A FAULT LINE.

A FAULT LINE

I built a space out of everything I knew.
Poured out everything that was said.
I watched the lines carve themselves out of red and blue.
Swam through the labyrinth.
I traced my fingers along the impression.
Coils of cobalt settled along the edges of my fingers.
I unravelled the rift in the ceiling.
Violet spilt from the seams.
I was sure I spoke the language inside dreams.
The fissure turned on its side,
Cracking and curling ash, as a ghost inside.
I closed my eyes, let it drift.
The colors fell back into the rift.

3/2026 // this failure is built deep into my design

3/2026 // this doubt is deafening

3/2026 // cause you were gold but I'm colorblind

Song: Colorblind by Movements

FLOWERS TURN TO FIRE.

What does it feel like to carry it?

3/2026 // I’m not a child

Covered and overlapped
With no need to take root
As it’s always been there
But, it didn’t need to stay
Any number of words
Could have stopped this

The panel has convened
Me, myself, and I
With no answers to my questions
And my voice caught inside my head
We’re stopping this.
I’m not a child.
Flowers turn to fire.

Song: Flowers Turn To Fire by O+S

SHOWER THOUGHTS.

Art & Fear Chapter 4 and Shower Thoughts

“Art is often made in abandonment, emerging unbidden in moments of selfless rapport with the materials and ideas we care about. In such moments we leave no space for others. That’s probably as it should be. Art, after all, rarely emerges from committees. But while others’ reactions need not cause problems for the artist, they usually do.” [Page 37]

The simple idea of any reaction to my artwork, causes me problems. Big ones. The authors go on to write that we carry real and imagined critics with us constantly. And they’re right. But I don’t care so much about the critique. I don’t care if they like it, love it, feel indifferent to it, hate it. I carry so much of everything else. I’m more worried they’ll see it and know it. And scarier yet, ask about it. I want to leave it in the world and I want it to be left unaddressed, at least by those who know me well. And for those fears, and for those reasons, lately, the work I create, I can’t seem to post.

“But for most art there is no client, and in making it you lay bare a truth you perhaps never anticipated: that by your very contact with what you love, you have exposed yourself to the world.” [Page 38]

“You have exposed yourself to the world.” It’s so weird to be an artist. I have this unbearable need to get the work out of my system and out into the world, so it doesn’t linger with me a second longer. I can’t describe it any other way, it has to get out. But I fear a fallout from it’s emergence. I want my art to be seen, exist. I just wish to remain unseen. A true paradox.

“The lesson here is simply that courting approval, even that of peers, puts a dangerous amount of power in the hands of the audience. Worse yet, the audience is seldom in a position to grant (or withhold) approval on the one issue that really counts — namely, whether or not you’re making progress in your work. They’re in a good position to comment on how they’re moved (or challenged or entertained) by the finished product, but have little knowledge or interest in your process. Audience comes later. The only pure communication is between you and your work.” [Page 47]

I don’t want to worry about the audience anymore. I don’t want the outside world to hold any power over what I wish to create. I don’t want to censor my work because it feels too true, too much, too dark, too anything. I want to make what I want to. Say what I want to. I’m tired of trying to make everything fit into these little boxes all the time. So I’m torn between wanting to shield the circle of those I know from my artwork. To separate the Claire they know from the Claire who creates. But we’re the same.

2/2026 // shower thoughts, i’m cleaning my head out

Our scene opens. The narrator speaks: The hardest part wasn’t what she thought it would be.
The camera pans in, the rainwater shower head makes frantic pitter patter sounds on the fiberglass walls and floor. As the subject sits still, the water pours and pours over the subject.

The narrator explains: Saying goodbye in silence wasn’t the hardest part. Existing as it slipped away wasn’t either. The still, dead air wasn’t the hardest part, nor was the familiar depths of depression, revisiting in layers.

A song by Ethansroom called “Shower Thoughts” begins to fade in under the narrator’s words:

It was the undeniable little scrap of hope she clung to, against all better advice to just let it go. Against all her better judgement, holding onto it, like cupping water in your hands, refusing to let it go as it dissolved.

It slipped, silently, without permission, as so many things do. It said no goodbyes, it closed no door. She relinquished it, under the weight of depression, without even knowing. It went, without a witness. The hardest part wasn’t the endless abyss of numbness. It wasn’t the revisiting of the crushing, black void. It wasn’t even the tortured “what if’s”. All these things weren’t the hardest part. 

