Ghosts by Gabriela Marie Milton #flash fiction #short prose #poetic prose

Edvard Munch, Weeping Nude, Public Domain

Ghosts by Gabriela Marie Milton

I spend most of my time in the house. I rarely write anymore. I remember what you once said, I believe you were quoting: Culture has become a demonstration of nothingness. It moves with a terrifying speed in direct proportionality with our appetite for fame.

Three times a year fleshy, peachy roses are still being delivered. They have my name on. It happens mid-day, at the exact time when I take sedatives before immersing myself in a bath infused with scented Dead Sea Salt. Dried flowers float in the water. They stain my skin. They make me think summer by our lake: scents of blue irises; somnolent movements of algae.

Nights are cruel. No nightingales. Tree branches hit the master suite’s windows even when the air is soft like the breath of a new baby. Half-naked, lying on the sofa I think Wuthering Heights. Catherine’s ghost knocking on the window. In the dark, Lockwood pushing his hand through the glass. Her cold hand. Her voice. She wants to get in.

Inscriptions: Catherine Heathcliff; Catherine Linton…

I kneel and scratch your name under the frame of every bedroom window. I wait.

The windows start rattling. I pick the middle one. I push my hand through the glass. Pain. The warmth of my blood. The ferocity of wounds. Voices coming from the gooseberry bushes.

You.

Come in my love […]

Gabriela Marie Milton
#1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings

Head of a Woman’ by Jean Jacques Henner, Public Domain

Flash Fiction by Gabriela Marie Milton

My name is Gabriela. Papa used to call me Marie.

One night the moon stretched in our bed, its lips sultry, its breasts soft like two humongous cotton candies bought by the Holyoke Merry-Go-Round Carousel. That night your cascading laughter made all naked desires hide under the bed. I tried to drag them out. I couldn’t.

Later, head on your shoulder I looked at the stars through the broken ceiling, my eyes plagued by an inexorable yearning to prove my existence. I don’t know why. Those who want to prove their existence live in the realm of the inexistent. They are bizarre people who write love letters to themselves trying to deceive others. Any trick is a cry for recognition. Any cry for recognition is a basic assertion of impotence.

What was I doing? Oh, I was trying to get into my red dress. I couldn’t get it over my hips. The humidity of the night must have made it stick to my skin. Did you laugh again? Stop. Put your shirt on. We’re going out.

Anyway, I was talking about the absence of existence itself which always leads to sorcery. The skin of an eel caught in the spring, dried, stuffed with rose petals and rosemary, chopped and hidden behind the head of the bed. A night spent in that bed will haunt the two lovers for life. Like I haunt you.

How did you call me? Why did you use that name? Yes, it is my first name, but nobody uses it. Everyone calls me Gabriela.

Stop calling me Anastasia. I am not resurrected yet. I don’t know who Anastasia is. I’ve never met her. But don’t get fooled. That doesn’t make her less dangerous than me.

Follow me on Twitter here.

Thank you.

Gabriela Marie Milton
#1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings

I am my mother’s daughter – short prose by Gabriela Marie Milton

I am not who you think I am. My loves are the result of my interiorities in which meanings lie. “Outside” is an illusion. I do not seek the attention of the cup bearer. I am the cup bearer.

It was evening. I was five years old. Mama wore a beautiful dress, pale lines of fresh green dripping on her body. Curves, rose scents, pearled skin. She looked ravishing.

Phlegmatic look on his face Papa smoked Arturo Fuente cigars. He said: That dress is too short.

Mama did not answer. She entered the house. I followed her. She went in the yellow room. The room had a large French tapestry on the left wall. She took a pair of scissors and cut her dress shorter.

The next morning, she looked even more ravishing.

The thought came to me in the afternoon. A big smile appeared on my face. I ran into my room and took out all my little dresses from the wardrobe. Armed with a scissor, I proceeded to the terrace. One by one I cut all dresses trying to make them shorter. I was ecstatic. I thought of how happy Mama would be. I swear I saw the roses dancing in the garden.

I am my mother’s daughter.
My sweet love, should I cut my dress shorter?

MasticadoresUSA update

Congratulations to my fellow editors of the Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and other editions of Gobblers/Masticadores on their performances.

May I please get some help? There are several new poems up at MasticadoresUSA. Please visit the site here and support your wonderful fellow poets. Do not forget to follow the site.

Thank you.

@Gabriela Marie Milton

On Love

I must rebuild your love in my brain.
My soul bears the marks of castles lost at sea.

My Dear Readers,

Thank you again to everyone who bought my book. Special thanks to those who review it on Amazon. I plan to feature each Amazon review on my blog. Until then, here is a review, one among many, done on an online book club by a reviewer whom I do not know.

