Kat Musings

I’ve been thinking a lot about Saint Thomas the Apostle, AKA “Doubting Thomas.” I’ve talked about my current spiritual journey back toward Catholicism and my experience attending Mass in other posts, but I wanted to share some thoughts. I don’t fully agree with all of the Church’s dogma, but I’ve found myself drawn to something else entirely: its tradition, metaphor, art, history, mysticism, and heritage, all woven together into something that feels lived rather than purely i

He’s throwing accusations like grenades reality warped like a fun house mirror Meanings feel unstable I second guess everything where is my backbone each new text a jolt We’re both swirling through infinite mirrors a power struggle I wasn’t the problem we are the problem Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (c. 1944), Francis Bacon

It’s not fair messages, but no real dialogue. You reach for connection, but not for me in the ways I need. I don’t know how to say no, how to let go. My heart doesn’t stop beating just because it ended. And you know my Achilles’ heel, how to make me kneel. I have to stop the pain from recurring. I have to learn to believe in consistency. Antonio Canova, Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss, c. 1793

Burnt out. Run down. Like a cigarette smoked to the filter still burning my fingers while pretending it doesn’t hurt. I keep pouring from an empty cup. Keep showing up half-human half-static. The tarot reads: Hanged Man. Sacred pause. Reversed King of Pentacles. Stop. The High Priestess. Rest. Unplug the wire. Let the signal drop. Let the static fade. And I am just a body left in the dark. The Magdalen with the Smoking Flame (c. 1635–1637) by Georges de La Tour

I am tired of translating hunger into softer language tired of folding myself into patience while my needs sit untouched between us like unopened letters I am tired of reaching first of asking gently then clearly then breaking when even my breaking goes unanswered love should not feel like standing at a locked door with bleeding knuckles hoping someone inside finally hears me because somewhere between the begging and the silence I remembered something: I am the prize. not a b

I keep thinking I am the pattern instead of the person inside it a hand learning the shape of loss before it happens a mouth rehearsing apology like it is a language I was born speaking I say I am trying to go slow but I am trying not to disappear first You say you need safety before coming closer I hear not yet not yet not yet and my body translates it into history the way rooms used to close without warning the way love became something I had to earn by being smaller I am a

And somehow just when the squall begins to swell my tether tightens my anchor appears no warning no announcement just tires on gravel a quiet intrusion into the ordinary air like the world decided to be gentle for once he says I just felt like I needed to come no map no reason just the pull and I don’t ask him to explain miracles inside the house is too small for what rises in me when he hugs me I fold like weather giving way and I don’t mean softly I mean finally I didn’t kn

May 10, 2026 Today, on Mother’s Day, I’m feeling the pangs of grief. It is my Grammy’s first heavenly Mother’s Day, ten months without her here. My grandpa passed away in March 2024, so today holds the ache of missing them both, and of how quickly absence becomes part of time. This year has also carried two unexpected losses among my friends. My dear friend, Dylan Lane Sepulvado, passed away unexpectedly on February 11, just months before what would have been his birthday in

I don’t know what the ignition was in childhood that catapulted my attachments interpreter stabilizer fixer I learned early how to read absence as if it were a language The pattern repeats itself in different names I once called mine same distance same return to silence I recognize it sooner now the way it begins how quickly I start listening for what isn’t said how silence asks to be explained I answer anyway We were always in motion boxes half-opened goodbyes already practi

And somehow I found a way to forge my own path to march to my own drum I hum the chants to my own tune Opinions are louder than gongs sometimes everyone speaking toward the air everyone certain small altars of being right everyone carving the world smaller with their mouths offering pieces of each other to invisible crowds saying too much too fast and somewhere in all of it we stopped hearing not for agreement just for the quiet weight of another life I think we are losing th

She arrives like weather that forgets it is weather all voltage, all sudden brightness like the room loses its footing before I do Her stories do not stay still they shift when I look directly at them I stop asking for certainty and start collecting fragments She is all restless movement itching at her own skin, shifting in her seat like her body cannot decide where to land she asks me questions like she is building a map but leaves herself half drawn edges missing, details w

Not everyone is privy to my presence. Not everyone gets access. I decide the threshold. Who enters. Who learns the shape of my light. My silence is not permission. My distance is not cruelty. I have learned what it costs to leave every window open, to mistake every knocking for love. What remains is mine. My quiet. My fire. I am learning that closed doors can still hold warmth. That chosen hands arrive gently. That light does not owe itself to every passing shadow. Those who

I came thinking language might be enough to rebuild what time had loosened. You were already halfway into the night before I could name what I needed from you. You were already drinking when I got there like it had started earlier than the conversation like I had arrived in the middle of something I wasn’t part of but still had to stand inside. You kept your hand around the drink the way people hold something they don’t intend to put down. And still there was warmth. That par

I’ve been moving through something like an inheritance I did not know I was still carrying, part heritage, part grief, part return. Not belief exactly, but something closer to recognition forming over time through place, ritual, and memory. My grandpa, Philip Oliver Correro, passed in March 2024. My Grammy, Dr. Carole Ann Lax Stewart, followed in July 2025. In the wake of those losses, grief did not arrive as a single absence, but something layered. It moved backward as much

I was always reaching for connection, as if it was just out of frame, just beyond the reach of language you called it pressure I called it connection we were never naming the same thing Star trails over the One-Mile Radio Telescope. Image credit and copyright: Joao Yordanov Serralheiro.

John Collier, 1891 I’m tired of being an emotional tampon for unwhole men, sponging up pieces they left behind, patching their cracks with my patience, distracting myself from my own edges. I’m not your oracle. Not your mom. Not your counselor. Not your bandaid. Not your plaything. I do not exist to anticipate your moods, to translate your silences, to fill the gaps you refuse to face. I am mine. I hold my own pieces, every shard and curve, every flame and shadow. I am not a

If I go, bury me with sunflowers from the backroads. Scatter my hair with the ashes, or send me off with gold on my eyelids, a wreath of broken glass for the light to catch. Downwind of the graffiti dam, past the debris, into the lake. Let the flames kiss the surface. Let the current carry me beyond memory, beyond name. --- The first few lines came to me out of nowhere. I kept thinking about a kind of send-off, something ritualistic, almost like a Viking funeral, at Wallace L

Something I’ve learned from being in the public eye Someone will always find a way to criticize the work you do that it’s not enough that it’s too this or too that without offering their hands to help build the future they’re complaining about

Sometimes self-awareness is bloody annoying. I “art” (yes, I’m using art as a verb, don’t judge me) my inner thoughts, hoping to be seen, recognized. Many artists, and really anyone trying to navigate the human condition, crave to be truly known, even while fearing exposure . I guess the question is: is it safer to be the observed or the observer? I suppose the central question in artistic expression is this: what is truth? And I wonder, through whose lens are we seeing and

I’m starting something new, a space for my “Kat Musings.” Somewhere for my ponderings, scribbles, and the little flashes of life that linger. It is a place to share what moves me and to give you a glimpse into my inner world. When you can’t sleep, so you write a little scribble… A Flash I’ve seen you in a dream or maybe just around town somewhere between streetlight and memory Something about your eyes feels familiar like they know what I might be before I do Do you tilt your