For I Am Fearless

Introduction

Several years ago now, I took one of my stories, the likes of which I’ve been making up since I was a small child, and stuck it in an unformatted Word document, which sat on my computer being fiddled with and muddled for a year before it finally composed itself into my first novel.

Before I trusted myself to publish it, though, I had to figure out how the platform worked. So, I took a little collection of poetry I’d written in grade school and stuck it, again with no formatting, online, just to see how it worked. I sold a single digital copy to my mother, and I was so proud.

Now, with seven publications under my belt and a dream of a career in the writing world well underway, I can look back at those first projects and cringe with a smile on my face. I’ve grown a lot since then – in my style and formatting, in the stories I tell, and in the life I draw them from – and looking back at my old work often feels like waving at my younger self and telling her that she’s going to be okay.

The title of this anthology is For I Am Fearless. It’s pulled from a famous Mary Shelley quote:

Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful.

It’s from Chapter 20 of Frankenstein, and it’s one of my favorite literary quotes. In that particular scene, the Monster is screaming out in anguish and fury – Victor Frankenstein has just destroyed the wife he was making to appease the monster because he feared what would come next. Victor feared a race of monsters spawned from his creations, but the Monster feared nothing at all. That, as he explains, makes him all the more powerful; where Victor’s fears held him back from giving in to the Monster's demands, the Monster’s fearlessness meant there were no rules he needed to follow.

Though significantly less morbid in the context of my life, I believe this is a powerful sentiment. Being fearless doesn’t mean that you’re perfect or making the right choices; it means that you can’t be held back from making choices that others wouldn’t consider. It means being open to the possibilities presented to you and being willing to take leaps of faith when you need to. Fearlessness encourages growth, and growth as a person is seldom a bad thing.

Wherever you are in life, I hope that you are able to find your fearlessness. Whether it’s asking that cute guy out on a date, applying for that job you don’t know if you qualify for, buying tickets to that country where you don’t speak the language, or whatever other adventure your life throws at you, I hope that you are able to look it in the eye and grin. For you are fearless, and therefore powerful enough to make your life what you want it to be.

Fearlessness has brought me a lot. I hope that I can continue to carry it with me.

Yours,

Cat

Between Spaces

Creating Between Spaces

Between Spaces is my earliest still-available collection of poetry. This was written while I was working in a bookstore in my hometown. In fact, the cover of this work is a photograph I took just outside the door of the store in Perry, GA. The lovely little cobblestone street with its classic main-street-style shops always struck me as beautiful, and I found that I adored how it looked in black and white.

The name came from one of the poems included in the work, Between Spaces. This poem was inspired by the idea of liminal spaces. Liminal is defined by Merriam-Webster as being of, relating to, or situated at a sensory threshold; barely perceptible or capable of eliciting a response, or of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition; in-between, transitional. So, it follows to reason that a liminal space is where you are when you’re on your way somewhere else. This might be a physical place – an airport, a bus stop, a 7/11 just off the highway – or it might be an emotional one – the days before you graduate from school, your final interview for a new job, deciding to move in with a partner.

I’ve loved the idea of liminal spaces since I learned of their existence, oddly enough, through a Tumblr post long since lost in the depths of the website. The post showed pictures of different liminal spaces during times when they were completely empty and commented on the fact that it was somewhat unnerving to see these places so still, and more unnerving to stay in places like that for too long. These places, different blogs decided in conversation, were meant to be passed through, and so your brain doesn’t like trying to process an extended stay there. It’s jarring. It’s not supposed to be.

I’ve spent a good portion of my life in liminal spaces. I’ve traveled overseas often enough to remember the international terminal of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport well, and domestically often enough to know that the Denver airport is too long to traverse comfortably between flights.

More importantly, though, I’ve made lots of decisions that left me emotionally in-between; I’ve pursued a chancy career (more than once!), quit jobs because I felt unvalued or morally compromised, and moved halfway across the country to be with the man I love. In each of these cases, there’s a moment just before you commit that’s utterly terrifying. You can see that everything is about to change. You can see where you might go next. You can see the plane and boarding has begun.

Between Spaces is a celebration of those moments that we tend to forget about in the aftermath – those moments of not yet. Here’s to remembering our liminal spaces.

Sitting there outside the door

Sitting there outside the door

I wonder if there’s something more

I could have done to keep my place

Within the room I dream to face

As my foot tap tap taps the floor

The hall is silent as the night

I try to be calm with all my might

As the clock ticks forward, on and on

At the same time I wonder where time has gone

Did I do something, was I wrong or right?

