I found out, sitting at a picnic table with a friend over my break yesterday evening… I was immediately and irrevocably floored…

It’s not like I didn’t expect it. When he called the very last time he told me he didn’t think it was going to get better this time, but he had faith in his God and hope… But I knew for him to admit that to me meant he was saying goodbye. I cried then, not in his presence of course – but I cried… because of all the people in this world that didn’t deserve this, it was he who never did a truly shitty thing to anyone, he who was always there to help or be a friend, he who could always make me laugh… HE DIDN’T DESERVE THIS.

Later I was struck by it, had my 45 second cry in the fucking bathroom at my work… crouched down like a child playing in the mud… and we’re talking ugly, sobbing, cry. To my credit, the make-up held. (He used to tease I could be sweating buckets down my face, yet my make-up never ran, lol…)

These sorts of things usually don’t bother me like this… Death is part of life and part of the cycle we will all go through… but this one hit hard…

I mean, he used to call me at night when he was doing the traveling construction bit just because he “got lonely” and wanted to talk to someone… and intermittently, following that stint, he’d call just to bs….

Terry kept tabs on me forever. He’d ask about where I was living, what I was doing, my family… all of everything…

He hauled his cookies out to my mom’s every time he knew I was gonna be in town – And every time, even when I weighed 400+, even when I was crippled up, even this last time in July 2018 when I knew he wasn’t feeling his best, he would bellow: “HOOOOOOLLIE!!!” the instant he saw me – Then scoop me up off the ground in a giant hug.

I’ve known that boy for most of my life… 36 years of it, anyway…
We went to the principals office together in first grade, me for something I didn’t do and he for something he did… I stood by him and we got in trouble together. I convinced him to help me steal a giant “road closed” sign during a blazing hot summer day while we were in high school. (Don’t judge! The entire time he kept telling me as he hefted the behemoth into the bed of my truck that he was NOT helping me steal that sign!) I tricked him into joining FHA in the wayback and he actually enjoyed it!

Crap! He even took me on a date, lumpy old me, back when we were 15, lol, and years later he actually came to my house to tell me the morning after he lost his virginity… and how he always thought it would be me who took it, lol… But I never would make any move (and no, I didn’t even consider that until he mentioned it that day, and it was immediately dismissed with peaks of laughter from us both, lol!)

He’d check in on my mom as the years rolled on and help her around the house with little repairs and projects in my absence. He was always good for a story and a laugh… He was my friend. He never judged, was never mean. I don’t think he knew how to be that way…

He was the only person I knew that long that was still actually there, really there, not because he was family. Not because I gave him anything, or he felt like he owed me anything or because he wanted something…

But just there because he wanted to be…

The funeral is Saturday. I have no $$ for a flight, so I’m gonna have to either pray for cheap last minute flights I’ll purchase the day before I fly out or drive that lonely 18 hours x 2 by myself… I won’t even be able to call him to help pass the time.

I have to go. I just have to… I have to say goodbye to my oldest friend for the very last time.

And she thinks I’m too loud, but her friend finds me too quiet…

And I’m definitely too much on the whole…
but still not quite enough.

There are times when I’ve been handsome, beautiful even, when the mood strikes you… yet entirely too plain, too ugly, too average for most.

Let’s take note — I was too serious, yet far too funny… Too tough, too soft… Too friendly, yet distant… so very distant.

Sometimes I’m just too smart, too experienced, too informed, yet I know nothing, can’t hold my own, and am such a dumbass…

Tomorrow I’ll be just right, but today I’m just not?
Yesterday though… yesterday I was perfect… but still I wasn’t… just ask him.

And everyone has an opinion, like somehow my body, my personality, my actions, my very soul is up for debate, correction, change at the whim of the public, the call of the masses, the directive of the individual… the demand of you…

So fuck it, I think. Who cares what the collective you thinks, what you want, what you need…

Yet I do care! I want the world to voicelessly proclaim in silent adoration how much I’ve suffered, how greatly I’ve performed, how far I’ve exceeded expectation, how worthy I am of spoils beyond number for what I’ve done, what I will do… what I wish I’d done…

But realistically I know we are programmed to see the faults. We are designed to see what’s wrong, what can be better, what isn’t like us… or isn’t like how we’d like to see ourselves, more likely…

So I’ll simply continue to be too me…
And you can continue to be way too you…

And we’ll absolve ourselves to disagreeing about our general perfection and imperfection as we must… as we should.

