Author: katkarney

I Bring This News to You in Anger, Horror, and Resignation

You’ve got to make it through all of the “firsts” without him. The first Thursday. Your birthday. Then his.
Crying alone over the green shoots of spring daffodils. The first piece of good news. The next bit of bad.
You’ve got to make it through, knowing only that grief is more prolific than useless baseball statistics.
It just goes on like this. It just goes on like this. It just goes on like this. And nothing can make it stop.

Reminders (of Stanley)

1. The Lake
2. The Chagrin River
3. Furnace Run
   
4. Oak Trees
   
5. Violets and Bluets (Spring)
6. Buttercups and Forget-me-nots (Summer)
7. Chicory and Black-eyed Susans (Fall)
8. Dried Thistles, Rattling in the Cold (Winter)
   
9. The Iridescence of Crow Feathers
10. The Crows’ Persistence

Stan and I were an unstoppable duo, and he helped me rebuild my life post-divorce. Making weird art, hanging out, going on hikes, and holding him tempered so much disappointment and loss. I have edited and retitled several works from that time to make them more cohesive. Thank you, sweet Stan!

I. CONCEAL

spend all your time
in a house far too spacious
for a small woman and her large dog

II. CONGEAL

the dog takes up two-thirds of our bed, two heads
on the same pillow

back-to-back, spine-to-spine, vertebrae
softly align

he turns upside down, four paws easing into the air
drooping grayed pasterns downward

III. REVEAL

in a cloak of crumbling plaster
and twisted-pair cabling crown

tarnished copper veins ache
for a heart that long stopped ringing

she emerges from her brick chrysalis
and spreads her asbestos-tiled wings

with none but the dog to witness

(Image description: Female polyphemus moth resting on a brick windowsill.)

1. Young Bowie smiling (before he fixed his teeth).
2. The sunset at Endert’s Beach, California.
3. Cold fried chicken on the drive home from Cedar Point.
4. Recurring dreams where the attic is a portal to the past.
5. Peace that follows grieving.
6. How grief finds a way to circle back.
7. My dog asleep in my arms.

I lost my beloved Labrador at the beginning of the month due to complications with late-stage lymphoma. Stanley was a month shy of being 11 years old. From diagnosis to his passing, we had 2 weeks. Two glorious weeks of eating whatever the hell he wanted. Two weeks to cherish my soulmate. Two weeks of couch cuddles and slow, cold walks around the block.

On his last day, I made him his favorite mini apple lattice pie. He got a cheeseburger and fries. We went on a short loop walk in his favorite park. He lay in the center of our living room among the baby’s toys, listening to the extended family talk. He always kept track to make sure we were all safe. He left the room to lie down on his bed in the den, where he began having breathing complications and shaking.

Stanley passed peacefully that evening at the emergency vet. I cradled and kissed his head, listing every person who ever loved him. My mom rubbed his back.

As a survivor, I must bear the burden of unconditional love into the interminable future and carry the wellsprings of joy and pain that his memory evokes.

The posts for the foreseeable future will be about our life together. I’ve revised some old pieces as an attempt to write my way through grief, but it is insufficient.

I wrote the below in Fall of 2019. Just Stan and me building a new life in this big old rental.

labrador retriever at 3:23 AM

the dog whines to go outside
i walk slow from my bedroom
down the steep steps
and he clumsily follows

“don’t knock me down
the goddamn stairs!”
i stage whisper
– he snorts

we emerge
into crisp Cleveland
he relieves himself
on the hydrangea bush

amber streetlights
illuminate the leaves
splaying patterns
across my pale limbs

cool air carries
close scents:
hot piss
a distant skunk

he smells the wind
and comes back inside
to drink water like a moose

my mind seeks
the gentle tones
of human voices
rustling in the treetops

i whisper back
to the breeze
“Stan’s a good boy”
and pet his velvet ears

he is already asleep
unfathomably peaceful
a cozy, rounded-corner
of blackness

(first dream of the new year)

We rescue three kittens:
One striped and two black.
I know it is a dream because I am not allergic.

make the sign of the cross
(up, down, left, right)

lift your eyes, ask the rafters:
what incense, what votive
can restore faith?

lose the rosary
but not the feeling
of thumbing the cherrywood beads

of bone-carved agony, begging for relief

forget
the right words
& whisper instead:

there is you
there is pain
and there is death

image (ruined large format negative with black label maker applique)
text: (black label maker strips with white lettering)

i am the
swirling
island of
plastic trash

i am the ocean

great grandma raised two kids alone
until asthma took her one morning

her husband abandoned the family
her jewelry became a warning

encircling bones
of hands unknown
glittering gold
and amethyst:

beware what a man
can carve from your soul
simply by dissipating

beware anyone
who limits your creativity for their own comfort

or requires continuous reassurance
while denigrating emotional intelligence

they will make self-deprecating jokes that aren’t jokes
and through self loathing, destroy you both

beware the poet
the final word is always theirs

to be whole
on one’s own

not confused
with the yoke

he places
upon his

own shoulders