Venice--October 2012

 Venice

October, 2012

By October of 2012, Gina had become a ghost wearing her own face.

The woman who once filled rooms with laughter had dissolved into silence, as though the tide had carried her voice out to sea. Words lived inside her like trapped birds, beating against her ribs. She knew exactly what she wanted to scream from every rooftop, but when she opened her mouth, language shattered into fragments.

She was no longer imprisoned by walls.

She had become the prison.

Anthony had spent years laying each brick with careful hands—one rule, one insult, one threat at a time. He measured her world until there was barely enough room left for her to breathe. Friends disappeared first, especially the ones whose eyes could read the monster beneath his polished smile.

He hated witnesses.

She hated everything about him.

His rules.

His certainty.

The smug curve of his mouth.

He stood over every moment like a puppeteer above his stage, tugging invisible strings until every ending belonged to him.

Even Paolo had never escaped.

People saw privilege.

They didn't see programming.

Raised beneath impossible expectations, failure became forbidden, and perfection became a prison all its own. Addiction slipped through the cracks like floodwater. Before long it carried him toward jail cells, treatment centers, and nights spent sleeping beside garbage bins where rats became familiar companions. The handsome boy disappeared beneath hollow cheeks, broken teeth, smoke, and despair.

Their family tree bore poisoned fruit.

Its branches twisted under the weight of fear, rage, and distrust.

Gina looked at the harvest and wondered whether love had ever lived there at all.

Then Anthony began preparing for endings.

He called it practicality.

She recognized it as cruelty.

Zeus—her faithful guardian, the only soul who loved without conditions—had sores that refused to heal. Blood stained his legs while Anthony refused the simple mercy of a veterinarian. They tried every remedy they knew, but Zeus lingered, stubborn as an old oak refusing the axe.

Perhaps he understood.

Perhaps he was staying because Gina still needed someone who stood between her and the dark.

From the outside, they looked untouchable.

A Bentley gleamed in the driveway beneath a vanity plate.

A magnificent home overlooked Hawaiian water.

A beautiful boat rocked gently in the harbor.

Every year they crossed oceans together, collecting photographs of happiness like actors changing costumes.

This year, the stage was Venice.

The city floated between water and sky, its ancient palaces mirrored in quiet canals that hid unfathomable depths. Gondolas drifted like black swans through streets of liquid glass, while stone bridges arched over currents carrying centuries of whispered secrets. Venice understood beautiful things built upon fragile foundations.

There, Anthony almost resembled the man he'd promised to be.

Travel softened his edges.

For a few borrowed days, he wore humanity like an expensive suit.

But masks are heavy.

Eventually they slip.

Only Katya knew the true architecture of Gina's life.

The nightmare lay beneath it all like thin ice over black water—appearing solid until one wrong step sent everything crashing through. From a distance it glittered beautifully. Up close, it was always threatening to break.

It felt like a thriller where everyone was marked for death long before they understood the plot.

Anthony believed he was writing the final chapter.

He believed every life around him existed to serve his ending.

He was wrong.

Because beneath Gina's silence, something ancient had survived.

Not happiness.

Not certainty.

Hope.

Hope is a stubborn seed. It pushes through concrete. It splits stone. It reaches toward mālamalama even after years underground.
Anthony had mistaken her quietness for surrender.
He had confused survival with defeat. But her spirit remained kūpaʻa, rooted deep, waiting for its season to bloom.

And survivors learn what storms never understand:

Trees that bend are often the ones still standing after the wind is gone.

This was not where Gina's story ended.

It was where she quietly began writing it herself.

Postcards

 Postcards

Arrive.
Bringing
Care.
Distance
Echoes.
From elsewhere,
Gathering light.
Held
In hand,
Journeys
Kept.
Light
Memory.
Notes
Opening
Paths.
Quietly,
Returning
Summers.

Time
Unfolds.
Voices
Whisper
Xenia grace.
Yesterday
Zealously remembered.

