Davin I
Posted on April 8, 2024 Leave a Comment
You could have been content in the sun – at thirty-one. Unfolding a camp chair at the lip of the sandpit on the sixteenth hole, taping ISO 12312 lenses to your frames. You and your brother pushing tripods into mud, assessing filters, discussing apertures, the three of us under the blue, leaning back, gazing up, moon interceding light at the precise point of our nexus, silencing sparrows, blending shadows beneath a single black hoodie, transfixed by incandescent halo, enraptured – pine pond breath becoming negative space. Three minutes, sixteen seconds, celestial bodies suspended between silence and din. One hour, thirty-six minutes, your body suspended between cervix and divination, pushing silence into breath. You crowned thirty-four days early, quietly emerging beneath the fluorescent halo, at the apex of our existence. You were gold skin and hair, Encased in blue light, a tiny mask shielding your eyes from the spectrum that could damage sight – heat milk howl sating negative space between lull and martyr, eight years before his blackout, thirty-one years before yours. You, the luminary subject of our gaze, our three bodies suspended between sun and moon. You could have found resurrection in love, dismissing my remarks about the black flower tattoo clutching her neck. Or perhaps opened a pro-shop weaving gut, piloted a Cessna over Belgrade, shucked oysters in your own piano bar – folly flight fugue. We would probably banter over spoons and sponge, same old same old, who cares? Life is no more than jive and jest. Even if you read To Kill a Mocking Bird, again, in the chair across from mine by the fire, I could pop in special lenses and gaze at your corona with awe. Twenty-seven years, six months, twenty-three days, after the blue moon interceded the astral spectrum, You could pull your heals through the darkness, carving da capos in the sand, reflecting on how feelings felt like facts – breath hum synchronicity. Celestial bodies sedated amid dawn and dusk, silhouetting negative space – blue black argent, heraldic spectacle, gazing through ISO 12312’s at the precise point when the eclipse will pass.
© 2024 Deborah Garcia, All rights reserved
Images by Deborah Garcia
hunger as vow: a triptych
Posted on February 14, 2024 Leave a Comment
[After Sarah M. Sala, Migraine as Whale: A Triptych]
Honoring NYC Retired Firefighter, 9/11 first responder and Nassau County, NY Resident
Posted on February 6, 2024 Leave a Comment
Thank you for your service Bob Beckwith. May you rest in peace.
HOCUS POCUS: Golden Shovel
Posted on October 31, 2023 Leave a Comment
After Jennifer Michael Hecht
When you were twelve, your shadow out cast mine, you’d eat
two bowls of long spiral spaghetti straws twirling in a
meaty sauce I scratched, red, lip-smacking, mmm. Wednesday nights, the donut
shop man is a dervish charmer filling our sack for three dollars for no rhyme
or reason. Once, in a recording studio you improvised a jazz opus
in “F” on your sax and called it Boston Cream. The CD lies on a shelf with
the summer scrapbook wherein you hooked bass in lotus
blooms from your kayak and released grip from the apex of the rope
swing, ooo. I do not know these lines yet, how your body glossed by sunlight is
carving ripples lit by the gloomy rays of the moon. In 2005, you said, Homework is a bogus
way to waste the day, so I’ll study at four A.M. as a hocus
stunt of genius to play Need For Speed after school – hocus-pocus
masking your stash of dark seeds deep in your solar plexus – hocus–
pocus – pitching no-hitters, stroking break points, keying Chopin – hocus-pocus.
Loss is vexing, shame is dispiriting, life is one thing then another. Please dare
to tell someone, if not me, anyone, eat a donut, blow an “F” not–
e, check your pulse on a smart watch, swipe the dark web off your screen, we need you to
be. Don’t close your eyes, there’s so much hope for your tomorrows. Don’t kill
yourself. Bake a cheesecake, hike the Long Trail, take a steam bath, aaa. Kill yourself
and hundreds of other people die. Smash a pumpkin. Smash a hundred. Please stay. I
will give full-sized candy bars to everyone who has figured this out about suicide. Won’t
you help me help you to not get spellbound by the circumstances of the present? I won’t either.
