Full Info & Teasers for “Variations of Time and Nature"
I’m so excited to release this anthology of short stories and poems directly linked to my paranormal drama novel, Ripped in Two. Though it is written by me, the work was fictionally created by Elijah, a main character from Ripped in Two. The stories and poems add further insight into his relationships and points of view.
Variations of Time and Nature is presented in four sections: “Winds of the Past,” “Waters of Today,” “Fires of Tomorrow,” & “Earth Ever-Changing.” In each, poems build up to a climatic short story at the end. I’ve picked four poems to showcase here as teasers. Click play below to hear me read them.
There are also two interviews after the poems, one with the super insightful Dwane Rodriguez and the other with the amazingly talented Meka Nism! Lastly, as a bonus teaser in this blog, I’ve also included the short story “The Lake.” Read away!
Poem reading selection from the “Winds of the Past” section.
LOOKING AT SELF-PORTRAIT
I remember a time
When time meant nothing
Nothing was everything.
Everything had endless possibilities.
Endless possibilities carried the meaning of life
Water was scarce then
You had to know exactly where to look
Sand was everywhere, filling everything.
The warmth it had, dangerous and beautiful
Amongst its grains was the Devil
Above the sweeping wind was the heavenly sky
The clear sky
Blue as the sea
Desired to reflect the green of possible trees
Luscious trees seeding fruits of laughter.
Eventually burnt or cut down by desperation and madness
From a distance, I see myself
Slightly visible, barely there
With my feet deep in the sand
Arms raised to the sky
Searching for meaning
Seeking my purpose
In that world, life carried endless possibilities
Endless possibilities were everything I had to hold on to
Even if everything turned to nothing
Having nothing still meant I had time
I remember that time
I chose to be there alone
Being tossed about by the wind
My path obstructed by the unknown
Now I choose the company of focus.
Standing ground in the moment
Looking back as I forge ahead
Poem reading selection from the “Waters of Today” section.
MESSAGE SPREAD
The Statue of Liberty took the cue
Her ideals black and blue
With a serious look dashed upon her face.
And inquisitive sadness within her state
Her body aching…
Her mind racing…
The people asked, “Lady Liberty, why so somber?”
She answered, “People have forgotten here and yonder
That enlightenment should create the law.”
Then she widely opened her jaw
Her body aching…
Her mind racing…
Angrily, she shouted, “While you move about the city,
I stare at the same view of you with pity.
Look inward and change things up.
Before you know it, days will pass, and you’ll be stuck.”
Her body aching…
Her mind racing…
The people said, “Calm down, just take a seat.”
Firmly, she stood. “I am not allowed to rest or skip a beat.
The time is now, not in the near future.
Learn from another’s culture and spangling features.”
Her body aching…
Her mind racing…
She turned her gaze up and ahead
Holding her book and torch, hoping her message would spread
While the people below
Held up their phones and took photos to post and show
Poem reading selection from the “Fires of Tomorrow” section.
GLOBAL WARMING
Read all about it!
It’s coming tomorrow!
Be prepared for the last ticking of the clock
Be prepared for the first sound of disturbance down the block
Tank tops in winter, summers of rain
Fast Food Fashion will become a popular chain
There will be a party to recycle and reuse.
There will be a party to dumpster dive and recluse
Read all about it!
It’s coming tomorrow!
Just look at the signs of ice melting and face masking
Just look at the signs of raging fires and rubber tires
The coral bygone, the drought in the cities
Let’s spend some more money to get bigger titties
Rises in prices of palm and baby oil
Rises in prices of medicine and gasoline
Read all about it!
It’s coming tomorrow!
The underground with lots of lava and larva
The underground with loss of permafrost and bedrock
Have you seen the bees, koalas, and polar bears?
Where did they go? I just saw them, I swear
The aboveground with lots of floods and drugs
The aboveground with loss of trees and streets
Read all about it!
It’s coming tomorrow!
The countries compete for the highest earthquakes and hurricanes
The countries compete for the hottest blazes and financial shakes
There will be so much fun when we all quarantine
Unemployment will equal alcohol, movie streaming will be morphine
The countries compete for the lowest population and organization
The countries compete for the coldest defamation and degradation
Read all about it!
It’s coming tomorrow!
Poem reading selection from the “Earth Ever-Changing” section.