The camera focuses on the water, the drops that slowly slide down the walls of the fiberglass as the subject covers her face in her hands with one long sigh. The narrator finally tells you what, in fact, was the hardest part: The hardest part, you see, was waking up one morning and knowing deep in her core that it had all gone, a very long time ago and that awful, stubborn and beautiful little kernel of hope prevented her from knowing it had left. The hardest part was it slipping away so quietly, under all that weight. Robbing her of the knowledge that it was already gone, robbing her of feeling it, robbing her of feeling anything at all.  

The scene cuts to black and the song ends. The narrator yields the final words: The hardest part wasn’t what she thought it would be. The hardest part was realizing what it took and not knowing when it had left.

MIDDLE DISTANCE.

The sun is warm on my face and I can’t deny how nice it feels. I swear I can feel it seeping directly into my skin, as some missing vitamin grabs hold inside. The dirt and gravel crunch under us as we tumble out of the truck. Each of us strapping various bags to shoulders, adjusting water bottles, extending hiking poles, and applying uv protection for the sun.

My mother leads, eager to walk, and we follow. She’s such a sunshiny flower. She carts little bits of trail mix in her pockets so that a bag doesn’t rustle. I get my sensitive ears from both my parents, the wind irritation from hers — my ears screaming in pain under the pull of even a slight breeze, and the uncomfortableness with repetitive or intrusive sounds from my father.

2/2026 // pockets full

I smile to myself as she has cleverly found a way to make no sound at all and still have her snacks. My father grumbles next to me, “She never stops eating.” I change the subject, as I move behind him on the winding trail and call out: “Look it!” —a familiar family phrase from long ago that will take him back. He stops and looks around wildly, to see what I might be pointing at. “Straight in front of me, be quiet! The bird!” His eyes are looking down for a “road runner,” whereas mine are looking up at this little bird atop a saguaro.

2/2026 // perched

I wonder how it survives here. What it searches for… Arizona looks to be one thing but, the feeling I have, doesn’t match most of what I’m seeing. Yes, this landscape has its own beauty. The green is striking, with little hints of yellow on the ground and blue in the sky, it looks like a movie set. But the more I study it, I find an uneasy feeling welling up inside. Somewhere deep in the back of my thoughts, a voice urges, “Run.”

2/2026 // the thousandth time

On the second day, a blue lake appeared, surrounded by rocky, sandy mountain trails spotted with more saguaros. The blue water glistens in the sun and creates the beautiful bokeh I fell in love with years ago. And even though I know I’ve taken a thousand pictures like this, I have to stop and take just one more. People behind me continue their hike and my father waits for me, talking to each and every one. The blue ripples continue to move, the sun is so warm now, I don’t want to get up. I want to just sit here and squint at the water as it glitters. It feels like it doesn’t belong, nestled inside this cluster of mountains.

2/2026 // no horizon

That feeling stayed with me, following along the dusty wind to “The Compound.” A name I started to use for where we were staying. It was comprised of similarly looking sun-bleached trailers. Each one roughly the same shade, each with a little deck, stairs, and each with a small patch of gravel raked just the same way. There was an order and neatness to it all. A quiet community of the 55 and older crowd.

When I first arrived, the sun had already slipped below the horizon, and I could only see it by light of the street lamps. I felt a quiet unease immediately and marveled at how everything belonged a bit too well. Once inside, there was no horizon line, only trailer after trailer, road after road, golf cart after golf cart. Where the desert had some semblance of life, with the cactus and wildflowers, roadrunners, and ducks on the lake, The Compound felt preserved, like time stopped, like the world stopped. Closed off, secluded, gated inside. All your needs met, never wanting for anything else, never needing to leave. It felt odd to me, that this was what people would choose. To surrender to the seclusion. That voice deep in my head said again, "Run," more urging this time.

2/2026 // Run.

I stand somewhere between the two. Not rooted like the saguaro, always balancing itself, not preserved like the trailers, each one identical, waiting. Just passing through, like I was made of the same dusty wind that carries everything else. My family moved around me, my mother reaching for her silent snacks, my father talking to strangers, and I watched them the way you watch something through glass. Close enough to touch, but with something between us I can’t name.

I am a photographer through and through. I frame and capture, looking for the whole picture. But I look through a small rectangular viewfinder. Suspended in a small window, present enough to see what lies ahead but one step removed from actually being there. I keep coming back to that little bird, perched atop the saguaro. What are we searching for, little bird? And how will we know when we find it?

WHERE YOU LEFT ME

Yes, I remember 
Yes, I recall 
Yes, I paid attention

I am not where you left me

Along the side of a little shop of Wonders, residing on a fading Main Street, sits a couch somewhere between an orange rust and a merlot. This long little hole-in-the-wall Shop is bursting with things. Crammed floor to ceiling, wall to wall. Every step, every glance, every inch, holds a little piece of someone else. 

