reading

Where Does Belief Lie: a Prose Poem.

A prompt from Felixflautajrpoetry.

“Describe a place you visited often, what you heard there, who you wanted to become. Write in the second person. Describe it to yourself. Describe yourself.”

Even at thirteen, fourteen, you were questioning, a Doubting Thomas, and you held more interest in the artistry, the pageantry of the faith — the stained glass windows and the gravitas of the priests. The crescendo of the songs, the rise and fall of the Hallelujahs. The Latin. Always the Latin.

Yet you wanted to believe. You always wanted to believe. You wanted to feel something. You wanted to feel it in your heart like your mother did when her fingers moved across the rosary beads, but you never did.

You felt reverence in other ways. Your heart felt big — so big, too big for your chest — when you drove through the mountains with your family or you passed through with friends. When you stood against the ocean or watched a storm come through.

You felt grandeur in the ways that made you feel small and reminded you we’re just infinitesimally tiny. But in that church, in those pews, you look at that crucifix and you don’t seem to see it.

But you go. You go every Sunday. You go each Sunday and you go those holy days of obligation. Your fingers move across the rosary beads.

And yet, you don’t feel it in your heart.  Not at the stained glass windows nor the gravitas of the priests. Not even the crescendo of the songs. Even when it came time for the rise and fall of the Hallelujahs. Or even the Eucharist.

You wanted to feel the holiness — the reverence — when you walked, head bowed, into a cathedral. But it was just a building. It was beautiful, yes, but you didn’t feel God there.

You felt God in other ways: standing at the ocean, looking as far past the water as you could; driving through mountains; and when you flew. Any time the world reminded you how small you were.

But a church, even a cathedral, that wasn’t it. Those were man-made. Something manufactured to make us feel something, and you’d rather feel God out there somewhere.

But you were young then, you were thirteen, fourteen. Questioning. Doubting. And small. Even the sound of the choir did not shrink you even smaller than you already were.

The metallic clanking of the thurible at the priest’s side as the fragrant scent of frankincense wafts toward you, and you did not grow more expansive, nor did you shrink.

You doubted, but still, you plunged forward with a faith you weren’t sure you believed in.

Isabelle Palerma

Pieces of You [Her]: a Short Fiction

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.

A Peek into a Sleepless City

Sleeping is illegal. Dreaming is monetized. They said it was for our safety. But it wasn’t.

The city never sleeps. Why should it…?

The Regime is watching. Always watching…

Interested in more?

Wait until the official blurb comes out.

Maybe you’ll just have to stay awake to find out. 😉

Isabelle Palerma

An Excerpt from my WIP

Hey y’all,

Long time no updates. So, while I’m still working on GP, I’m also working on a few other projects – a chapbook and a couple of novels. One is a dark fantasy novel; the other of them is dystopian sci-fi.

I thought some of you might be interested in seeing an excerpt from it while I continue to work on my other projects.

I need to see you. It’s urgent. The words shimmer before dissolving into an array of scintillating pixels and vanish from my screen. As I yank my starched lab coat off and tug my scuffed-up leather jacket on, my thoughts splinter between the contents of the message and its sender, my best friend, Nahia Winters.

Meet at my place? I text back, scrunching up my eyebrows.

As the laboratory doors slide open, the chatter of my colleagues escalates, echoing against the linoleum. Most of them are headed to a downtown zone-out café. Some hipster joint with the hottest headsets, most up-to-date Dream technology, and most recently uploaded dreams.

After a fourteen-hour stint at the lab, I don’t blame them, but the word “urgent” buzzes through my veins like a stimulant. It makes the concept of rest impossible. Anyway, Nahia’s a Tier-1A Dreamer. Worst case scenario, she can lend me a headset and upload a dream for me.

“You coming, Simon?” Jonathan calls, glancing over his shoulder at me.

I wave him on, flashing him a small but genuine smile. “Got some personal stuff I’m dealing with,” I admit, “but thanks, anyway, bro.”

He nods. “Sure thing.”

I watch as he catches up to the rest of the group, grateful he doesn’t ask any follow-up questions.

A ping as Nahia reply comes through. I’m already there. Our texts glimmer: individual letters become dancing dots, then disappear before sending me back to my home screen. All evidence of our exchange disintegrates rapidly. Pinching the bridge of my nose, I shake my head in disbelief. “How does she have access to my phone?” I mutter, rolling my eyes. She’s the Dreamer, and I’m the scientist, and I can’t operate basic tech like she does.

Shit. It occurs to me. Nahia might be in trouble. I sprint out of the sterile space and hurry to the Aeroline station. Once I am at the station, I gnaw on my lower lip, contemplating how to ask Nahia if she’s in trouble without rousing suspicion of the monitors.

I loathe the monitors. They’re the ones who capture the outspoken ones.

I’m certain they’ll capture everyone who speaks out against the Regime one of these days – the way they surveil our phones and emails and now, how they check the Dreamers’ dream content for any signs of unrest or revolutionary thought.

Focus, Simon, I remind myself as I slide into the seat and flash my pass at the scanner. My heart begins to hammer in my chest as it dawns on me that Nahia’s probably already in trouble with the monitors if she’s showing up at my apartment during peak Dreamer hours. So, as we begin our ascent through the clouds, I start scheming.

Interested in reading more? Let me know! I’m always looking for more readers.

Isabelle Palerma

This excerpt is entirely my own content – no A.I. used to create this.

Spirits Follow Me Here, Too: a Short Fiction (Part III)

May is National Short Story Month, and in honor of National Short Story Month, I decided to write a short story combining my interest in tarot and witchcraft with fiction. I hope you enjoy the result. Please be sure to check out Part I here and Part II here.

That night, I followed Vee home like a street urchin or an orphan, and I suppose, in a way, I was. My own mother already gave me up once, washed her hands of me like Macbeth. The blood still stained her hands as well, though not nearly as violent as his, I suppose. My nonna had died – the ultimate abandonment, and my dad, well, who knows what happened to him.

Everything inside me that had felt crushed and stifled was suddenly expansive as the sky and unlimited. I felt like all the furniture of my heart that had been cramped into a dollhouse of an existence was suddenly opened up, and I didn’t know what to do with all of those emotions.

Vee looked at me, unadorned and plain, flat-chested, and dark-haired, and told me something no one had ever said before. She told me I was beautiful, and when her lips brushed against mine, everything inside of me unfurled.

Where I simply existed before, now, I had come alive. Her touch electrified me. This is what drugs felt like, I was sure of it. The slow honey drip of lust before the drop in the pit of my stomach, flipping me upside down like every cliché. My skin prickled with tiny goosebumps, and when she asked if I was cold, I looked at her in surprise.

Temperature was such a meaningless concept. I just felt alive and aloft with something as transformative as love. It was beautiful as every lyric that had ever been penned, and when her lips touched mine, I wanted to write her sonnets and villanelles and odes.

I wanted to kiss her everywhere all of the time.

And we started to.

We started to explore each other. Cartographers mapping curvatures and ridges. Learning hills and rises as well as the valleys and smooth spots. Her hands found my tunnel and explored that, caressing me sweetly as her lips made their home against my skin.

Again and again.

The spirits followed me here, too. I thought they giggled because I found “The One”.

I did not hear the cruelty in their laughter because I was busy falling madly in love with Vee.

Isabelle Palerma

This short story is entirely my own content – no A.I. used to create this.