FROM WHERE IT CAME AND TO WHERE IT WENT
That shirt came from somewhere
It didn’t just one day appear
It was made in the outskirts of a big city in Taiwan
But the cotton came from a small town in India
They put it in a box and shipped it off to Turkey
That succulent wine came from far away
It didn’t come from anywhere near
It was bottled in Italy
But the grapes were also used for jam
Now put on biscuits eaten all over England
This chair over here
Has been through more than you and me
It was built in a factory in Peru
With wood chopped in Brazil
It’s sold in many stores in the provinces of Canada
That sushi roll didn’t swim to that plate
It joined forces with ingredients from overseas
The rice from a plantation in Vietnam, the fish from a sea in China
The fish eggs were gathered in Scotland.
The soy in the sauce concocted in Bolivia
That pen that you write with has stories to tell
The ink was produced by the people of Holland
The plastic material created in the Netherlands
Some of it is used over there, but some of it
Got on a plane and landed in the capital of Portugal
That gorgeous ring wasn’t born on your finger
The gems and stones were found in South Africa
The gold was gathered in Ghana
Then assembled in Switzerland
Someone got on one knee and proposed in New Zealand
That movie you watched was filmed in Romania
Based on a play from Russia and cast in the Ukraine
The screenplay was written by writers from Spain
The director was from Cuba who grew up in the U.S.
It was first released in a lavish film festival in France
From where it came and to where it went.
From here, from over there
It could’ve come from anywhere
Like us, it’s a mix, a medley, a collection
An interesting blend, a beautiful confection
INTERVIEW WITH MEKA NISM
We talk about channeling in writing, spirituality in character development, empowered female leads, future projects, and more.
INTERVIEW WITH DWANE RODRIGUEZ
We talk about the original concept and creation, current events affecting the psychological aspects of the work, writing through another character's voice, cover design, and more.
Short story selection from the “Waters of Today” section.
THE LAKE
Sunday night’s lover
On a bright Tuesday morning
A sharp scent hovers
He woke up. Since Sunday night it’s gotten more difficult to sleep. He forgot to close the curtains and the sunrise pierced through his eyelids with its rays. Frankie pulled the bedsheets off him. He laid for a minute more, thinking of Catherine. Two days have passed since that night, the moments they shared together still fresh in his mind.
Frankie went camping on Friday. His birthday was on Saturday—a let’s-not-really-talk-about-it thirty-six years old lone celebration. Two days in the woods by Buckley Dunton Lake was what he needed. August existed for this very reason—to go out and reconnect with nature. On the way, he thought of stopping at the Dream Away Lodge in the town of Becket, Massachusetts, for a hearty meal, but he took too long to get out of New York. The sun would soon set, and a better course of action would be to go straight to the camp site and set up for the night.
He loved New York. He lived a little above the heart of it all in the Upper West Side. His place was at the corner of 66th and Amsterdam, a short walk to Lincoln Center. His parents bought that two-bedroom apartment in the city when they were in their thirties and it’s been the only place Frankie has ever lived in. Since his parents moved out, he’s had the place to himself. It meant more time to look inward and devote to evolving; a blessing and a bit of a curse. It can get tiresome to face oneself.
His parents moved to Italy to live in Tuscany when they retired six years ago. They adored wine and originally met in Florence while studying abroad in college. Going back to that region melted their hearts with joy. The only issue was their son. Frankie insisted that he would be fine without them. He was a full-grown man after all. They called every couple of days on video chat, which he looked forward to. He loved them and missed them, but he had his writing to keep him going.
Many things influenced his writing, the latest being the events from this past weekend. Sitting down by the kitchen counter to have his morning coffee, Frankie recalled one of his earliest influential memories. Back in 2005, in the middle of the night of his tenth birthday, Frankie watched Poltergeist. The Hopper and Spielberg masterpiece, which is what Frankie called it, was the first film to affect him in a way he could not control. He went into the viewing as if it was nothing he couldn’t handle. Why did everyone make such a big deal about it? Watching that family’s story filled him with wonder. There were plenty of scares, but those were fun and more exciting than he had originally imagined! As soon as the Freeling family tossed the TV out of the hotel room at the end of the movie, Frankie clapped quietly and turned off his laptop. He was a big boy now, unafraid of any scary movies.