Purple Umbrellas

 Purple Umbrellas

Lift my spirit,
purple umbrellas.
Tiny pockets of twilight
perched above white hydrangeas,
keeping the sun from stealing
their porcelain blush.

In my sister's nascent garden,
everything is practicing:
buds learning to blossom,
bees tuning their buzzing,
breezes humming backup,
while the umbrellas sway
like flowers pretending to be birds.

They make me think of Mary Poppins,
drifting over London's rooftops,
her umbrella winking at the wind
as if every gust were in on the joke.

And surely, they're cousins
those merry umbrellas and Katya,

who is, by now, somewhere over the Gunks,
zipping through blue skies
with determination in her pockets
and laughter on her sleeve,

off once again
to rescue Gina
from yet another faux paw—
the kind that leaves everyone smiling,
tails wagging,
and the whole world blooming
just a little brighter.

Because gardens know the secret:

it takes only a splash of purple,
a pinch of whimsy,
and one well-timed umbrella
to turn an ordinary day
into a song.

The Third Day

 The Third Day

On the third day
we found a radio
sleeping in the garage.

It woke
to soft music,

and the silence
opened

like dry earth
meeting rain.

The empty rooms
remembered breath.

Our hearts, too.

A dark screen
is only absence.

A song
is enough.

Show 'Em What You Got

 Show 'Em What You Got

Anthony had a job lined up before they had even left New York. Two years after they moved in together, a four-day trip to Hawaii allowed him to make it happen. While Gina toured Pearl Harbor, Anthony was busy building his future. He started by calling the local head of Sears' Home Improvement Division in Honolulu. Then he walked into the man's office and waited. 

And waited.

For hours.

His persistence finally paid off. Impressed by the young man's determination, the boss handed Anthony the number of another ambitious Italian on the other side of the island.

Anthony called immediately.

The following evening, he and Gina met Sal P. and his Japanese wife, Kiki, for dinner. Sal owned the local siding company, whose 

slogan proudly proclaimed, "Steel Is for Real."

Over dinner, Anthony's confidence filled the room. He had already proven he could communicate, but Sal still had one question.

"Can you run a company?"

Anthony never hesitated.

"I can."

Sal wasn't completely convinced, but he admired the conviction.

"Come back in a few months," he said. "I'll give you a job. Then we'll see."

It wasn't a promise easily made. Sal had heard plenty of confident talk from would-be employees over the years, but few ever lived 

up to their own words.

Anthony intended to.

The truth was that he knew nothing about installing steel siding. He was a roofer by trade. But he learned quickly, worked relentlessly, and before long had impressed the hell out of Sal.

In return, Sal became more than an employer.

He taught Anthony how to sell. He patiently corrected his terrible spelling. In another life, Sal had been an English teacher, but wanderlust had carried him far beyond the classroom. Business had become his new adventure.

The partnership flourished.

Within a few years, Anthony was running the company while Sal focused on sales. Their strengths complemented one another, and the business prospered.

Eventually, Anthony felt the pull to build something of his own.

Sal wished him well, knowing that independent spirits are rarely meant to stay in one place forever.

Soon afterward, Sal moved to Saipan to launch several new businesses. Kiki had lost her battle with an aggressive cancer, and Hawaii no longer felt like home without her. Rather than dwell on grief, Sal chose another beginning.

Anthony hired a trusted local employee and continued building his own success. Business was good, and he never let anyone forget who he believed was carrying the financial load.

As his confidence grew, so did his need to remind Gina who was responsible for their lifestyle.

He often told her he was the earner in the family, as though his paycheck gave him the final word. Eleven years older than Gina, he believed age and income entitled him to authority. What had once looked like confidence was slowly revealing itself as control.

Anthony had built his career through persistence and determination. He had earned Sal's respect by proving himself, one opportunity at a time.

At home, however, he expected respect without question.