I can hear footsteps, moving around

Normally that’d be a calming sound

Yet my heart decides to race

A bead of sweat rolls down my face

Suddenly my eyes are glued to the ground

You can do this, you’ve done your best

I tell myself, just the same as the rest

We’re all playing just the same

The same routine, the same old game

Yet still the heart thumps on in each chest

The sound of a click, watch the handle turn

I can feel my stomach churn

The creak of the hinges and

The door opens, we all stand

I can’t bear to look, can’t wait to learn

Ode to Notre Dame

So fly the wings of ancient holy practice

Where on the weight of history resides

The spires tall and gracious beauty sits

A point of national and worldly pride

Where through the windows stained with blessed image

The sun of radiant gold and silver light

Shone like a gift from their high patronage

Which thence became a famed and lovely sight

Bring there your lowly sinners cruelly shunned

Bring there your faithful child who seeks relief

Bring there your pale hidden faith to be sunned

Bring there your hollow sufferers of grief

What wonders that we might have only learned

What wonders are lost now that it has burned

I am home

I am home

I am wrapped in your arms

I am wrapped in your scent

I am wrapped up in you

I am home

I am warm in your arms

I am warm in your eyes

I am warm in your laugh

I am home

I am safe in your arms

I am safe in your smile

I am safe in your hello

I am home

I am happy when you whisper

I am happy when you pull me close

I am happy when you kiss me

I am home

I am alone

I am cold

I am awake

I am not home

We fit like gloves in winter chill

We fit like gloves in winter chill

Protected from the frost’s sharp bite

We gaze into each other’s eyes

And smile in the stillness of night

Your hand in mine is a song’s baseline

Without it, it all falls apart

Your kiss on my lips is a symphony

The drums kicking in are my heart

You pull me close and whisper to me

That you love me, that you want me near

And my god, if that’s not my perfect dream

Just you, holding me, saying this in my ear

So I’ll whisper back, and you’ll laugh at me

And soon enough we’ll start our day

But I know that too soon I’ll be alone

And my god I want only to stay

Time.

The harshest mistress closes her hand

Upon the waiting wrist

The aching world so powerless stand

To shake her fearsome grip

She does not stir for cries of fear

Nor pause her steady gait

For those who wail and shed their tears

Know naught can alter fate

Sovereign matron, healer old

That bested every wound

The hand that pulled us from the cold

And plucked us from the womb

The guard who keeps the rearward front

And marshals forward still

From richest man to poorest runt

The maid of iron will

Press, oh press, and press in kind

Your ruler most sublime

For not one man has yet to find

The means to best her: Time.

There is Sound in Silence.

There is sound in silence

The rustle of the leaves

The birds that swim in water dark

The birds that chirp from trees

The cricket chirps and cicada songs

The buzz of bumbling bees

There is sound in silence

In silence music breathes

A breath of beauty golden

Reflects on water grey

That shimmers, ripples onward

In the stillness of the day

The fowl inhabitations

That honk and gloat their song

A breath of beauty golden

Life learns to stand up strong

Staring down the path to the fork in the road

Staring down the path to the fork in the road

Where footsteps tread leave little dent in the underbrush

Further one, greens and yellows taunt and goad

Like hands of flower maiden in the fruits she rushed

There another were trodden black with age and rot

The leaves left by the fates themselves

Far better worn by frequent travelers’ trot

Where true the least adventurous delves

Such I considered both options at my hand

My head should have fallen from my shoulders with each turn

And neither option were as I had planned

One might lead to joy while the other might burn

Yet the burning path has sparks of excited light

That could be what I had needed all along

For I cannot see to the end where it is too bright

I cannot hear more than the first bar of its song

Paralyzed here in indecision and slight strain

I looked again to the other, merrier way

It was soft and perfect and expected and plain

It is where I will go if I choose to stay

So stare I now, now having reached the fork in the road

And my heart flutters to and from and too much

And compose therein its simple ode

Two roads diverge in a yellow wood, and such

Between Spaces

The funny thing about airports is just how timeless everything is inside.

Everyone is both in a rush and waiting,

hurrying and standing still,

speaking in quick, clipped tones over the soft clatter of rolling suitcases while their immaculate while business dress shirts stay perfectly pressed.

People catch naps wherever they can,

on the sleek modern seats of the main veranda,

curled up beside electrical sockets by walls,

and huddled in the sparse plastic of waiting gates,

trying desperately to maintain their usual schedule of rest

while the world revolves tirelessly around them.

New York City may be the City That Doesn’t Sleep,

but Hartfield-Jackson Airport is the City That Doesn’t Exist.

Three tiers of liminal space extend upward

to the circular skylight

that in the pre-dawn light

might as well look on into the depths of the ocean.

The high, transparent glass clocktower

in the center of this crossway

floats above troubled commuters

like the eye of Big Brother

or an Angel watching souls in Purgatory

patter on toward judgement

while they mutter about schedules and deadlines and itineraries.

In this place,

slowly coming alive with the sounds of a new day

and wishing the old one fair rest without a single pause,

nothing seems to matter

but getting from A to B as quickly as possible,

leaving me to wonder

if anyone else feels that they have stopped in the woods

between worlds

to glance at what eternity might feel like.

Do Not Fear The Woods My Child

Do not fear the woods my child

Fear the beasts within

Fear the wild looking eyes

And boil-ridden skin

Fear the screeching, screaming calls

That echo in the night

Fear that there may come a day

When you must learn to fight

Do not fear the woods my child

For they house and contain

All the things thus unexplained

The things that bear no name

For even as the trees confound you

Your path runs knarl’d and bent

The creatures that dwell far within

Are not themselves exempt

Do not fear the woods my child

Do not fear the wood

But do not heed its cries for help

They offer nothing good

Do not believe the lies it tells

Of people just like you

Do not leave the path my child

For wilds I could not subdue

Do not fear the woods my child

For