A pair of black roller skates with green laces and green wheels

A license plate with a little rust

A new doll that stares, not seeing, back at the visitors

A bowling ball bag, sans the ball

An extra small, dark green leather jacket with intricate floral patterns

The sight is overwhelming. Inside this Shop of Wonders, I get lost in the sea of things. So much to see. My dad doesn’t. He sees what he wants. And before he takes it for his own, he goes line for line, story for story, with the brother of The Man who owns this shop. He can separate things. He can do pretty much anything. He can decide what matters. Where I, never do. I never learned how to put anything down.

As my dad fills the space with his stories, he gestures to me, speaks to The Man like I’m his pride and joy. He expresses how much we are alike and how I know him. He tells The Man, a story about us and he looks to me and says, “Remember?”

Yes, I remember 
Yes, I recall 
Yes, I paid attention

And they’re always so impressed. That I remember. That I pay attention. That I recall. Over and over, they are all, just always, so impressed. 

I remember. 
My superpower. My curse. My purpose. My burden. 

I remember. 
I’m like the inside of the Shop. Crammed floor to ceiling, wall to wall. Holding little pieces of someone else.

But I’m also like the outside of the Shop.
Like the couch. Sitting just outside, just around the corner, bare, uninhabited, vacant. It’s slightly removed. On the edge, the outskirts.

I am not where you left me. 
But I will remember. 

NUMBER 13

To avoid certain number 13’s, remember: it means nothing until proven otherwise.
Remain neutral until evidence is clear.

number 13 favorite crime

Steeped in golden warmth, I wonder if this metal is brass. I’m almost sure it is, as my stomach lurches into my throat with the rise of each floor. The wood is cast in warm light, making it appear richer than it is. The marble walls I had walked through to get here, were cast in a similar overwhelming amount of soft light. As I moved through them, I found the black of the marble to my liking, drawn to the darkness where thin bits of white wisp along the surface as if they flourished on their own in the elegance of this 1930’s building. Desire rose, urging me to trace the lines with my fingers. I forced it back, keeping my hands at my sides.

Here, now, in this small rectangular box, a row of illuminated numbers runs in a precise, lateral line. I analyze the font, try to guess it, but I can’t place it. Each number is softly lit as it slips us past each floor, their little glass faces catching the light as we go, like small beacons of light in the dark, carrying me upward. I look away, down to the floor, and sigh for the millionth time, wondering how long this battle of dark and light will command my life.

The vertical corridor moves me up and down and I think about the symmetry again, of how the light and dark push me up and down in this world. With my camera wrapped around my neck, resting like a shadow rests against a body, forever with me, I absently lift it toward the numbers. With a small, deliberate act, my fingertip meets a gentle resistance that gives way to tactile and unmistakeable “click”. The hum of movement quiets from this lifting cage, and a metallic chime signifies we’ve arrived and the doors split and slide evenly open.

On the other side of the elevator, white, san serif numbers greet me from the dark hall. I pull on the door with “1670” illuminated next to it. The room is small, filling with bodies in finely dressed attire. I settle into what can only be called a wooden pew, it’s smooth surface worn by decades of patrons of the law, locked in their own battles of light and dark. I fight off memories of places like this and, instead, to distract myself, I lift the camera to review the frame I just captured. The image comes to life on the screen. It’s how I remembered it looking, the warm light, strong vertical brass lines reaching for that horizontal line of numbers and then suddenly, there it is: the number 13. Illuminated in quiet declaration against all the other options.

Quieting the snicker that rises in my throat, I let out a huff of air, almost rolling my eyes as I do. This tiny moment, this unfocused click, this lazy photograph, captured the quiet tension, the bit of mystery, the lore of “13”. I wonder about my luck. I wonder about what it means in my unending battle of light and dark. And I wish it didn’t feel accidental.

To avoid certain number 13’s, remember: it means nothing until proven otherwise. Remain neutral until evidence is clear.

VACANT.

and one more thing, is too many things
an inner voice pleads for it to stop
it whispers out to the universe
I am vacant

vacant, 1

vacant, 2

this vacant tale isn’t safe to tell
twist it back inside
burning neon
I am vacant

POETRY IS EXIGENT.

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Let’s study.
A bare rumination
in how shadows drown out a space
and where the light claims its domain.

A mood that is a bit aimless
and quiet. Contemplative
and pensive.

What could be the point?
perhaps not declarative,
but something else, something like
seeing and passing.

The absence,
echoes the wandering,
in the spaces that are left.

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