© 2023 Deborah Garcia, All rights reserved
Your memory cannot be erased by the veil of time
Posted on September 11, 2023 Leave a Comment
This souvenir photo was taken in Y2000 on “Take Your Child to Work Day.” Davin was 7-years-old. I took the boys to visit Daddy at work on occasion throughout the year. They would sit at his desk in his cubicle at Marsh & McLennan and play computer games he’d set up on his desktop, pretending to work like Daddy. At lunch time, we’d walk across the street to the Marriott complex, imagining the voyages aboard the grand yachts tied in the harbor outside, ending our visit with lunch under the grand glass-vaulted atrium.
Today, I found myself walking alone in this atrium, now the Brookfield Centre Mall. I watched a little girl of about 6-years of age, skipping up and down the palacial villa-style triple staircase. Her squeals of delight lifted the veil of time, and little boy voices echoed upon the great marbled treads, where a young woman combing her fingertips through a blonde flip, and a man decked in a fine wool suit with a beeper vibrating at his hip, stood at the base, together. Enraptured.
DAVID GARCIA : Age 40. IT Consultant–Marsh McLennan, GHI. WTC 1, 97th F.
DAVIN GARCIA : Age 27 (8). Son. Prolonged Grief Disorder.
© 2023, Deborah Garcia, all rights reserved
September, 2023
Posted on September 2, 2023 Leave a Comment
Autumn has already settled in here, in my home in northern Vermont. Maples are beginning to blush, days topping in the 70’s, evenings into the 50’s.
August has always been a tenuous month, the lead-dog racing into September, pacing through October, charging into the holidays. This used to be my favorite time of year; return to school and normalized work-schedules, empty beaches, crisp air. The swirl of bronzing leaves and the scent of stewed apples provided me with a sense of grounding on the approach of my October birthday, through thirty-seven years of my life. Now, I dread them all. This year, I deluded myself into believing that after twenty-two years of traversing the dark August tunnel to September 11th, I wouldn’t need to refill my benzo prescription. Yet again I find myself on the floor, in child’s pose, heaving. Smacked down by mini breakers, I’m lost in the undertow of all of my designated tasks, questions of purpose, endless solitude and celibacy.
Over the course of this year, free from the constraints of single-parenting, a difficult second marriage, and intense grief over the loss of my son, Davin, in Oct. 2020, I’ve become more present and informed in the supportive and geo-political 9/11 community, of which is both a privilege and a crucible. I’ve engaged in some public speaking opportunities and I participate in bi-weekly family support groups, where I’m proud to have inspired others in the self-healing practice of writing. I’ve dialed in on hours-long conference calls with impassioned, and exasperated family members (mostly widows), phone hearings on active litigations, discussed plans for attending this fall’s hearings for the five unsentenced conspirators held at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center, Cuba, and had conversations with senators and local representatives regarding the myriad of open issues that severely impact mine and my son, Dylan’s lives. In addition, I continue to spend bloodshot hours studying court dockets, hearings, and legal statutes in order to learn the legal cipher necessary to lift my confidence and raise my voice.
Our nation is opening the gates to the great Trojan horse, teeing off on soveriegn Saudi assets, wetting their appetites on our landscape as it transforms into hot, arid wasteland
Without question I’d love to let go of the wheel and coast through my sixties with an iced pitcher of espresso-infused martinis on my picnic table. However, “closure” is not an option. I know that those I hold close wish for me to move on, with the implication that I can pack away and swallow the key on twenty-two-years of fighting for my survival, my sanity, my children’s well-being, my husband’s legacy, my sense of value. Every day I’m opening to discern the expanding awe of how the perfect love that grew between David and I for two decades, continues to evolve in unexpected ways. In Dylan’s inciteful ways of solving problems and his proclivity for art and Edomae sushi. In the love that remains strong between his mother and I. In the way the unbroken voice that had always been hidden deep inside me, protected by the fortress I’d spent half-a-century building to protect the beaten down parts of me, is surfacing in a continuous unveiling.
