive…I twist contorted hands into sheets, cutting off circulation with serrated starburst indentations, I devise a rhythm of gripping for security and scratching for survival, drenched in sweat, pooled in the inability to take my first breath, choking on my tongue, I can’t swallow…the pain, the cage rattling agony, the terror of amplification, as I scream a tempest battering, a banshee sounding my own death…dislodging another prisoner of memory, incarcerated in the solitary confines of my mind…I am the executioner, a murder of self so divine, I speak in glyphs illumined upon my skin from a continuum deep within the chasm of being, and I read of the luciferian liberation...

E.A. O'Connell. November 2018

{Excerpt}

I cull genius, a sacrifice to intuition. I could feign ignorance, but I insight instead. I’m aware of my purpose. I toil many an hour, hammering and melding, smithing my armor and blades. I know where they aim to strike. Oh, the damage of myself, and the bane of my existence. I know my place…the space that needs to be filled, the murderer of the time they can’t solitary. I’m the answer to a longing that sustains until the permanent defines my temporary. I’m the in between and the blurry periphery. They don’t remember my name, nor retain me in their memory…given unto a question, occasionally my own…who will strength and broach the perimeter…who will ride and go the distance… …within myself…deep within the forest of my head…I shut the door to the world and walk the worn path that melds to my feet…I leave no trail of breadcrumbs, no ribbons tied, nor a length of string…I disappear beyond the rough brush of thorny vines and stinging nettles…I distance and leap the divide…until I meet the walls…running my hand along them…impenetrable iron will… {…I will not…} …I walk the length until I come to a pile of rubble…a crumbling wall…I’ve allowed this dismantle… {…I will not…} …Scream…I scream, unhinged like a mad woman…maddened by the tear to the fabric of its purpose…the flaw of its fabrication…and I desire to rip it asunder, I desire to rebuild… {…I will not…} …Stare…I stare at the wreckage and question my existence…translucent spectre without a land to haunt…shadowy succubus without a dream to manifest… {…a scared little girl who hides behind walls…} …I will go…I will go to her…to the furthest depths, along the densest path…I find her beneath the willow…silent child, legs pulled into her chest, bound by her arms…eyeless face of September…a physical manifestation of the word no… {…I will not…} …Stay…I stay beside her…brushing my fingers along the back of her hand…until, hesitantly, she releases her white knuckle grip…and welcomes my hand’s embrace…sightless, she considers the horizon…I map her wounds and scars…cataloguing…remembering…touching on myself where the next target has been set… {…I will not…} …Ache…I ache for the girl who absorbed every drop of the hurt and pain…who’s will to survive built this woman from the grave up… …She releases from me…walks to the willow boughs, wrapping her arms, legs, and body in the switches…and releases…releases her hold on the earth and swings… {…I will not…} …Leave…I leave her to the singular joy the willow always brought… …My journey back makes me prey to an unseen bow hunter, armed to the hilt…aiming arrows of words that hunt me… {…burden…disposable…damaged…abandoned…unloveable…broken…} …I cast off my clothes and walk the rebellion… {…Come for me! Fucking come for me! Strike me! Kill me!} …a memento mori in song, the arrows whistle… …Grazes and scrapes mar my body, blood does spill, but no arrow penetration…no arrows to snap and push through the wounds… …I take stock and pay my respects…I take notice in how the blood always washes me anew… {…I will not…} …Apologize…no apologies for this cloistering, this much needed self-preservation… …No fear…no fearing my reemergence, to be once again thrust amongst the living… …beloved of the dead…

E.A. O'Connell. November 2018

{Excerpt Edit}

I remember fearing him—and as he approached, trying to curl into myself, until I’d become a shadowed void he’d miss entirely amongst the gnarled, velveteen roots. But my body just lay there still. A windsong played about me, calling to him, beckoning him to come closer. He stood above me, and I felt him immense in stature, intense in being, but my fear soon shifted to a curiosity of this legend standing before me. I tried with all my might to piece together a coherent sentence as he knelt down beside me, but stuttering breaths and welled tears were all that escaped. He softly brushed the blood-matted hair from my eyes, and in doing so captured my tears on his finger, like iridescent armored entities, letting them scurry from his hand to the mossy bed beneath us.  

He patiently studied my face with his eyes and his hands. I had memories of voices distant, echoing off the back of my skull, speaking of his harsh, chilly touch, but his fingers were warm like mid-May sunlight and he was soft; his hands, his eyes, how he looked at me, soft like twilight. He finally laid himself beside me, wrapping his arms about my body, and he smelled of fulfilled hours, bound histories. And then he spoke to me, and his words whispered into my ear felt like childhood security and tasted like entombed truths unearthed from myths. 

‘You’re not meant for this.’

He sat up, leaning his back against the trunk of the tree, and tenderly pulled me into his lap. I was weakening and incapable of moving my limbs, so he cradled me childlike in his arms. He leant his forehead against mine, his right hand placed above my heart, and he told me to be patient and to trust him. He calmly instructed me to study the tree, all the life living about me, and nourish myself with all I learned from bearing witness to their strength, resilience, and will. He told me I would know when it was time to become one, that it would feel like a lunar tug on tidal lines, and that my first inhale would feel like my throat was engulfed in flames, but to not panic, and that he would always be near to me, and would one day return for me.

