An Avocation for Breathing

A story with a protagonist whose perspective requires an associative, free-flowing use of language.

inspired by Friederike Mayröcker

Her 1988 story “my heart my room my name,” was written entirely without punctuation, which inspires the breathlessness of these pieces by not utilizing punctuation.

vignette i: breath

When I took a course on modern poetry at a university where classes were taught in crumbling brick buildings with decaying ivy and windows held together by glass glue the professor told me that a comma is an inadvertent signal to the reader to pause to take a breath and that by writing long sentences we are forcing our readers to draw in their breaths sharper deeper like they are swimming or more accurately drowning but this isn’t a poem modern or otherwise this is me introducing you to who I am so I’m sure you’re asking who am I why is my story something special but it’s not it’s not I don’t know how to convince you otherwise but that summer I turned nineteen my breathing was sharper deeper and I thought I was drowning but instead I was swimming yet no-one told me that I was in a hotel pool not an ocean like I had come to believe and every time I tried to swallow everything shimmered at the edges like a dream sequence or a hallucination but I was not dying I was not dying and you told me I was beautiful I was beautiful but I thought those were just words you said to a corpse because I was so sure I had said the same thing to a body in a glass case in a museum near Pompeii because I was so sure I had said the same thing to my grandfather’s body in a cherrywood box in a funeral home down the street from his empty house but no one told me no one told me what you’re supposed to say when someone dies but I was just a child the professor told me that a comma is an inadvertent signal to the reader to pause to take a breath but we’re not breathing are we?

are we?

vignette ii: love song

He asked me if I only write sad poems like elegies or church bells with missing clappers but I know I’ve written happy things whether they’re memories or fiction I’m not sure but this isn’t just a collection of all the times my heart was an explosive and detonated too soon and I hope you’re remembering to breathe because all of this is building up to a climax that’s not all that exciting yet I want to be the vial of peppermint oil that invigorates you when you thought you were dead yet I want to make you laugh so hard you feel like you can’t breathe but I can’t believe I’m jealous of a ghost and yet my memory isn’t what it used to be but I keep reading articles about our shrinking hippocampus and our galaxy expanding faster than it should and books about false memories like that will stop the onslaught the ravaging of my mind by that plaque that destroys but I guess you don’t realize how scared I am of forgetting what if I call you by the wrong name or what if I offer you a honeysuckle flower and you tell me it’s calla lilies and daisies you’ve always loved and I guess what I’m trying to say is that this is a love story even though it doesn’t sound like one because all I’ve wanted all I’ve ever wanted is to be your home and to be the vials of peppermint oil that invigorate you and yet I’ll write you poems until my ink well dries but he asked if I only write sad poems but isn’t love just a sad villanelle or a brokenhearted sonnet?

isn’t it?

vignette iii: exhale

are you still breathing?

are you?

vignette iv: lungs

Anyone who knows me knows my poetry is a catharsis and hears the truth veiled underneath the metaphors and listens past the rustling of tree leaves and knows there’s more beneath the surface and knows I’m more than my past because if you just look at the faded Polaroids and old cassettes you will see one version of me but there are so many layers so many layers like when you’re painting and you wet the canvas and layer one coat of acrylic over the top of another and some kind of masterpiece emerges and this is what it’s like to live some days I’ve heard neurodivergent voices refer to it as “masking” and while that feels applicable I wonder where does the mask stop once it adheres to the flesh because I feel like I’m crafted of papier-mâchépapier-mâchépapier-mâché and glue and I’m afraid to peel back the mask because what if what’s underneath is ugly it is ugly isn’t it and I’m afraid because people are often repulsed by what they don’t recognize and if I don’t recognize myself in the mirror does that mean I’m a monster and are monsters even capable of breathing when he stitched a man of mangled flesh and confiscated organs did he know he was building a monster and were those recycled vintage lungs of his creature capable of breathing because I forget to inhale and exhale some days because I forget to breathe some days because I forget to be human some days and am I a monster because I always told myself I was a Russian nesting doll but I forget to breathe some days and is this my punishment for being a bad daughter and am I a bad daughter because my mother often told me that I was a thorn in her side and thorns don’t have lungs

does this mean I’m a monster?

does this mean I’m not breathing?

A drabble is a short work of fiction of precisely one hundred words in length. The purpose of the drabble is brevity, testing the author’s ability to express interesting and meaningful ideas in a confined space.

He had vanished all those years ago. All I had left was a pressed flower and an empty pack of cigarettes to remember him by. He offered me a world I could not fathom, so I Iingered behind. I guess the dying don’t lie. I promised I’d wait. Last night, he reappeared in a dream only to say I miss you, and that was enough. His eyes told me every story his lips could not, and I told him I dedicated every song to him at every show. I told him about the lightning showers. And that was enough.

Every time the sun rises out her window, she’s at a split in her story. Autobiography isn’t etched in stone. It is impermanent like fingers caressing rivers or kisses in the rain. Everything is until it isn’t. Everything feels fabled until you see how easily the stories dissolve. They crumble in the rain. She tells stories of her youth about the boy who drew blueprints for a house he could never afford. About the taste of honeysuckle in June. She can change the narrative. She can be the new beginning her children never had. Just run and don’t look back.

When I say I want to be described as breathtaking, I hope he realizes I mean beyond what can be seen. I hope it doesn’t sound like I want to be the girl in the sundress among a field of wisteria with golden light. I want my words to captivate. My soul to catch on fire. I want him to look at me and see my aura ablaze. I want to write poetry and stories that stop people’s hearts. That makes them forget where they are. Forget how to breathe. My words could be as unique as fingerprints. Don’t forget.

