Trigger Warning:This poem contains dark themes and is intended for audiences who can handle these themes. If you are experiencing symptoms of depression or suicidal thoughts, please see a mental health professional or refer to my list found here.
Before you ask, yes, I am feeling sad and hopeless, and I do have a lack of pleasure in doing things I previously enjoyed — like writing poetry or talking to my imaginary friends.
& yes, I’m aware how it makes me sound when I say “talking to my imaginary friends” but I’m an author and a poet, I play with words for fun.
This isn’t fun for me. These wellness checks. These inventories on my feelings: check “yes” or “no”, rate your feelings on a scale.
Most days, I’d rather paint you a watercolor of my emotions, let the feelings wash together until you can’t tell ecstatic bliss from despondency.
But today, before you ask, words are falling apart, they’re fragile ghosts who haunt me but don’t seem to speak my language.
Before you ask, the poet in me doesn’t want to waste the paper. She thinks it’s better used for a brilliant mathematician cycling through his numbers or a census-taker calculating persons than to listen to her trivial whining.
Yet here I go.
Before you ask, yes, I suppose it’s natural to plan these things. To work out the logistics of life and to perhaps even plot out the details of death. But I’m not Sylvia Plath, contemplating the temperature to set my oven, nor am I going to the ocean with stones weighing down my pockets.
I have too many plans. Too many things to do. I would have too many goodbyes to say. Too many books to donate. I still have unfinished stories burning in me. Before you ask, the light in my eyes flickers and yes, even dulls, but though the disease tries to steal me, as I go through these inventory questions, I discover I’m not ready to leave
The newest anthology I’m featured in, Horror en América and Beyond, has been released!
Here’s a small blurb about it:
Horror en América and Beyond is a chilling collection by some of the most talented horror and speculative fiction authors, poets, and creative non-fiction writers in the country. It includes terrifying tales by award-winning authors Pedro Iñiguez and Carmen Baca, poetry by Poet Laureates Edward Vidaurree and Juan Perez, and Creative-Nonfiction by the prolific Daniel Olivas.
Each story traverses the boundaries of horror; with topics so fiendishly taboo, yet deliciously mortifying, you’ll be tucking your toes under your blankets at night. With razor-sharp poems unveiling the horrifying nature of American violence, both supernatural and mundane. The non-fiction will have you question the horror of politics in America. This anthology will keep you in a stranglehold until the very last page, and leave you gasping for more!
As usual, you’re more than welcome to purchase it on your own if you’re interested in buying a copy or if you rather, if you’re on my mailing list, I can send you an autographed copy. I would just have to add in mailing expenses. Plus the bonus charge for my autograph. 🙂
Please feel free to let me know if this anthology is something you’d like to add to your collection.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, I sent Killer of Creatures to three alpha readers and I’m about 34k words into a different novel. I know I should be working on the sequel to Killer of Creatures, but to be honest, I had to leave that on the back burner because I haven’t been feeling very funny lately.
Write a story based on a line from a movie. (June 28, 2025,Out of the Box Prompt.)
“The worst part is I’m starting to forget. I have to constantly make myself remember her. Every day.” (Ricardo Morales from “The Secret in their Eyes”.)
Still frame from the film “The Secret in their Eyes”.
How can you forget the person you love? How can I have looked you in the eye morning after morning, kissed you good night and now, your name is all but a cypher. A code I cannot break. Everything I do, and yet I cannot conjure up the memories of you as I once did.
You are my love. In my notepad – the one where I jot my most important information into – I write your name over and over until it looks like a meaningless scribble, scrawled letters without any context.
I’m too young for this forgetting disease. But they told me it’s not the brain plaque like some folks get. It’s something different, and, of course, the doctors have explained it to me in a thousand different ways. Each time, I think I understand and I write it down, but when I try to read it later, none of it makes sense.
I curl my hand into a fist and slam it onto my desk. It’s frustrating. I feel like a child, or worse, a lab rat.
Telling myself I’ll remember makes no difference. I always end up forgetting. Your name is just empty syllables. Even when I say it, it is ash in my mouth.
I want to curse, but all the words are the same. I curl my hand into a fist and slam it onto my desk. When I look into a mirror, I scarcely recognize the woman I have become. When I pass you in the hall, you are a stranger. Weeping, I beg you to remind me who you are, who we were.
So, you do.
You don’t just say our names, but you tell the history of us. The way you kiss me like the very act of kissing would braid our souls together. You tell me how though you always loved me, you never married me.
At this, I feel my brows furrow.
You explain, “I never wanted to steal your wild. You were a flower I did not want to pluck from the earth.”
I feel myself smile. I feel myself soften.
I wish I could let go because even in forgetting, I still find pieces of you I remember.
Often, you take me into your arms and dance with me, whisper about the scent of the seasons. Spring – honeysuckle. Summer – fresh vanilla. Fall – cinnamon and bon fires. Winter – impending snow storms. You say my scent is your favorite.
That I smell of autumn. I am a woman of cinnamon sticks and bon fires.
But I do not know why. I never wear perfume.
Yet you breathe me in as though I will save you. I begin to forget you.
One day, I struggle for breath. It’s hard to remember. These basic tasks. This remembering.
I gasp. The breath is fleeting. The memories are going, too. I want to say goodbye, good night, but I can’t even remember the breathing.
Eleven years is a long time. You’ll forgive me, won’t you, my love?
We watched the sun rise like a film strip from a movie, drinking Darjeeling tea, every morning. Every moment felt like magic. Her hair, like cinnamon and bon fires. Her skin left me breathless. Enchanted.
We whispered our secrets into the bottom of the kettle and into the shape of each other’s ears, like forming mists and watching them drift away. One morning, after telling my sins, I knotted her a dandelion ring, the only promise I ever knotted her. I asked forever.
