writing

Free Churro by Rebecca Tillett

Two nights ago I cried pretty unexpectedly at the end of the Bojack Horseman episode, Free Churro. Have you seen it? The entire thing was Bojack giving a eulogy for his recently deceased mother, with whom he had a very strained & complex relationship. It was sad & powerful & raw & brutal & articulated so many feelings I have toward my father (& really, my mother too). Feelings of dismissal from both, but in dramatically different ways.

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Saguaro and Buckhorn Cholla by Rebecca Tillett

When I became lost in the separation of child and mother, 
Of myself and the other
When I became lost you became found
You climbed on to the backs of birds and
sailed between land and space for miles
Your back covered in feathers as black as the sky on a moonless night
each freckle an understudy for the veiled stars

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Unfinished Prose, Edition 01 by Rebecca Tillett

Are all the heroes dead? Or just ours? Will the melodies ever sound the same, as somber and fixed in time as they are now? Will they stay? Because your voice, when you're playing Nutshell and humming Layne's voice on my parlor guitar, and I'm reminiscing over dreams I stopped having years ago; your voice and your fingers and everything else that I love. They stay in that way; reincarnated. I miss the dreams and am in love with the cause; a quandary, because I see things in dreams. Now I just feel like life stops when I sleep. Like death. In backness and nihility.

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You Wanted Her by Rebecca Tillett

You hadn’t looked at me in days. You hadn’t really seen me in years. You saw only the heavy black clouds enclosing me. You didn’t understand me. You didn’t want to. You wanted something easier. You wanted to believe you deserved better. You wanted someone smiling back at you from future days. You wanted to stop cranking your neck backward in hopelessness and exhaustion.

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Yearning for Permanence by Rebecca Tillett

This all just stops. You know that, of course, but do you really truly know that?

I ache, perpetually, at the realization.

You are my container of happiness, my vessel, my iron safe. How could I ever handle more? I fear for the power of whatever could be loved more by me, even if it is our zenith, our culmination of desire and passion and wanting and patience. In truth, I don’t need more keeping me here, begging me to stay, and I would love such a creation so much it would gut me.

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Mine, a Short Story by Rebecca Tillett

As some of you know, I’ve spent the last two and half years in school at Regis University, and the last 16 weeks completing my final capstone necessary for graduation. I chose to write and illustrate a short story as my final project deliverable (that I then later decided to animate and add sound to also). Last night I attended my very last class and gave my final project presentation and received unforgettable praise from both my professor and classmates, so I wanted to share it with you all as well. I am so extremely proud of the final product and hope the passion invested in this project is evident.

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(Before I knew it I was) Home by Rebecca Tillett

I could never forget this moment and I don't need this picture. I could never forget what coming home each day to this man felt like, how we could occupy such a small space and fill it with such passion; tears and rest and laughter and food, and deaths and rebirths, and smoking and drinking, and pasts and presents and futures all commingling in space and time, and friends and sex: loud and unapologetic, and love, oh my God, love. 

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Of Land and Roots and Belonging by Rebecca Tillett

Sometimes I feel physically ill from the memory of what I left behind and the way that I left it. I am not capable of the acts I committed, the desperation I induced. I am that woman now, capable of such things. How long am I allowed to toil in heartache for the woman I can never again claim to be? Sometimes I grit my teeth so hard my jaw aches. I wake up often that way. Feels like every unbearable tension, climbing every root of every molar battling for dominance.

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Reminders, Defeats by Rebecca Tillett

Why are each journey's impending ends so difficult to conquer?When you feel close enough to see it, but still too far to claim it? As if reaching and grasping at a too-distant destination is an agony worse than seeing nothing at all, nothing to tease or torment, just stumbling around in the dark and hoping for good news. I'm so tired. I know you are too. I'm so ready. I know you are too.

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Gratitude and Equanimity by Rebecca Tillett

I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive the 15 years of time that existed between knowing you and loving you; but maybe it’s hollow lamenting not-knowings, past lives you were only a part of in obscure ways, or distances we utilized as justifications to exist separately in the universe. It feels wrong indulging such a twinge in my heart over something that finally submerged me in much needed hope, happiness, love, and fruition, because I’m anything but ungrateful.

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Dark Rabbit Hole by Rebecca Tillett

You mentioned thinking life could always get better. I think I suffer with that as well. It used to be on both a personal and professional level and now it's only on a professional level (which is good) but seriously, I feel like I actively avoid success sometimes. Does that make sense? I just can't seem to get on the internet anymore without stumbling on someone's fantastic body of work and seeing that they're somehow doing that for a living (no 9-5 bullshit). How did they do that? How did that happen?You mentioned thinking life could always get better. I think I suffer with that as well. It used to be on both a personal and professional level and now it's only on a professional level (which is good) but seriously, I feel like I actively avoid success sometimes. Does that make sense? I just can't seem to get on the internet anymore without stumbling on someone's fantastic body of work and seeing that they're somehow doing that for a living (no 9-5 bullshit). How did they do that? How did that happen?

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The Burden of Filling the Vacant Spaces by Rebecca Tillett

So many never wake with clenched jaws, with jagged teeth newly softened and smoothed and transformed to powder. So many have never hosted such a civil war in their mouths. They'll never mourn the fatalities, the wounded, the lost. You'll never crush things between your teeth the way you used to. You acknowledge this.

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