Isabelle Palerma

The Garden of Eden: a Poem

On January 18, 2015, at Stanford University, Brock Turner, a nineteen-year-old student, sexually assaulted Chanel Miller while she was unconscious. On September 2, 2016, Turner was released after three months for good behavior – only half his original sentence.

The original scene of the crime is now a garden.

If we could landscape the horrors
and build walls of stone (to call them beautiful),
we would.
But remember –
even without these gardens planted,
you can upend our worlds.

There are names we never speak in our households
like giving Satan a title (a crown) –
James, perhaps,
or
Geoffrey, maybe.
The boys with ruddy skin & sharp teeth,
the boys with trust funds and drinking problems.

The girls we worry about are the ones
who think “no” isn’t a reason
or that “stop” isn’t a complete thought.

*Photo by* *Yana Mazurkevich’s* *photo series,* “It Happens”.

The ones who break us are the ones who teach us
rejection doesn’t matter —

nothing matters.

Boys aren’t always just boys.
Boys can be feral creatures:
unforgiving with dried blood
underneath their crescent moon nails.

Boys like Nathaniel and Brock and Christopher.

(The boys you thought were beautiful
are the ones who disrobed you
with their lust & savagely attacked your beauty
with no regard for how you crafted your stars
or lingered over your constellations.)

Manipulate me,
but I will always say your name.

I will not be quieted
because like the author warned me,
the girls who swallow their teeth
are the ones who get eaten.

So, I will not get roped into settling for
the garden of Eden and blamed for taking a bite
of the fruit of knowledge.

I will not be silenced.
I will not be vanquished.
I will scream.

Isabelle Palerma

The crime scene where administration refused to let the words Chanel Miller chose be placed on a plaque in honor of victims of sexual assault.

Our voices will be heard.

We will not be silenced.

Update on Catching Dreams

Yesterday morning, I received an email with my edited manuscript. I was all prepared to dive into the edits and see how I could improve my writing before sending it back to the publisher for one more round of final edits.

Then, I read the email. The small press I had to decided to go with is shutting down as of January 1, 2025 and will not be publishing Catching Dreams.

Isabelle Palerma

See You Later, Dear Friend

It’s been ten years since you died, but it’s been more than ten years since I’ve seen you last. I still see you in my dreams occasionally. The last time I saw you, you apologized to me, but I wasn’t sure why.

You said you were going to work on getting better. That you had hit rock bottom, and you never wanted to experience it again.

You took me to a bar in the city with paint splatters on the wall and we shared dinner. I think we held hands.

You told me what it felt like hitting your lowest of lows, waking up in your car with vomit all over you, not sure what had happened to you the night before.

When you hugged me, it didn’t feel like goodbye, but it was.

We used to talk on the phone as you painted your nails. I’d listen to the sirens in the distance and wonder if we lived different lives. If we could ever experience a world the same way.

I’d braid your hair on Friday nights; other girls would put your hair in pigtails, but I liked a single braid.

I remember lying my head on your chest, your hairy stomach soft underneath me. You never complained about the weight of me.

I remember you playing the guitar at night. I remember listening to Fleetwood Mac with you and thinking all our thoughts were worth writing down.

I never took a picture with you because I thought I was ugly, unphotogenic.

I remember you telling me you played me the guitar because you didn’t know the words to say.

It’s been ten years since you died, and even though I have a guitar, I still don’t know the words to say.

I never said goodbye.

She told me you loved me. That you always loved me. I must have hurt you because I laughed when you tried to kiss me the first time.

But now, you are buried and gone, and I’m here. You always played me “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd. I guess I just wish you were here. I feel like we could talk all night and maybe I’d let you play me the guitar. And maybe you’d let me braid your hair.

It’s been too long, and I never said goodbye.

Isabelle Palerma

Remembering a Friend

In 2022, I lost a friend who was so dear to me. He called us “kindred spirits” and we talked up until a couple of days before his mysterious death. We were close, yet so much about him I felt I never knew.

He was gentle in the face of my storms and though he was soft-spoken, he fought his demons every day in a way that took more courage than I have. He was two days away from forty when he passed, and it’s easy to say that’s too young to die. His flame burnt out, but his memory will live on in all the lives he touched.

He described himself as an eccedentesiast, and I am too to some extent, but his smile, though it hurt him, was one of the things I will remember him for. He smiled through the pain. I cannot write a eulogy for him because I didn’t know him like that, but from what I did know, he was a beautiful person who filled the world with positivity, even when he himself felt bleak.

Just a few of the lessons he shared with me along the journey.

He was found dead in his sleep in 2022, and I’m not sure if his family ever got the closure they deserve from this. I hope they do because I know from experience how closure can aid in the healing process, even if you don’t think you’ll ever be able to breathe again without a person.

I have trouble forgiving myself for some of the things I said to him before he died – things said with the intent to help him to live before he died, things said not knowing he was going to die young – but now hopefully, he can finally set his burdens down and he can be at peace somewhere in the heavens.

The last few weeks before he passed, we spoke frequently and he wrote me a poem. In it, he said, “Even in the darkest of nights and days, I know I can rely on her always.”

He called me his pretty Italian girl and encouraged me to write when I felt like quitting. He taught me to appreciate the parts of me I found ugly. He swore he trusted me, but I wonder how much of himself he hid behind that smile.

We talked about getting a cup of coffee together one day and sharing our writing; now, I imagine he writes in the stars and smiles down on me. I don’t know if I believe in Heaven, but I know I believe he deserves peace.

Today would have been his 42nd birthday, and while I have to move forward, when I hear the Beatles on the radio in the car, I still roll down my windows and belt it out just for you.

Just ignore the fact that sometimes when I sing along, I get a little misty-eyed, thinking of you.

Happy birthday, friend.