He creeped out of his room and turned the light in the bathroom. He ate a bag of caramel popcorn during the movie and drank a liter of Coke. He’d probably get in trouble in the morning for taking in so much sugar, but he didn’t care right now. He peed, then squeezed some toothpaste onto his toothbrush. He heard his mom in the back of his mind reminding him to floss.
“I’m skipping it,” he said. “It’s my birthday and I can do whatever I want. ‘Move into the light, Carol Anne!’”
He smiled remembering the film, rinsed his mouth, and turned off the light. When he entered his bedroom, his curtain moved as if a breeze had blown through them. That would’ve been fine, except the windows were shut. Maybe the breeze came from somewhere else? No need to be afraid though. There were no monsters or ghosts he couldn’t tackle. He looked at his bed and imagined one of his toys creeping up from under it to attack him.
“Stop,” he stumped his foot, “you’re a big man. Don’t get all freaky on me now.”
He dashed to his bed with goosebumps on his arms. He pulled the sheets over his body and closed his eyes. A few seconds later, he saw a flash of light dash across the room, bright enough to notice with his eyes shut. He opened them and saw nothing for a moment. But as he was closing them again, another flash came out of his wall and disappeared into the ceiling. He barely caught it, but it was there. Before he could think of what to do, another flash came out of his closet and entered his laptop. Then, many more appeared from all sorts of directions. He screamed as loud as could for his parents. They both ran into his bedroom with bulged eyes from having been awoken by their screaming child in the middle of the night.
“What is it, little booger?” His father stood in the center of the room. His father gave him that nickname a couple of months ago when they both picked their nose at the same time. They caught each other doing it and the nicknames stuck.
His mom sat at his bedside. “Are you all right?”
He told them about the movie, how he wanted to prove he was big enough to watch it, but now he swore that were ghosts in his bedroom. Frankie apologized numerous times. His parents calmed him down.
“Aw, you’ll be all right, little booger. It’s probably your brain projecting the idea of the ghosts because of the movie. You’re okay. Smile for me, little booger.” His father gave him a hug and he did feel a little better. But the images of ghosts still hung about in the back of his mind, waiting to come back out if the lights were turned off.
“I’m sorry, big booger,” little booger said, hugging him back. His dad went to bed a few minutes later, but his mom caressed his hair for almost thirty minutes. She didn’t stop until he fell asleep.
Frankie smiled at recalling his ten-year-old self. How innocent he was then. At thirty-six, it has become extremely rare to have a horror movie creep him out so much. He sipped his coffee and thought of Catherine. Just the memory of seeing her body in the moonlight got him going in this lonely morning in New York.
“Poltergeist. I haven’t seen that in at least twenty years.” Frankie took his coffee and buckled down on the couch, where a fresh copy of the Sunday New York Times eagerly awaited to be read. Sure, it was Tuesday, but he was so preoccupied with Catherine in his mind since he arrived from camping Sunday night, he had not bothered to read it. He browsed through the Arts & Entertainment Guide section. He was aware that in 2031 it was a bit old-fashioned to have a physical copy of the paper, but he grew up with the Sunday Times in his household. Leafing through it was a tradition he did not want to let go of. He saw that the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas—a movie arthouse a few blocks from him—would be playing a Paranormal Activity marathon the coming weekend.
Frankie remembered that the original film was the second thing he could think of that influenced him growing up. He was unable to watch another horror movie since Poltergeist. It wasn’t until four years later in 2009, at the age of fourteen, that Frankie had the courage to experience a new scare fest. His girlfriend, Jennifer, who loved horror, invited him to see Paranormal Activity in the theaters. The film resembled Poltergeist in the sense that it involved another suburban family haunted by a spirit. Afraid of looking girlie in front of his girlfriend, Frankie first went to the movie the day before without her.
“Did you like it?” Jennifer took a sip of soda as the credits rolled.
“Yeah,” Frankie replied confidently.
“You didn’t really jump at any of the scary moments.” Jennifer felt something was up.
That symbolized their year-long relationship—Jennifer could not shake the feeling that Frankie constantly hid things from her. He acted cool and collected all the time, but something in his voice changed when Jennifer questioned him about anything.
“I don’t know, Frankie,” Jennifer said on the last day they saw each other. “It’s just not working out.”
