Guernica

My memories are scattered. Sometimes they show up as sharp fragments, bloody and jagged, lost pieces of time. Other times, the past grows hazy and slips away when I try to hold on. My mind feels like an abstract painting, and I have no idea who created it.

I walk alone through Bilbao, the streets uneven beneath me. My Tivas dig into my feet, straps leaving red marks I’ll find later, reminders that I was here.

Pebbles shift under my steps, tiny echoes of all the pieces I carry inside. Each movement pulls at something old, something I thought I’d left behind.

The air is thick, smoky, pressing into my lungs. Everywhere I look, there are fragments—shards of things, of people. Blood on metal, heat rising. Even the faces around me seem unfinished, as if everyone is made from scraps. The world outside leaks into the world inside me. Both are scattered, both incomplete.

I am my own small world. Love, grief, memory—these are the things I hold. Words and air, snowflakes that drift down and melt before I can touch them.

At first, it’s a party. People bring food, flowers, and booze. They clean, cook, and ask, wanting to know. Books arrive; walks are suggested. They plan the memorial, stay by your side. Like a birthday party, a memorial celebrates a life.

After the memorial, the world shifts. Friends slip away, returning to their own routines, showing up only on weekends. The phone sits silent. Walks get shorter, then vanish. No more casseroles, no foil-wrapped leftovers waiting in the fridge. Flowers droop, water rings left behind on the counter. 

How are you doing? People still ask, voices softer, but they don’t wait for the answer. Their words drift back to errands, dinners, the business of living. I stand just outside, watching, unchanged, as if I’m behind glass.

But my life isn’t there to return to. It’s gone. It won’t come back.

Who do I cook for now? No one stands beside me at the stove. The kitchen is too quiet. At first, there was only shock. Now the phone is cold, silent, no more silly messages lighting up the screen. I feel everything, then nothing, learning the shape of the empty space. Routine molds me. Outside, life keeps moving, as if nothing happened.

Then, somehow, things start to look normal again. The world keeps moving, and I watch from the window. Something unsettled lingers in the air. I cry less. I laugh sometimes, but the hollow stays. I listen to a podcast, eat breakfast, try to fill the emptiness with small rituals. This new normal never matches what’s inside me.

Life keeps going, and so do I. I carry loss and whatever strength I have, step by step.

Shock and disbelief have faded. I’m not numb anymore. The wounds are hidden under skin, but the ache is still there. My mind clings to blurry, aching pictures.

Memories. Trees. Babies. So much beautiful food. Love. Hate. Sadness.

So many memories are fading, breaking down like old photographs left in a drawer. The pictures I used to see clearly now blur together, shifting from sharp color to washed-out black and white.

I know I’ll remember it all again. Each time I reach for a memory, it changes shape. Nothing stays the same. Every visit shifts the scene—old pictures replaced, blurred by new feelings.

My friends go out to dinner. They drive to the lake for the day. They eat at home or at someone else’s table. They slip back into their own worlds. Mine is just too fucking quiet.

I stand still in front of Guernica. My mind keeps circling back to Bilbao, again and again. Maybe I’m trying to find the memories I lost.

Now, when I look at photos of the Guggenheim Bilbao—whether in my mind or from the times I was really there—I see the building’s soft, flowing lines. I can almost feel the curve, cool and smooth under my hand.

The tragedies of war never fully disappear. 

Amnesia Or Time Travel

I’m not myself. I’m not Michelle Kathleen O’Kane. I’m just a foggy picture of whatever I once was. 

Now I’m a fading, static instant photograph. Shake it like a Polaroid picture. Words inside my head shake. Letters and punctuation and quotation marks floating around this turbulent area behind the bones of my skull. 

The universe, inside my head, is a flat Polaroid picture. I’m searching for light to force emulsion. But this empty brain inside this skull is dark. To dark to develop the lives of all the versions of myself I've lived. Now I’m collecting layers—negative and positive layers, which help me diffuse into the infinitely developing images. My lives.

Time travel is complex. Memories are never the same place twice. 

This place. This soft gray shawl, my WIP on my bed. On my west elm side table a book waits to be read. Dare To Surrender. By Lilly Feisty. Me.

Me Before and Me After incessantly converse about me. I wake up while driving in various cars, and I’m always the driver. Cars. I often travel in time. I find myself in the driver's seat in incongruous cars: 72 Blue Nova, yellow VW rabbit—I got this car when my mother died. Blue Ford Ranger. New. Miata! Purchased that new, too. 

I received a bit of money when my mom died. So when I turned 18 I could spend my inheritance on whatever the fuck I wanted. I bought house. In Santa Clara. I made a garden. 

Aware. When I’m driving I surround myself with the color-changing hills. I’m humming along with Elvis Costello.  I’m watching the detectives. (The Angels Wanna Wear) my red shoes. 

I’m now pointed west, driving 92 toward Half Moon Bay. I’m various makes of cars, all of which I owned. Today I’m driving a clutch—my blue Ford Ranger. This is the car I purchased with the money I received after my mother died. 

I am now 18, and she’d died just a few months ago, while I was 17. Just before my mother died she’d received several thousand dollars, and then my brother and I inherited that money. So, of course, I spent it. 

I’ve finally come to realized and understand how crazy I am. 

I haven’t watched a movie with another person in over 5 years. I haven’t laughed with someone in as many years. A few times something I’m watching or hearing has caused the sound—the sharp chirp of a laugh. The noise scares me. Hearing my own laugh is such an unfamiliar sound that it shocks me. Then, of course, anxiety crushes those feelings and I have no idea why. Or maybe I do, but forgot. 

I’m jealous of so many things I see on TV. Landscapes and cities and people at tables with white espresso cups. 

Lives.