There was a difference, though Anthony rarely saw it.

 

I'll Show You the World

 I'll Show You the World

He said, I'll show you the world,
and Gina—still soft with the faith
that good hearts recognize good hearts
mistook a wolf
for a man carrying flowers.

Anthony knew every beautiful sentence
that sickness could wear.
He stitched himself from borrowed sorrows,
made every old lover a villain,
every scar a medal,
every lie sound like survival.

She believed him.

She believed tears meant truth,
that broken men only needed love,
that promises were maps,

not traps.

So they married
before the echo of warning
could catch its own breath.

He gave her rings,
stories,
and ghosts with different names.

Lola became the monster.
Laundry became betrayal.
Cold takeout became proof.

Children became witnesses
in a courtroom built from his delusions,
where Anthony was always innocent
and someone else carried the blame.

Then came the Chevy Blazer
iron crashing through the fragile theater,
truth arriving without knocking,
headlights cutting straight through
his careful performance.

Still he called.

Still his voice wrapped itself
around her hope
like ivy around a gravestone.

Still she believed
the next apology
would be the honest one.

So they crossed an ocean together,
newly married,
chasing the paradise
he'd painted in impossible colors.

Hawaii waited,
green and breathtaking,
while beneath every postcard sunset
his darkness unpacked itself
one lie,
one wound,
one cruelty at a time.

He had promised her the world.

He never mentioned
he meant
the one he had already
set on fire.

 

Purpose Driven

 Purpose Driven

In the bicentennial year,
when flags bloomed like bright weeds
from porches, windows, courthouse lawns,
Katya moved through the city
like a small question with whiskers,
listening.

She met a man whose thirty years on Wall Street
had folded shut like a ledger at dusk;
his good shoes still shone,
but accusation followed him
like rainwater in the seams.

She met a young woman carrying degrees
as carefully as glass bowls,
only to find the cupboards bare,
the jobs gone thin as soup,
the food-stamp office lit with tired fluorescent mercy.

She met a mother of five
with three jobs knotted to her back,
her children turning keys in empty kitchens,
learning too young
how silence can sound like supper.

Rich or poor, guilty or only tired,
they carried trouble in different pockets.
Some hid it under laughter,
some under lies,
some under the hard bread of habit.

And then there was Gina—
wealthy Gina,
who lived behind gates polished bright as silver,
where roses climbed the walls
and silence learned to keep secrets.

She wore pearls at dinner
like small moons at her throat,
smiled when the room expected smiling,
and lifted crystal glasses
with hands that had learned to steady themselves.
Her house held marble floors,
fresh flowers,
locked doors,
and words sharp enough
to leave bruises no mirror could prove.
But somewhere inside her,
a window had not closed.

It was Gina who made Katya stop,
who taught her that suffering could wear perfume,
ride in black cars,
and sit beneath chandeliers without being seen.
Pity became purpose,
not like thunder,
but like a match struck in a dark room
small at first,
then certain enough
to show the way out.
No one would think to ask a cat for help;
cats belonged on windowsills,
in alleys,
in stories told to children.

What could a cat do
against fear dressed as marriage,
against a voice that closed doors,
against a mansion that felt smaller than a cage?
Perhaps not break the lock.
Perhaps not silence the voice.
But perhaps she could sit at Gina’s feet
until Gina remembered
she was not alone.

And perhaps, one morning,
Gina would open the smallest door first
a phone call,
a packed bag,
a name trusted enough to say aloud
and the house that had kept her
would become only a house,
while the road beyond it
opened like sunrise.

But Katya was brilliant
in the quiet way moonlight is brilliant
on a kitchen floor at midnight.
And Tiki, tall enough for foot pedals,
drove the Time Machine
while she planned beside him,
her paws folded like prayers.

He gave her more than motion,
more than miles bending backward.
He gave her friendship,
that small, steady lantern
money cannot buy,
and loneliness cannot blow out.