“I don’t know what else to do.” Frankie sat by the fountain at Lincoln Center with her.
“And I don’t want to be friends.” She saw Frankie’s heart break at that. “It’s just too hard for me.”
“Wow, Catherine of the Lake. I can’t believe you’re making me think of all this stuff.” His meeting two days ago was stirring a lot in his heart, body, and soul. Frankie put the Sunday New York Times down and allowed his memories to take over his morning.
Frankie recalled that another four years later, when he turned eighteen, a woman named Martha came into his life. That relationship was even shorter. Martha felt Frankie wasn’t in touch with his feelings and wanted someone warmer.
Frankie started going to a therapist to figure all that out in the fall of 2013. After nearly two years of sessions, the therapist concluded that Frankie’s fear of being viewed as someone lesser than or not brave enough came from a need to impress his dad. The therapist told him that this was quite common—how parents’ demands on their child can counter-react in various ways. The good news was, now that he knew what made him appear to be a young man with calculated and premeditated emotions, he could change that. So, he did.
He went into his twenties sleeping around with many women. At twenty-five, he recalled the number of conquests was at ninety-six. By his twenty-ninth birthday, he had lost count, but assumed he was closer to two hundred. But as thirty neared, a sense of dread slowly took over his bedroom, his life, his mind. After so many women, his spirit lost touch with his emotions yet again. Except this time, he refused to see a therapist. He wanted to fall in love but found himself unable to. If soulmates existed, wouldn’t that person be able to yank him out of this misery and get his heart aflutter? If that was the case, then why see a therapist? It’d just be a waste of time.
In 2025, on his thirtieth birthday, his parents announced they were moving to Italy. Frankie expected it. They had talked about that plan for years and were house hunting for the last few months. Frankie congratulated them, saying how happy he was for this next chapter in their lives, but his mother saw something else in his eyes.
“You can come visit anytime,” his mom said as she sat at his bedside caressing his hair as they talked.
“I know.” The caress reminded him of that Poltergeist night long ago.
“You’ll have the whole place to yourself now.” She winked.
“Yeah, that might be fun. Expect me at Christmas, though.” He winked back.
That was six years ago. He has visited them five times, about once a year. He loved Florence and could see himself maybe one day residing there, too. But not quite yet. More to journey through in the rapid waters of life in New York—a river of souls, waterfall-ridden at the brink of a major breakdown at any moment.
Frankie got up and tossed the paper away. He took the last gulp of his coffee and wondered if he should eat something. He opened the fridge, but nothing stood out to him. He opted for a shower instead.
“Why do I have this nice bathtub if I never use it?” He filled up the tub and stepped in. As he relaxed, he thought of Catherine again. “Ugh, am I going to stop thinking about her?”
Frankie didn’t really have many friends. They slowly faded away year after year. A lot of people move in and out of New York on a daily basis. Frankie was someone who found it hard to keep in touch if you weren’t physically around—an out of sight, out of mind kind of guy. A couple of buddies, whom he cared for still remained. They went out to dinner and caught up every now and then. But because those buddies had girlfriends now, and one of them would soon be engaged, Frankie imagined they too would see less and less of each other.
Being in the bathtub reminded him of Buckley Dunton Lake. How he enjoyed spending time there. Just the thought of it relaxed his entire body. Buckley Dunton Lake in Beckett, MA, carried a number of memories Frankie was fond of. His family usually rented a house in the Berkshires for the summer. So much to do in that gorgeous, mountainous area during that time of year!
For six summers, from the ages of eleven to sixteen, Frankie went to a boys’ sports camp in Becket, which he enjoyed very much. His love for nature was birthed there. He spent many nights staring at the stars before he went to bed in his bunk. One summer, his bunkmates called him Star Boy. Playing sports was something he was great at—literally any sport. People at the camp told Frankie that he should pursue a career in sports, but he never felt keen toward it. His last year at the camp in 2011, Frankie decided to become an actor.
He didn’t go to college for it but took a number of acting classes in New York throughout 2012 and 2013. He met Martha, the woman who eventually led him to go to therapy, in one of those classes. Just like Martha’s perception of Frankie, the feedback from the acting instructors was the same—Frankie lacked range of emotions. He gave up that career path nine months after his first class. He was not about to waste years of his life in a profession that was clearly not for him. If many people told you that you don’t have the talent to do something, just stop and do something else. Believe in yourself only worked for Frankie if others believed in what he was doing. Affirmation meant confirmation.
