“I broke down in training today while being worked on because of the pain I keep getting hammered by.
But toward the end of my turn to receive as learning, an image and sense of you lying next to me, opening your arms to me shocked me.
I wasn’t looking for you because I’ve been trying to stay neutral – but there you were for me.”
“The concussion and thoracic pain hurts so bad that my eyes are literally twitching.
Now I need a new fecking category.”
“Day 2 after shower/tub wall head crunch = thoracic and head severe muscle torsion pain hits.
Tomorrow’s gonna be worse – and this week’s likely gonna be hard.
‘BEE-YATCH!'”
“Pushing Buttons” by Mendoza Line
“Your parents know how to push your buttons – because they installed them.”
107.1 FM Portland 12:45pm
By Athena Stairs, November 16, 2025
He’s drenched in it
I’ve got to help him
Better channel conduits
Taking good care of him
I need to learn his ways
Match up to syncopation
Gotta lift him up to reach
Higher levels’ expressions
—
(Please contact me for permissions)
Oh night time spirit of Elden white
Blessing revealed in bright sunlight
Wherefore have gone without a kiss?
Your courage my boon sorely missed
She had not thought of the consequences to herself for bracing against the incoming car’s impact – only that she was in a split second outraged and defiant in her refusal to let the man’s short-sightedness use her and her vehicle as inadvertent means to harm anyone around her.
—
(Title is also the name of a Depeche Mode album)
The night shirt that she sometimes wore shaped her chest as in Greecian times, puffed out below, and then cinched inward at her wauit in a kind of elegant flump.
She could not help but tease to him that she looked as graceful as a black flan – or perhaps a wrinkly-lined fig fruit- knowing that the images thereby imprinted upon his mind were like playful record scratches.”
“I’m so tired…so very, very tired.”
“They say that I shouldn’t – that I should maintain equality, if not demand status.
But I love indulging you.”
—
(Content of many meanings)
“Miss you.”
“Still alive – and back to retraining…’knock on wood.'”
“Something about survival -?”
“If you blame it all on the aliens and Yetti, humans no longer need to have accountability.”
“My crystal necklace that has been missing for awhile suddenly pops out of the suitcase when I pull out a leather bag that I had thought was empty!”
“Slippery floor and hospital visit…
I should have gone to that concert instead of trying to rest and recover -?”
“Little sleep, but unlike the homeless also at the hospital for help, I have showered and can still mask my own ‘insanity.'”
“They must have worked -!
A higher ranking rare and bizarre experience than I have ever had before.
Thank you for your blessings, oh ‘ghosts’ of the ER!”
“Confirmation of life.”
(Can I have some joy and pleasure, please?)
“I shall live.”
Headphones
Fall…
Get back up…
“My life is offici!lly a soap opera.”
“Suddenly feelimg pressure from many hands on my legs and hovering over me as if checking and reading me while crowding once the nurses left was freaking me out, cascading shock reaction until I took off the neck collar and relieved tension pressure from too much traction on my brain.
Weee…never had that happen before.
And here comes more pain.”
“I get a new tour.”
“Fallimg as I leaned forward in the unfamiliar tub, quickly grasping without purchase to catch myself – forehead smacking hard against the (luckily) flexing wall just before my hands landed on the bottom of the tub, causing a double jar-wrench right at the left neck locked up injury compression.
‘FU**!’ I cried out…then turned off the water so that the neighbors would know that I was alive and not feel compelled to call the fire department.
The optimist in me says, ‘Well…I’m working with the right people, so maybe this could somehow have knocked the site loose as a blessing, and they’ll help me inyegrate it.’
But the throbbing pain from there up into the left 9f my head around eye socket desires to just cut loose screaming and further cussing.
Oh yeah – and now that side if my face is throb-twitching…so fuuuuunnnnnn.”