Nineteen years ago, I was coerced under duress into signing an agreement that barred me, and all those whom share this tragedy and sought the elusive avowal of closure, from pursuing civil justice and appropriate restitution. The largest majority of us were young mothers raising children. Following a great persistence of widows and decedents in lifting these restrictions, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has issued judgements with the year 2039 etched in the terms, which feels more like a suggestion than an affirmation. For three years, I have been deadlocked by the Nassau County Surrogate’s Court, of my past residence, in my petitions to appropriate reparations issued by an act of Congress on behalf of David’s estate. My MDL attorneys arduously motion the DOJ and petition Congress to renounce extrajudicial killing of American nationals, expose truths redacted from 9/11 Commission reports, exact punitive measures, and appropriate reparations on behalf of my son and I. Consequently, the expanse of time that this wound has been open has widened the berth for serpentine profiteers in cashmere suits poised as attorney’s, congressional representatives, and corporate insurance conglomerates. Independent attorneys assemble satellite groups of 9/11-related individuals unlawfully seeking duplicate and exclusive judgements to seize assets based on the murder of my husband! This dissonance muddles and hurts the pursuit of justice and reparations for the families of those who were murdered and injured on that day, as the horizon recedes into the abyss! To date, I am sequestered to witness the unclosed trials of the few who are housed, fed, and administered health care, at a cost far greater than my “award”. To date, our nation is opening the gates to the great Trojan horse; teeing off on sovereign Saudi assets, wetting their appetites, as our landscape is transformed into hot, arid wasteland.
No prosecutions. No verity. No justice. No reparations.
Each year, the song of the sparrow dims as the ring in my ears grows louder. There are so many flashes in my field of vision, that most days, I don’t even know where my cursor is. Near the end of this composition, remains a broad caesura afore atonement for the murder of my husband and the subsequent death of my son. For this sacrilegious assault on my family there have been no prosecutions. No verity. No justice. No reparations.
For years I had felt stuck, choked by the scope of the 9/11 machine — the global terrorist organizations, the banks that hold deposits supporting terrorist activities, the foreign governments whose representatives and employees planned, trained, and carried out the attacks, the uncountable multidistrict litigations (MDLs), and the U.S. government protecting their secrets in sealed records under the guise that revealing the truth “threatens national security”. Really, the unremorseful mass murderers have already won; Fragment of right scapula, broken mother, fatherless sons, one death by suicide. I am their trophy. All of this, this, this, etc., punctuates the Islamic militant’s creed – that a “defiled” Islam must be purged of apostasy, with bloody sectarian killings. I am the bold-faced sentence of the crusade in Islamic jihad.
I just want to become someone I can live with.
But, despite the drag, I have been moving forward all along in my life. I strive to break the isolation of my northern Vermont shelter by travel to explore the beautiful landscapes and architecture of the world, taking daily walks with my border collie, keeping good company, and getting some fun, as Dave had wanted for us all. And oh yes, writing and sharing my stories. I may not always be graceful nor ever twirl with the verve of a young woman in a field of gold but, every day I dry my tears and strive to make peace with the 37-year-old who had to die in order for this 58-year-old to find freedom on the other side of my protective walls. I just want to become someone I can live with.
I accept the decree handed me by the Masters, as I continue to walk through the dark tunnels carrying the ballast of my load and loves in my backpack along the unknown path [ ] treading closer to the lucid acme of truth, transparency, accountability, and justice.
© 2023 by Deborah Garcia, all rights reserved
The Promise
Posted on July 26, 2023 4 Comments
After Marie Howe, “The Promise”
In the dream I had, when you came back in a shining silver jet you were not aged, but verdant and you were beautiful like you were at twenty-one, taut and muscular, sculpted cheekbones, a bronze luster stretched over your solid frame.
The pull toward you was irresistible, as though there were an affinity radiating from your amber eyes to my blue, as if you didn’t need to speak to arrange our meeting in the meadow where you drove it.
Unlike earlier encounters, you were animated, engaging, emotional, your smile and baritone voice opened my vacancy. You extended your hand and our fingers clasped tight like there was a tempest threatening to separate us. Breaking your silence was what you could not not do, like our yearning in this world, like our promise, as we did, on that shore, in 1987.
And you told me: “My dear, I’ve come for you in a silver bird, step inside with me and see.”
And with overwhelming awe I said: “David, where did you get this?”
Looking ahead of me, you squeezed my hand and led me into the cockpit. It was the signal we’d pass between us when the dark cast shadows on your path, the firm grip that wants to tell you to keep moving forward.
I watched you with admiration and fear take over the controls, like the way you opened throttle on the Hudson, blind, our bodies carving a wake through the river’s urgent ebb.
Your natural genius of mechanical engineering fondled the controls though having known little of flight in life. The engines whistled and the winged vessel rolled forward through the meadows like seasons, entering a bright autumn field fringed in maple and oak.