“I want to be a writer,” Frankie told his parents on his eighteenth birthday dinner.
“Whatever you want, Frankie.” His mom took a bite of her steak, happy to hear he had a new direction to pursue, though not very confident it would lead anywhere.
“You’ll be great at anything you do, little booger.” His dad gulped the last of his cabernet.
“I want season tickets to anything Lincoln Center has to offer.” Frankie’s eyes were abruptly fiery. “If I’m going to be a writer, I want to see every performance they have. It’s crazy that I barely go anymore. I think the last time I went was a couple of years ago.”
“Yes, we’re right next door.” His mom dipped her bread on olive oil and balsamic.
Alongside going to therapy for the next two years, Frankie saw every performance possible. He experienced creating all different forms of writing—a play, short stories, poetry, even a novella.
In the summer of 2015, he took a job as a stage doorman for a Broadway show. His parents had plenty of money and Frankie didn’t need to work. He was single, straight, good looking, and had just turned twenty. Some of the actresses naturally took notice. Frankie ended up sleeping with eight of them in three months. The friction and jealousy between the ladies escalated to the point of heated drama. They also felt they had been played by Frankie. In his mind, he had done nothing wrong. He was clear that he didn’t want a relationship and told them that he would be seeing other women. Eventually, Frankie was fired. A lot of good work therapy had done. Here he was, back in the same place, alone and misunderstood.
“Thank God, I have writing in my life.” Resting his head on the bathtub, Frankie wished to be back at the lake again. He tried to think of what his life would’ve been like without writing in it. He couldn’t come up with an answer. Was Catherine right about what she said to him his past weekend? Her words reverberated in his mind. Whether she was right or not, she definitely triggered him to reconsider the way he’d been looking at life.
He thought of when he was twenty-one. 2016 had been such an important year for him. That was when he went to a talkback with a Haiku poet—whom he had never heard of until then—that he fell in love with the artform of Haiku. The poems where concise and to the point. They consisted of three lines—two with five syllables and one with seven. One of the lines—usually the last, though not necessarily—was a bit detached in theme from the other two. But together, they made a specific, targeted point, one message.
He compiled a modest poetry anthology called In Between the Lines of New York. His father connected him to a publisher friend, and they did a modest release in 2018. It wasn’t a smash hit, but enough copies were sold to justify the publisher’s interest in another anthology down the road. All the poems in the anthology used his perceptions of New York as subject matter. The very first poem in it was a Haiku.
High Line Park’s flowers
Spring blooms in a prim walkway
Tourists push and shove
Not bad for a twenty-three-year-old poet who had never written a poem until a couple of years ago. The last in the seventy-poem anthology—with thirty of them being Haiku—closed the work with what a critic described as “A well-deserved slap in the face of the city.”
New Year’s Eve fireworks
New York blasts colors and lights
Subway rats scatter
Two more anthologies were published. The second, Picking Up Where I Left Off, in 2020 when Frankie was twenty-five and the third, Garbage Day, in 2024 at twenty-nine. They both did modestly well, each better than the previous one.
After that, he decided to dive into a novel. He worked on it for seven years, with various drafts and revisions and a whole lot of poetic flair. It was titled The Lake, a suspenseful love story. The plot surrounded the whereabouts of a lake where only good souls were allowed to peacefully enter. Bad souls were sucked in never to come out again. There was a leader, owner of the lake, who differentiated between the good and bad souls.
Frankie used Buckley Dunton Lake as inspiration. He camped there during the last seven summers. During the colder months, if he wanted to be close to Buckley Dunton, he stayed at the Dream Away Lodge since it was about a five-minute drive to the lake.
After a total of four drafts, he was still not satisfied with the ending. In every version of the last chapter, he killed the main character, a woman named Catherine, the leader of the lake. Determined to finally crack the ending, he arrived at the lake this past weekend. He pitched his tent, then heated up some beans and rice with shredded pork leftover from lunch.