My breathing felt like an unnecessary chore and gradually ceased, but with each of my last exhales, he would inhale my breath into his lungs and lift his head to the leaves—a bordeaux depth that hinted to scarlet fire, as he exhaled a breeze of my essence that blew gently through the boughs. He pressed his hand to my chest, and I felt it work through my flesh and sink into and beyond my ribs—his palm about my heart as it beat one final time—his hand cupping that heartbeat, pulling it from my lifeless cavity, and thrusting his fist in between two moss cushioned roots, burying my pulse in the soil that cradled and nourished the maple that had become my deathbed.

He held me tight, rocking me to the rhythm of sunlight streaming through swaying leaves, as a feral scream escaped him, clawing its way through the atmosphere, and reverberating off the sound of a shovel slicing through earth. He struggled with letting me go, but eventually he laid my body atop the roots, his countenance darkening as he stepped aside, watching my murderer approach me, carelessly picking me up and walking me to the other side of the tree, where he dropped my body in the hole he dug at the foot of the maple, his voice winded as he said aloud, ‘You always loved this tree.’  

He continued to watch in disgust and rage, his jaw set in hard angles, his eyes an undefined shade of hate, as my murderer filled in my grave and walked away without a hint of remorse in his footfalls and posture.

He stayed there by my grave for some time, the weight of my death and the intent of his actions bearing down on him; he had only committed himself to such a decision once before, and he knew the implications of his actions, he knew full well he would be met with anger and severe repercussions, as he had vowed after the last incident to never expand his purpose again—because you see, only One wields the power to return life to the dead, but for me, Death blatantly overstepped his boundaries and made an exception to the One’s inviolable rule.

{Excerpt}. E.A. O'Connell. 2018 

Morning Observations

November blue light, of a dip in temperatures as rain speckles the glass panes of the bedroom windows, a percussion that stirs me from my sleep, the wind furiously whipping one moment, softly moaning the next. Even in the shadows of an early cloudstacked morning, the Japanese maple I look out upon, has lit itself in flames, a seasonal Phoenix, lush foliage and silvered-bark patinaed with lichen scales. Threads of silk, bejeweled with crystalline raindrops, adorn the outside of the window casement and brick facade. Some softly give and carry in the breeze with the fluidity of a song escaping my lips. I look each morning for the wolf spider, residing in the cavern of a cracked brick behind the shutter, this morning to ask in passing how he fared the unsettled night. With a laugh, I remind him of boundaries, and advise him to, “stay wild eight-legged child.” Coffee beckons to my bones, happy voices of children in chatter to my heart. I think we may get lost today, in an aging garden, amongst the height of trees and rush of waterfalls, the pages of beloved books, within the music about our heads, deep in thought…

E.A. O'Connell. November 2018

{a deadication)

I see a truth, an impossibility of breath and flesh, that the earth can’t harness, the universe can’t fathom…this very life and blood untamable, fashioned out of a supercell building and stacking decades deep… I bare witness to the silhouette of the new moon backlit by stars, the rare glow of a shadow superseding it’s full counterpart…I grow mesmerized by the umbra of eclipse, as the sun’s white light serves as an alchemist’s proof, gold will remain inferior to the bronze of a warrior’s armor, the stain of battle worn leather…I baptize the hue of a nocturne, echoing off rocks lit in solar melt, as the chaos of a moth’s wings, spawns devils upon the flames of a ceremonial fire…and yet, I fail, each of my words, my every attempt, at properly constructing, encapsulating, that which defines, the immortal shade of forbidding eyes…

E.A. O'Connell. November 2018

{Excerpt Edit}

In a trickling descent through fine eyed needle stitching, the day’s soft sunlight laughter extinguishes in a snifter’s hush, leaving in its slumber a dense forest labyrinth, where towering opaque ghosts haunt, and a placid lake of blue moon sheen, slips its shores in lily bell curves.  Whispers in wisps of spectral fog, lament a falling star loss, silencing black winged boughs of their cackles, and from the void, the snapping of dead twigs and the disintegrating of skeletal leaves… 

     —a wandering—

A distant home of stone and bones, its ivy strangled windows of beveled panes, glow a wild inferno from a seasoned fireplace, while a solitary lit flame webs the splintered windows through a figure swallowing stairwell and second story corridor, where the walls breathe with shadow dancer frames. The spiritless cuckoo emerges, counting distant footfalls in successive knocks of its head into plaster. The Spirit Guide summons the Lady’s return from the depths of her transcendental thoughts, her attention re-emerging, focusing on the placement of how the cards had fallen from her hand to the floor. Her head turning in the direction of her property’s gate…

      —an approaching—

The garden, built of a wild spirit, by hands guided by natural impulses, protected by a multitude of eyes, is awakened with an aura of curious wonder, its slate path, lined in pale bleeding hearts and gore splattered caladium spades, collapsing in a violigo astral breeze…their gasping…their glimpsing…of fearless steps in a determined dead man’s stride, halting upon the breast of the thistle barb knit threshold, a cold, earth-stained hand splaying against the weathered front door…

     —a reckoning—

E.A. O'Connell. 2014/2018.