The holidays they come and go and with them are reminders of all the people who I’ve seen come and go in this world… each holding a part of who I am in their special way.

For instance, yeah… I remember Finn’s face… but it’s his hands, the freckles on his skin, the wild hair that strikes me… The things I can imagine him saying… him bleaching my first highlights into my long hair… him teaching me the tools of my trade, even way back then…

Photo Credits: All Photos within this post were taken, modified, and/or belong to Alex Steiner.

Hey, Alex,

How’s the afterlife? Seeing that you’re new there, you probably don’t have it all down just yet. But I bet you’ve got a good bead on things just the same. Of course, those of us you’ve left behind are stuck here first wondering why. Then accepting the inevitability of what has transpired and, finally, knowing that this is not some joke. That you are gone. That they’d seen pieces of this floating downstream for months. That they wish they’d said something, done something, been something in that final moment where persuasion might have actually been met with understanding. Where certainty still could crumble into something other than where we are now… But we didn’t. You did. That’s that.

I hope the trip was uneventful. (or at least uneventful in a negative way… I’m all for positive right now.)

I see all these people posting all this really great stuff about you on your wall and I tend to concur. There is nothing that prepared me for the news… and yet there is so much that did prepare me for it. I see messages we sent. Snail Mail I’ve yet to return favor. Your warnings written in understated clicks and paintings of light… Well, I have now opened my box of shimmery beautiful regret and I am floored by it. Your absence is deafening… Seriously, it roars in foreign tongues and stupors long since past and yet to be had. In fact, it’s been roaring at me for a week, yet I did nothing. I mentioned it in my journals. Spoke of it to Jas. Even made note of it in my over-cluttered mind. But I didn’t reach out. I kick myself for not saying anything. Something. But that was inevitable, too… I mean, your absence has been screaming at me since before you were self-silenced. Something had to give. I guess everything had to give, right?

I know that I was almost seduced by the roses and posies pasted on your wall. I almost delved deep into my admiration and bled all over it. (Yes, I used the term admiration. Look it up. It defines things pretty well.) But I didn’t. It all just seemed too public for someone who was herself, so public… yet not. Someone who padded herself with fuzzy, kitten-smelling barbed-wire, razor-sharp snails, OkCupid transcripts, and art photos while only publicly hinting at the state of all things Alex. We all know nothing I could put up there would be as good a tribute as what you’d posted yourself and I just don’t want to fuck that up. Besides, maybe it would mean something to know that I am writing about you on something that belongs to me. That I was spreading the gospel of Alex Steiner outside of the construct you had created.

A few weeks ago, you messaged me. You’d not really randomly message me in a very long time and I thought it was odd, but pleasant. I felt shone upon that you’d chosen me to help pass your time. You were, at the time, still recovering from that awful job that you hated. We talked about how horrible it was and how you tried to make it seem funny or fun, but that it wasn’t. You discussed how you come on so fierce and so strong, when inside you’re crumbling into a “little heap.” You were talking about how you’d stopped your medication and how that probably wasn’t the best idea, but that you were doing it anyway. You apologized for being a “lonely, borderline alcoholic” and drunkenly messaging me. I hate that the brief moment was pretty much our last real exchange. I hate that there has to be a last real exchange.

I still keep thinking this must be a joke. But the more I think, the more I know it isn’t. I mean, I had seen you pretty dark before, but there was an ostentatious quality about it. A commerciality  if you will. Something bigger than the words, like you were playing to an arena, and your flair for the dramatic always let me know you were going to be ok… But that last time there wasn’t any of that. It was just you and as much as you apologized, I always liked you for you. No apologies needed. Whatsoever.

Photo Credits: All Photos within this post were taken, modified, and/or belong to Alex Steiner.