A full moon shone above him as he sat by the shore. Questions of doubt floated over the peaceful waters this hot summer evening. How come he had not been in a relationship in over fifteen years? He was a writer whose work was filled with emotion. Hadn’t he conquered the emotional blocks in his mind? If so, how come his connection to women bounced from sexual desire to detachment? Were his parents to blame in some way? He concluded not. This was his doing somehow, his own fault. He wrote a Haiku.
Warm July evening
The lake keeps peacefully still
Critical heart rate
About a two-minute walk from where he sat, there was a small dock. A woman appeared. She walked to the edge of the dock, looked up at the moon, and took her shirt off. Frankie was taken aback. She proceeded to get fully naked and jump into the water. Did she know he was watching? She dove under and casually swam about. The full moon accompanied her bathing with its splendor.
Frankie’s lustful heart beat fast. His blood rushed to his groin. The sight was so filled with poetic vividness that he found himself entranced with emotions he had not felt in years. It was like having a mermaid seduce a seaman.
“Hey there!” The woman waved at him.
“Hey… there.” Frankie stumbled over his words a bit at the unexpected hello.
“I’m Catherine.”
“Frankie.” The fact that her name was the same as the main character in his novel caught him even more off guard.
“Are you alone?” she asked, slowly making her way through the water toward him.
“Yeah. Are you?” He was extremely turned on. She nodded that she was by herself. “Aren’t you afraid to be alone in the middle of the woods?”
“Aren’t you?” She laughed. “I’m a black belt. Any guy who’d fuck with me would end up fucking himself. Get out of those clothes and join me.”
Frankie laughed. He stood and took off his clothes. He stepped in the water. It was cold. He did not want to seem less of a man and forced his way into it, but his body shivered so much it was impossible to hide it.
“Hey you.” Catherine shook his hand. “Wow, you’re freezing.”
“No, I’m not.” His lower jaw trembled. Catherine laughed.
“All right, let’s get out. I’m warm you out there.” She walked out of the lake and turned back to him. Her body glistened in the moonlight. She extended her hand as he came out of the lake. Frankie was about to ask where she was from and how come he had never met her before when she interrupted.
“Don’t ask me anything.” She pressed her lips against his. “Be here with me. Feel this night. Let it enter you.”
They made wild love by the shore. The once placid water waved with excitement at the sight of the lovers. Afterward, they went into his tent and made love again. He asked her if they should get her clothes she left at the dock, but she didn’t care about them. They would be there in the morning.
Frankie said he was a writer. He was working on his first novel and the lake was part of it. He told her Catherine was the name of the protagonist. He didn’t know how to end the novel, but tonight he finally figured it out. Catherine should live in the tale. She was a magical creature and deserved to go on. Let others perish.
Frankie also disclosed that he had never felt this way. Sex to him had become blasé. He thanked her for such ecstasy as tonight’s.
“My pleasure.” She kissed his finger. “It’s interesting you felt that way toward sex… blasé. I mean, you being an artist and all.”
“I think maybe I’ve felt so much that my feelings became dormant. You changed that somehow. It’s crazy that I can know that, but I do.” If he went a third time with her tonight, it would be a record for him. “Stay with me this weekend.”
“I’ve got to leave in the morning.” She casually placed his hand over her belly. “I’m only passing through.”
“Can I have your number?”
“No. Let this be what it is. We met for a reason, and I want this night to stay magical.” She blew him a kiss. “You’ve found an ending to your novel.”
“But...”
This feeling you’re experiencing would not last if we took it any further than here.” She turned over and looked him dead in the eyes. “Take what the universe is giving you. Use it in your work. Revise your novel and really turn me into this mythical being who will live forever in the minds of your readers. That would make this evening eternally special.”
“I would trade my novel for a lifetime with you.”
“You shouldn’t say things like this,” she said, smacking him on the shoulder. “The universe is always listening, and that kind of crap is candy to its ears. You’ve already found the love of your life. It’s writing, your passion.”
“Yes, but that’s different…”
“It’s not.”
“What if I said I love you?” He smiled and she laughed.
“I’d leave.” Catherine seductively bit his chest and sat on top of him. “Listen to me very carefully, Frankie, because this is a message from the gods. True love is not always found in another person. Sometimes it’s found in your passion. The work that lifts you up to the skies, allows you to see the world with fresh eyes, and challenges you at every moment. That can be your ultimate soulmate, your work.”