We were about to fly away together into the firmament and I told you: “Dear, I don’t think this field is a big enough stretch to take off in, let’s keep moving into the next field.” Rolling into another field you said: “this does look a little better Dear.”
I asked you: “Where are we going anyway?” And you stared at me with the blankness from past encounters, “it doesn’t matter where we’re going. Nowhere.”
I felt the wisdom of fifty-years years, like an aspirin flush over a migraine, washing the blinding pain from my face, “dear, I love you, but this doesn’t feel right.”
Your expression turned sullen and I hugged you tight when I told you: “David, you’re getting too old for this, stealing planes, reckless abandon, you can’t keep doing this. I can’t do this.”
“I know,” you said, with the resignation you made when dropping the kickstand stand of your YZ-250 racer leaving boyhood in the garage, shrouding 111 beneath an American flag, — “But, c’mon dear, just this one last time, it’ll be alright.”
Looking into your eyes, I felt myself stepping back from you, arms outstretched, finger tips parting, you pleaded: “Dear, please!”
Running from the silver bird, through meadows, by crimson maples and goldenrod, my border collie, Joni, racing in the tailwind of my re-entry, I came up the rear of a white-single story stucco building, like the concrete white-washed row cabanas, where we unfolded beach chairs and our babies moved sand with little yellow trucks.
Leaning against a wall I crouched to the ground and dropped my head in my hands, deep breaths, Joni curled beside me. A man stepped out a few doors down to light a smoke, offering no more than a quick glance. Time stopped.
I heaved for leaving you cold, as though I were a coward for lacking the courage to follow, to trust you, like I had in life. There was the fear of going, of staying, of betrayal by the heavens repeating, “I can’t, I just can’t.”
You appeared around the corner and silently summoned me with a wave of your hand. You took me into your arms, and your glistening bronze tone paled, your eyes melted into glassy pools of buckwheat honey, settling softly into mine, like crystal jellies in a sea curl. Resting your head on my right shoulder, sinking all the weight of your essence into mine, I said: “Dear, you can’t do this anymore, you have to grow, evolve. I can never leave you, but I can’t go with you now.”
You said: “I know, it’s okay, I need you to know that I’m always with you, we are one, we’re bound by a love that can’t be broken, I want you to be happy.”
And I said: “I’m sorry, I don’t want to disappoint you.”
You smiled, “You can never disappoint me, you are my dear.” Pressing your lips to my forehead, you stepped back, and receded into the seasons.
© Deborah Garcia 2023, all rights reserved
I found some fantastic fudge today!
Posted on May 11, 2023 2 Comments
Today is David’s 62nd birthday. Considering that I spend most of my days authoring a poetry book and a memoir, and speaking around topics that the legacy of his leaving has levied upon the past two-decades of my life, I thought, perhaps, it’s time he give his own voice to the story.
April 30th, 1985 was the third day of the rest of Dave’s professional IT life, and his third week living in New York City. Leaving behind his boyhood home in the quiet Hudson River Valley hamlet of Wappinger’s Falls, NY, he arrived at the below street-level room he was renting on LaGuardia Place in The Village. He looked forward to “becoming an official MHT (Manufacturer’s Hanover Trust) employee,” as he wrote in a previous letter.
At the time of this writing, I was away at college. For the two-years we were separated following his graduation, we communicated by weekly phone calls and letter. I keep a vivid memory of the first time I visited him, a few weeks later, when he took me to the fudge shop of mention, located at South Street Seaport.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR! I Love you forever X/O
© Deborah Garcia 2023, all rights reserved
What Holds Me Back?
Posted on May 7, 2023 2 Comments
What is the force that drives the code I cannot crack, why can’t I step out of my shell what holds me back? I’ve read “how-to” books got keys to success from T.V., but still I haven’t figured out, how this all applies to me. Sure I make out my lists what goes and what stays, but it’s never enough my story regardless replays. What are the things that bring me great joy? please point out the road blocks, I unknowingly employ. I want a greater purpose to stoke ember fires, there has to be more just need to connect the right wires. I struggle to foresee why I am here, what purpose do I serve the answers aren’t clear. My mother’s hail Mary’ once filled me with grace, if only she’d deliver that awakening slap in the face. There’s gotta be more to life ways to be useful, to further my evolution authentic and truthful. So each day I press on ‘cause I know the reasons are close, unlocking new closets, revealing old ghosts.
© Deborah Garcia 2023, all rights reserved
