January 9th
The woman in the garden blesses the tree before she picks its leaves. I crave smoke. There are fires in California. The shrine smells of incense, people putting their offerings on it. Does the man across the lawn know that I’m a smoker? Does my body language and writing, show that I should be smoking a cigarette? The grandma that blesses the tree she takes from has a daughter, and a dog. When the girl walks the dog, she catches its shit on a leaf. I called my friend and told her about it, we laughed for an hour. In Vietnam everyone cuts queues while driving and it causes traffic. I cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner and I remember the kitchen I learned to cook in. A tiny room in the mountains of the Philippines. I sliced my finger on the kitchen sink there, and the missionaries poured salt in it. Thick, chunky, white salt in my finger.
I found a dead butterfly on a morning walk, and I put it on my wall. In Washington I was seven. I caught a wounded Monarch, and my dad poured alcohol over it. He used tiny pins to hold it against a dark blue velvet, and put it in a brown wooden box, to hang on my wall. I learned taxidermy at a young age.
Soon I will be in California. I will move to San Francisco, get an apartment and a dog, and continue school. Maybe my sister will visit. My family doesn’t believe I’ll finish school. They don’t even know what I’m studying.
I don’t think my mom will ever change. Years ago, my dad told us to not talk to each other. That we’re better off in no contact. My dad was never a part of the hurt, he just never stopped it. Sometimes said sorry after, but never stood up for me. Which is worse, to commit the crime or to see it happening and not stop it?
”Having the courage to dismiss what insults your soul is a matter of life and death”Glennon Doyle
February 3rd
There have been omens in my path
Maybe good, probably bad
A broken mirror
Dead bees
A multitude of dead and suffering butterflies
Things often break when my life changes, drastically or so subtle I don’t notice
My jade ring broke, while I was laughing
My Bedouin beads fell off my waist while she was on top of me
Her bed, cluttered with the only thing that makes me spiritual
I knew it was over long before I was hurt
Why does it always take me so long to leave
I couldn’t stop crying, before anything had even happened
A sensitive, emotional mess and I hated myself and who I became
When I forsake myself
My body remembers, as it always does
Not being able to move once it was really over
Could I have really ever known what it meant to love, before this? Before I knew what it was like giving someone a second chance and knowing that it will never work out. I think this is life, and love. To acknowledge that love is not enough, and the things we value become who we are. We believe we understand why we’re on Earth when we know love, we’ve reached the extent of humanity when we have a connection that will never die.
Love is never enough. We are taught as children it is all we need, that without it we have nothing. I read somewhere once that everything in the entire universe is about love, and when it’s not, it’s about the absence of love. But what if there is love, so much, and yet it’s still not enough? I believe this is when we come to understand our existence.
February 5th
The five caryatid sisters stand with an empty space in the middle of their exhibition. Their sister is gone, stolen. It cannot be helped but to imagine these statues miss their sister, as humans often put empathy onto inanimate objects. We seek connection, in every setting. It’s our nature to yearn for more than who we are. Each one is missing limbs, one without a ribcage, another with only one breast. We are ourselves, just as much as we are others. My sisters stand together. I know this because I stand from afar, pondering why they call their sister back. I could put them in a museum, sit and stare for hours. I could stay for days and would never know why they would want their sister back. Is it just empathy? Sympathy, the only reason being that we have the same blood? I can see their lack of pieces. Their eyes and noses blown off, arms cut off at the elbows or shoulder blades. At what point did I become so broken they believed me to be lost? Now they feel obligated to ask me to come back. I have no place beside them.
February 9th
Last night I had a dream that I called my mom and told her I’m in my second year of college. I don’t remember her response, or if there was one. In the morning, when the fire engines across the street light up my room red and white, I stretch my body across the carpet. Seagulls call out to each other and remind me I’m not home. My body looks like my older sister’s. When I was a child I’d stare at her hips and wonder if I’d ever have any, jealous of her having breasts and when she wore mascara. I see my oldest sister when I sprawl out on the floor. I don’t hate my body but I hate that it’s the same as hers. I hate that my face looks like my mom’s, and that she sees it too. I’m careful to never make certain facial expressions, for fear of seeing my siblings. My teeth and eyes are the same as my younger sister’s, but she got braces. I hear one of my sister’s voices every time I talk, and the tones of their laughs when I find something funny. I don’t hate my body, but with each movement I’m reminded I am myself just as much as I am them.
And my brothers, I feel them in my emotions when I can’t find the words to express myself. I can see their solemness in my spirit, and I know how everyone else feels about it. Is it a trait from our father? I have my mother’s anger and my father’s distance, I think we all do.
–
If it was a Sunday
I’d be in my dress
My dad in the garage, with a deer’s head in his hands
I know the smell of boiling antlers
Once a year he put down the deceased animals, to take my hands and carve a wooden car
I would sand it for hours until my dress was covered with white with dust
It never won the race but it was my favorite week of the year, the week spent in his garage
What is the strangest animal he’s ever had?
When he was 20, it was a skull full of maggots
At 6 I learned to kill a rabbit
At 7 I learned to pour alcohol over a butterfly to kill it, preserving it
At 10 I learned to skin a deer
At 15 I learned he could paint. His specialty being animal eyes
Glass eyeballs, of deers and bears, painted with the finest pointed paint brush
How many chances do we give love?
All my favorite artists reuse verses in their songs
February 14th
I moved to San Francisco
I feel less lonely here talking briefly to strangers on the bus than I did sleeping in the same bed as someone who was supposed to love me
I feel like less of a person when I beg to be loved
The greatest loss of my life will never be romantic
I’m woken by my nightmares
Looking my family in the face
And defending who I am, my existence
–
How do I move on, when I’m told that me not being there, could be the reason someone else is inflicted with the same things I once experienced. I now deal with the fact that my pain was so clear and obvious, that when I left, everyone knew it would need somewhere else to go. When someone you love dies, where does the love go? And when someone you couldn’t love, leaves, where do you continue to inflict the pain? Find the nearest source, the next best thing.
Maybe that’s why I find all the dead butterflies and bees. The pain has been inflicted and they left. They’ll spend their afterlife being a museum on my walls. I’ll spend my life collecting them. Do you damage a butterfly’s wings, take its ability to fly, and ask it to come back? Or make the bee sting you, and expect it to live?
Betsy Bauman 
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