She kissed him and they made love a third time. When he woke up, she was already gone. But there was a note.
Frankie,
Give your passion all the love it deserves. Only then, will you love someone else and allow them to love you back, the way you both deserve.
Catherine of the Lake
He came out of the bathtub, dried himself, went to his bedroom, and laid down. He wondered if he would ever see her again. What if his soulmate was his writing? Should he have insisted in exchanging numbers with her? What if she was simply playing a game and wanted Frankie to be persistent? Up until now, Frankie had not been very lucky in cracking a woman’s mind, unless it was through fiction. This Catherine of the Lake was the same. But what she said to him had already begun to change him.
Frankie never saw her again, but she remained in his memory. In 2032, The Lake was released and became a success. The dedication of the novel stated, “To Catherine of the Lake, who changed my life forever.”
Frankie wrote seven more novels through the course of the next twelve years, always recalling that night by Buckley Dunton Lake.
In the summer of 2044, Frankie traveled to Italy to write his eighth novel, The Vineyard. It was about a winery in Tuscany whose grapes were poisoned and controlled the minds of the people in town. He decided to live in Florence near his parents while he wrote that novel. To be in the landscape in which it was set was a bonus he could not deny himself. His parents were overjoyed to have him by their side.
On his forty-ninth birthday, Frankie started his morning having breakfast at a café in Florence. He had already finished eating and was reading the New York Times on his phone when a woman with a coffee and pastry in her hands looked for a place to sit. There weren’t any open tables.
“Excuse me, you can sit here if you’d like.” He stood and motioned for her to take his table. “I’m on my way out.”
“Grazie.” She smiled thankfully. “You are American? I’m Vera..”.
“Frankie.” They shook hands.
“Please sit. Stay for breakfast.”
“Oh, I’m done…”
“Would be nice to practice my English.” She sat. “Drink another coffee. Why not?”
“You’re Italian..”.
“Of course, I am! And very proud of it.” She tapped the table. “Sit.”
“Well, I’ve a lot to do today…”.
“Americano, the universe gives you and me one moment. Prendilo, Frankie, okay? Take it. Today is special day.” Vera brushed her hair with her hands.
“Okay, only for a moment.” He felt himself beaming out of nowhere. What was he in a hurry for? He could hang out a bit. Why not?
Frankie’s breakfast with Vera lasted over two hours. He mentioned it was his birthday and she bought him another coffee to celebrate. She unabashedly shared she was the same age as he—her birthday had been a few weeks before. They took a walk afterward and spent the rest of the day together.
They talked about his passion of writing and she of her passion for chemistry. She had been a professor at the University of Florence all her life. Though she retired, she volunteered at the United Nations with various research projects. They saw each other the next day and many times for the rest of that year and fell in love.
As their relationship grew and was tested, they understood more and more that their passions would always come first. As they got to know each other, they realized that being second didn’t necessarily mean a bad thing. Second was still very good, and the first passion was what drove them to wake up in the morning and be who they were. Writing and chemistry kept them interested in life and young at heart in many ways. To be able to have this urgent passion, to share it with a partner who understood it was a divine match indeed. Frankie realized that Catherine of the Lake was right after all. They would’ve not been a good match. She knew it then, and he knew it now. He wandered if that mysterious woman ever got to read his novels.
Frankie and Vera realized more and more as they went that they didn’t mind coming in second. If they ever felt they were getting in the way of each other’s first love, they gladly stepped momentarily aside, knowing that at the end of the day, they would back in each other’s arms.
In that mindset, Frankie and Vera got married on his fiftieth birthday, a year after they met. On the morning of the wedding, he maintained his distance as to not see the bride until the ceremony, as per tradition. But he sent her a poem, which she kept the rest of her life.
Raising my passion
A new muse flares up my work.
Chemistry is love
A GRATEFUL THANK YOU
to those who gave the drafts of this anthology a read and circled back to me with valuable feedback:
Suzanne Fiore, Melinda Grace, Matt Rodriguez, Dwane Rodriguez, & Judson Evans, as well as, Michelle Strier & Adrienne Scalo for feedback on “Visions from a Smoking Flame,” & Jake Marks on “Cambio.”
Also thank you to Alora Kate for the striking book cover & Silvia Curry for the spot on editing job!
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