Her eyes glittered with tears as she accepted.
It wasn’t marriage, but it was love. I thought when I said forever, I’d wake up with wrinkles etched in our faces. Eleven years is a long time.
She’s been gone, and graves are unyielding, unforgiving. The worst part is I’m starting to forget. I have to constantly make myself remember her.
Every day.
Yet she was the one with the forgetting disease.
My mind is slowing, wading through the molasses-pain of grief, yet the anguish is thick and blurs the details. I wish I could remember, but maybe forgetting is safer. Numbness is safe. There’s a reason surgeons anaesthetize.
But I pull out our photo books. I find the videos I made and listen to her voice. Her lilting accent like a song. Her eyes haunt me, begging me love, love, love, even in memories I scarcely remember.
Forgetting feels safer.
Was she always crying out for help? Was she always begging me for answers?
I wish I could let go because even in forgetting, I still find pieces of her I remember.
Isabelle Palerma
This short story is entirely my own content – no A.I. used to create this.
For National Short Story Month (like last year), I’m experimenting with writing more short stories.
The prompt from Dylan Drakes’ randomizer is an affectionate yet reckless street performer having to prove her innocence in a dark fantasy/sci-fi mind transfer short story.
Features: dark, potentially triggering imagery.
The way the rain came down wasn’t good for business. Nobody has got time for buskers when it’s pouring down rain. They’re busy shielding themselves from the tears from the sky, and it’s so damn loud. I wish I could just blame the noise on the howl of the wind, the tip-tap of rain on awnings, but it’s all those thoughts.
People’s thoughts get louder – and sadder – on rainy days. Folks wanting to jump from bridges. Take too many pills. It’s enough to break your heart. I’d switch places with them if they’d let me. Bury me six feet under instead.
I never cared about something as petty as my life. But the rain falls fast. Their thoughts loud. And I want to mother them. Protect them from the darkness in their minds.
So, one by one, I guided them out of the rain, out of the city, to a tent. The circus. Where there are clowns and a ringmaster and fire breathers and elephants. Tigers doing tricks. Fortune tellers with crystal balls.
One called me “selfish” as I led the people with the loud thoughts to the circus. “Self-centered” like an accusation. And it stung me like a wasp sting.
“You’re not as sweet as you seem,” a performer hissed.
An eyebrow arched, I had a million questions. I must have allowed him into my mind and vice versa because the words continued there.
Prove this is altruistic, he demanded, prove you’re not doing this just to quiet the streets. To silence your mind.
I wanted a little peace, it was true. Their thoughts interrupted my ability to play my violin. But I genuinely cared. I wanted what was best. Tell me you are innocent. That this is for the people and not for you, Clare.
His wheedling stuck with me. He wasn’t wrong. I was selfish. I always have been. Taking them to the circus wasn’t just charity. It was to quiet my mind. To still the streets. To leave behind the voices.
And yet, one persistent, reckless voice remained, telling me the streets would be so much quieter without a busker, a violinist, named Clare.
I never cared about something as petty as my life. But the rain falls fast. My thoughts loud.
Isabelle Palerma
This short story is entirely my own content – no A.I. used to create this.
“A love story told backwards, starting from the ending.”
trigger warning: begins with a vague implication of suicide.
I don’t know how to tell you this, and maybe it’s better I don’t.
And I know one day, I’d break your heart.
Maybe it’s better I don’t.
I’m lying in a hospital bed, a mixture of medicine and whiskey in my stomach. I’m dying, Fiona.
I used to write you letters after you left me. They weren’t exactly love letters. Well, I’m not sure you ever read them, but they were begging for forgiveness, Fiona. I know I messed up along the way. I see where I screwed up now.
I sent you little photographs I took. I don’t know if you ever looked at them, Fiona, but I took small photos. Random things here & there. Pictures I thought you’d like. The moon. A watch tower. Sometimes, I’d include things I’d find on walks. Bird feathers. Business cards floating around, then stomped on by passing cars.
Anyway. I thought about us a lot before I ended up here in the hospital.
About our story.
The way you slammed the door the last night we were together. The way the stars blinked as I tried to hide my tears when I told you to get out of my house. I watched you leave. You didn’t have a car or a bus pass, but you held your chin high and walked away.
I wonder where you walked to, but you never came back like I thought you would. We had fought one last time. Screamed one last time over some stupid thing. I accused you of cheating. You told me I was stupid and suspicious.
Fiona, you were right. I was stupid and suspicious.
You were too lovely to be mine.
I knew I couldn’t keep you. I was bound to destroy something so beautiful.
I remember the glint in your eye. The hurt look in your green eyes.
A part of me wanted to rush over, to beg forgiveness, but I barrelled on anyway like an idiot, accusing you.
It was just an accusation before I shouted.
But before the accusations, before the shouting, we were in bed together, it was nice. My breath was like cigarettes and whiskey. I hadn’t known it at the time. It was just us holding one another, watching some black-and-white film. Some classic movie you begged me to see. And when I turned to kiss you, you asked me to brush my teeth.
My feelings were too delicate, I guess.
I didn’t know the brutish combination of cigarettes and whiskey.
I could have just brushed them instead of turned into a monster.
But even before the film, there was a girl who loved a boy.
She held him near and whispered away his ghosts – the ones who troubled him like that of his former friends who didn’t understand him or his mother who told him nobody would love him.
And Fiona, I wanted to ask you to marry me one day. I truly did.
And we went out on dates. I took you out and showed you off. You with your lustrous dark hair and beautiful eyes like jade. You whose hair I brushed at bedtime, after making love.
It was backwards and all out of order. I fell in love with you the moment I saw you, but I couldn’t because you were too lovely and I knew one day, you’d break my heart.
Isabelle Palerma 