As the weeks went by, your updates were at times slightly more aggressive, yet also withdrawn. You seemed more insecure, publicly as well as privately. As the end came closer, your postings became more erratically timed until they were pretty much gone. I felt oddly suspicious. I told myself you were preparing to kill off this account. That I just hadn’t received an invite to the next one, if there was even going to be a next one. But I never thought…

No! That’s not true! I did think for a split second: “Has Alex hurt herself? Has she done what she hinted at?” I brushed it off, but I did think it. When you said to me “I’m going to be off of here for a while,” in the most sedate way you could, I thought “Why?” Now I suppose I know why. When Jay, the catalyst for our friendship, posted on your wall, I knew that those thoughts and feelings I’d had were now justified. As the hours went by, it became painfully clear: Alex had done exactly what I was afraid she had done… And I wasn’t so surprised. Hurt? Yes. Saddened? Definitely… But surprised? No…

I just wish your sails had filled with a different wind, taken a different path, and that I could write you this letter and know that you’d actually be there to read it.

So I guess I’ll just say: I miss you already, Alex. I miss you because you were a link to a part of me that had long since past, but that I cared deeply about, and because you were just so very singular in a world full of so much of exactly the same. I hope you find what you’re looking for out there. (I mean it.) You deserve only the best things. (I mean that, too.)

Safe travels, sweet friend,
~H

Photo Credits: All Photos within this post were taken, modified, and/or belong to Alex Steiner.

“That bitch owes me money,” he said gruffly as he took another swig from the bottle. A drop of the thin, yellow liquid slid down his chin before being wiped away with the back of a withered hand.

She hated it when he got like this. Belligerent, obnoxious old fool. These were the moods that got him locked up all those times. These were the moods that got mother smacked in the mouth and made her leave. These were the moods she dreaded. In his youth, these moods were lusty declarations of manhood, charging in warlike and ready to conquer. But he was old now. Old and spent. She knew it was only talk — Just a little bravado to help him get past whatever it was he had to get past this time. She also knew it wouldn’t be very long before he calmed down enough to be reasoned with. A few more beers. A TV show. Maybe he’d slip out the secret stash of nudie pics he had tucked away… It really didn’t matter to her how he soothed himself when he got in one of his fits — Just so long as he did it and they could get back to the normalcy of this partnership. A Pairing of thieves. An endless meandering bond between father and daughter that left her feeling more like the parent than the child.

“That whore owes me money and then up and disappears? What does she expect me to do with it?” Again, he rambles on about the busted up car that his dead best friend’s wife left sitting at the mouth of the driveway. “Scrap it,” She offered. It would not be an acceptable answer, but it was the only one she had at the moment. “Just like you told her you would last week.”

He stood, spat some unintelligible, mutterings her way, and walked into the back porch which had been converted, years prior, into his private bedroom suite. Not that she’d been asked about any of this. He was just suddenly there… Doing what he does. Embedding himself into every facet of a person’s life so that they can never get away without an explosive discharge and a lot of mess to clean up.

Like what happened between him and her mother. Her name was Anne. In her youth she had been quite a beauty and, even after all the years of putting up with this life, she remained attractive. She’d been with her father nine years before she decided to leave. Clara was told that her mother’s plan was to return for her after the smoke cleared. Apparently the lugubrious stuff must still be hanging, as she never even tried to make contact with the child since that fateful day 20 years ago. Some people say she’s dead. Clara’s grandmother says she sent her a letter once from “somewhere in Spain,” telling her everything was ok and inquiring about the weather. Never any mention of the child. The old woman said that thinking of the child she left behind would break her heart, so she just doesn’t. Clara thinks that’s bullshit. Mother’s who love their children, don’t leave them alone with volatile drunks like Richard. Period.

~H

Dear _____,

I think of you often. The way you used to mean so much, yet gave so little. The way you drew me in, made me want to morph into something different, altered my perception, changed my soul.

Your heart didn’t know what your words did to me — Did your mind? I was a passing fancy — An object to enjoy as long as possible before tossing me off into the wind. At the time, you loved me… Maybe? Maybe — Maybe just snippets of me. Now, years later — I simply don’t know.

Long after I ceased to exist for you, I still remember what you felt like. Your scent. Your swagger. You… as you appeared to me in your tortured glory.

