MIA KERNAGHAN

This is the final breaking of a bone before it can heal, the long-awaited anticipation of how badly it will hurt, my last whispered prayer before it gets worse, my loudest scream that you will never hear in this hospital room. I am not the first broken person to walk through these revolving doors,  teeth clenched, eyes closed, and waiting for it to be over, the fantasy of being whole slowly dismantled,  and wondering what all this pain will ever be worth. A cold hand reaches

I know everything about you that everyone else doesn’t — How you don’t like the fat on your steak, wispy singing in pop songs, your deep urge to people please and feel like you belong. I know about your dream to leave the city and live small in a van,  and to make a good impression and to act like a good man.  I know you see rabbits everywhere and think about what I said  and you remember how I told you what they meant to me back then. I know you feel sorry for yourself and e

My hungry body is nothing but a nuisance these days — a low, slow, growling reminder that I am functioning on empty and need to be fed — and so I shove a handful of blueberries or buttered bread to the side of my mouth and try to give it what it needs. It feels mean.  It’s two distinct parts of myself wrestling on the kitchen floor — One cries to be seen, the other locks the door and shrugs, both thinking that something has ruptured which the other cannot repair.  I have yet

How much time has passed, if any at all? My clothes still smell of firewood from Sunday evening,  not one load of laundry needs to be done, flowers are alive from the night he brought them home, the mirror for my wall sits on the floor, unhung. But walking to the couch, I felt a line and crossed it — a sudden break in my haze that told me life could never the same — and felt grief over something I had not fully lost yet.  The smell of wet hair, the making of a bed,  the passe

How is it I once felt I was destined to be something so great, just to be spending my days thinking about the next day and all the things...

In this painting, you get the bed right by the window — the one where the light looks in and it’s blue, endless sky and you can enter and...