“The work of art is a beautiful thing. Poem is the master of all arts. It creates emotions deeper than mere imagination and beyond. It transfers human feelings to a realm of wonders. Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings is a book of art written by Gabriela Marie Milton…. I was wowed by the poems. I became engulfed in them…I have been inspired to write my own poems starting with love poems….”

Nothing honors me more than inspiring others. You can read the entire review here

My book, Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, can be ordered here.

Thank you
Love
Gabriela

@Gabriela Marie Milton

In a flash my mind shows me a thousand streets tormented by loneliness. These streets – once the grand wine-presses of human bodies and cars – are now haunted by sickness and eaten by desolation.

It’s spring. The ocean’s water is warm like a country bread. I can taste it. The crisp crust, the sweetness of grains and earth melt on my tongue.

I miss you and the chestnut tree from that pastel afternoon when we first kissed.

Why did I love you? Of course, you were handsome, but it wasn’t that. I loved you because you could not have been conquered by the tricks with which a woman conquers most men. Why would I even want a man that any women with lipstick and stilettos can have?

I am digressing, am I not?

It’s spring. The water is red. Under the light of its pearls, flowers open like fresh young lips.

I avert my mind from the memory of your arms which tries to drag me inside an abyss of naked love; a love blessed with the force of the mistral and the sensuality of linked fingers under the moonlight.

The earth and the waters are one.

Yet the pain is heavy and filled with fluids like the chest cavity of a dead animal hanging up-side down.

I can see your boat. It’s beautiful.

The world is sick.

If I say I love you will you tell me what I can do to heal it?

Please read my Spillwords Author of the Year (2019) interview here

My thanks again to Kevin Morris – a wonderful poet – for interviewing me. Please read Kevin’s interview with me here.

Love and good health to everyone.
Gabriela

Heaven and earth change places.
The core of the earth shines. Rays pierce waters, beamed from below, springing from the phosphorescent floor.
Dark corridors open in the walls.
I put my hand in the water.
My hand metamorphosizes into bright silver.
Noise. A nymph?! Oh, that pristine beauty which always dethrones Aphrodite’s pagan looks.
I don’t want to leave. This is the only place I’ve known where any remembrance of human neurosis dissipates like morning fog.
“Clara we can’t stay here. We need to leave.”
“Miguel, I am not leaving. You said everything for me.”
“Clara, they don’t sell the damn grotto. If they did, I’d buy it for you. We need to leave.”
“I am not leaving.”
The light from the water floats inside his eyes.
How beautiful.
How seductive.
Is he angry with me?

(excerpt from the manuscript Glass Lovers)

Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, my poetry book, will be available for pre-order on April 14th; publication date April 20th.

@Gabriela Marie Milton

image: Timur Kulgarin; Shuterstock; [link]

These are the waters in which on the day of atonement I will unlearn him and learn you.

image: Gabriela Marie Milton.

My poetry book Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings: available for pre-order on April 14th; publication date April 20th.

We sat there in the shadows of Sacré-Cœur, our laughter gone, our wills broken, our souls scarred, longing for what once was us. A heavy darkness was staring back at me from a white abstract past, like Malevich’s Black Square hanging on a cracked wall.

Who was to blame for all that happened? We had no answer. We could not judge ourselves anymore. We did that too many times. We got nowhere.

God did not promise us anything before we were born. He did not promise us anything even after we were born.

Miguel and Jacques looked petrified.

I gazed at Miriam. She spoke.
…
Miriam and that beautiful face of hers, her short black dresses scented with jasmine, her love for Jacques whispering like shadows on the roofs of Paris during purple dawns. Miriam and her paintings violating the silence of her studio from which one could see Notre-Dame. Miriam watching Rodin’s Gates of Hell for hours at the time. I always wondered what she thought about.

Now I think I know.

excerpt from the manuscript Glass Lovers
@Gabriela Marie Milton

image: Lana Tikhonova; Shutterstock; [link]

I can still hear that deep voice of his and see his striking profile against the walls of the Chartres Cathedral: tormented French Gothic autumn; agonizing blue eyes; gelid rain lingering on stained glass and trickling on my face like liquid wax at the feet of saints.

“Clara, Miguel needs to stop. He needs to give up. Make him do it or I will.”

Nobody could make Miguel give up. The verb “to give up” was not part of Miguel’s vocabulary.

Miguel was not General Santa Anna who lost the Battle of San Jacinto. At heart Miguel was Cortés. Cortés who conquered an empire. Cortés who enrolled God to help him. Cortés who destroyed and rebuilt.

Jacques had no chance.

Now, when I look back, alone in the mist of those haunting memories, my eyes lids heavy, my body weak, my lips cracked by fever, Angelo was right when he said:

“Wait, Clara, wait, you don’t know Jacques yet.”

In fact, none of us knew Jacques. Not even Angelo.

How ironic.

Excerpt from the manuscript Glass Lovers

@short-prose-fiction (Gabriela M)