No, you never intended to imprint yourself on me and, seriously, I never wanted it… But it happened. Looking back at it, whatever it is, all of this seems so inevitable. When it comes to tragic figures, I can’t stay away and you always paint yourself so tragically. Like some pained poet living in the words of others, yet never truly filling your own skin.

Even now, with your angst, your dark quotes, the endless mystery of someone we both know never truly existed yet stands before us in the flesh just the same. It makes me wonder who you’ll be next — When all is over, where will you end up?

I heard your voice the other day and it said the cruelest stupidest things. It laughed along with the jokes that were, on some level, about me and others like me. (If we exist — maybe my collective we is just me?) I heard the words. I heard the implication and a message that only I could perceive: “I don’t care about you,” it cried… and I couldn’t anymore. I severed the ties, stopped looking… Stopped caring (as if I could ever really stop caring)… Stopped wanting to notice you.

So… I guess this is goodbye for now. I hope that somewhere along your journey you find yourself hidden behind the facade of what you’ve become.

Your (sometimes) friend,
~H

“I’m leaving,” she called to the empty house. Her words bounced off the cluttered furnishings like a high-bounce ball carelessly tossed by an invisible hand. “Invisible,” she thought. “I am invisible.”

It was a blustery morning as she started the many blocks to school. Not cold enough for snow, but cold enough to feel barbed ice crystals riding the wind to cut through her gloves and scarf as a knife cuts skin. Somewhere in the distance a wind chime played on the breeze until it came to some sort of violent end and clattered to a stop. Her pack felt heavy on her shoulders. She was alone. As she lumbered along, she told herself it was better this way. Alone is safe.

She always left home later than the others. Always arrived in the door later than the rest — Not usually late, but late enough that she didn’t have to stand around and make small talk with all those pretty faces. Late enough she didn’t have to stand around and say the wrong things, act the wrong way, be the wrong version of herself. Late enough she didn’t even have to notice how different they were from her… At least not until recess, when it always became painfully clear that she did not fit in.

The same was true for the afternoon’s walk home. She dawdled in the classroom preparing to leave. Slowed her steps to the doors to head into the sun. She would find excuses to stop in the office or return to the classroom, pretty much anything to not have to traverse the streets of older kids on her way home. Having anyone notice her was excruciating these days. She felt old and began imagining herself as an ancient woman with long hair and a hunched back, carrying all her personal belongings in her pack as the wind cruelly taunted her. She imagined her hands becoming so rigid with arthritis and scars that they resembled the tree branches over her head. Then she became the tree, creaking and groaning with every movement, nearly naked as the last of it’s leaves fell, again, at the hands of the wind.

Soon, she could sense the school approaching. As the tall brick building came into view, she hung her head lower, more determined than ever to become invisible. Her heavy, dark hair hung low over her face as she contemplated turning around and going home before anyone noticed she’d even been there. Instead, she finished her trek and went inside the doors to meet her fate.

~H

Scars

By Hollie A Miller
Featured on Thursday, April 26, 2012
by the Johnson County Public Library in honor of National Poetry Month
______________________________________________________________________

Scars
run like train tracks traveling back through time to that moment when life betrayed you.

Strength squandered,
once ever-present, now fails you.

Friends bereft,
grieve your passing before you’ve gone.

Family hover,
then, like dead leaves in fall, swiftly blow away, afraid to cling to what is left of your shattered soul.

Nothing is left to remind you of the person you were,
yet everything you were remains, hidden behind a facade of decaying flesh.

Every broken memory, every ordinary thought, every dream, every nightmare, all point to the person you were before.

Nothing leads back to you now…
Except scars.

~H

The sun rose again today,
Contrary to last night’s “End of The World.”
I should be comforted by this…

I watch her rise above the horizon,
Fiery tendrils reaching across the sky in a blaze of defiance
Against my anything and everything.

Why does she choose to mock my mood?
To squash my worries like ants on the pavement?
Discredit me with the simple act of rising?

She just beams, sometimes a little too brightly,
Sweet radiation cooking my skin, making me sweat.
Making me burn.

~H

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