Cornelia DeDona

Author, Photographer, Performance Poet, Writer,

[corneliadedona]

[corneliadedona]

I Didn't Die Last Night

I Didn't Die Last Night

The current arrived wearing the face of chance, a silent predator slipping beneath the skin of the house, testing its bones with invisible fire.

It began with the breaking of a tree limb,

its weight surrendering to gravity, falling across the power lines like an axe laid against the artery of the neighborhood.

One broken branch became a messenger of chaos.

The current played its cruel game— I dare you. One heartbeat.

One spark. One breath between ordinary living and an obituary no one was prepared to write.

The smallest things fell first. A lamp surrendered its light. Faithful appliances gave up their usefulness, each one warning us that something unseen had awakened.

Our home became a body in distress, its veins carrying more than they could bear. We were no longer its keepers, only passengers inside a vessel whose pulse had turned against itself.

I pulled plugs from the walls as though drawing arrows from wounded flesh, then fell to my knees,

where fear strips pride to the marrow.

I prayed for mercy, for wisdom that comes too late, for forgiveness of ignorance, of the quiet omissions that gather unnoticed until they stand before us

wearing the face of consequence.

Then came the answering lights.

The electric company arrived like watchmen crossing the darkness. Their hands knew what ours could not. Patiently, they followed the hidden language of wire and current

until they uncovered two broken connections—

wounds left by the fallen limb, small fractures capable of becoming a funeral.

With practiced precision they mended what could not be seen, restoring the pulse without ceremony, asking nothing except room to work.

Five houses stood together on the edge of the same unseen cliff.

Five families

were given another night.

Sleep would not come. My mind wandered through rooms still echoing with the sound of what almost happened. Silence itself felt fragile, like glass

waiting for another crack.

Morning arrived without applause.

Steam rose from a cup of tea— honey, cinnamon, and lemon— a quiet communion for someone who had awakened to another borrowed day.

I walked the house, counting losses that money could replace, making a list that included a new pair of kneepads,

because gratitude, I have learned, sometimes leaves bruises.

Tonight the current hums again,

its voice soft as innocence, pretending it has never threatened to become a flame.

But I know better.

I know how thin the veil is between shelter and ash,

between routine and ruin, between this breath and the last.

So tonight I will count my blessings like candles still burning after the storm.

And if grace allows me

another quiet evening,

I will breathe one long sigh—

not because danger has vanished,

but because mercy arrived first.

…

[corneliadedona]

Rain wrings the planet out, storms strip the compass bare— east, north, west, and south.

A would-be dictator

lectures the wildfire on restraint, warning an indifferent enemy it would be wise to stop fighting.

What a ridiculous man, arguing with the tide, as if facts could be voted away.

We are all drowning. Them too.

Don't look up.

The lucky Linseys have already slipped through the exit door.

The runaway train has frozen inside the Rockies, while Dumb and Dumber shop the clearance aisles, packing closets already swollen

with tomorrows no one will wear.

Meanwhile, the mother ship warms its engines, ready for the last departure.

Still,

I wait for the sun to find a seam

in the clouds.

I pull on my rain poncho, walk the trail, splash through the puddles, and listen for birds reckless enough to sing anyway.

The storm is not forever.

Neither, I remind myself, is despair.

…

[corneliadedona]

Ancient Psychology 101

Give me a Big Mac, fries, Diet Coke— Tomorrow's the diet. That's always the joke.

The dream of a master procrastinator: "I'll leave him tomorrow... or maybe later."

I've dated a loser far longer than wise, Believing old echoes instead of my eyes.

There wasn't a prince waiting patiently there, Just ghosts in the hallway pretending to care.

I can't post the truth where the whole world can see, Because then all your lies would unravel for free.

I'm not who you've painted, not wicked, not wild— Just someone who finally quit playing the child.

No— it's you.

A spineless jellyfish floating with ease, Bending to crowds with each whispering breeze.

Even old fossils have more of a spine Than someone who buries the truth every time.

The sting finds the liar. It always comes back. No shortcut escapes an invisible crack.

I've still got my dignity. I've still got my name. You traded yours off

for applause and for blame.

So I'm leaving. No hiding. No rewriting the page. I'm done with your circus, your cowardly cage.

Go play with the dinosaurs, bones turned to dust. Keep feeding the ghosts that you cradle with trust.

They're haunting the corners that daylight won't claim, Still calling your number, still speaking your name.

Teach them to blink when the truth floods the room. Teach them to dance with the scent of their doom.

The tide always rises. The sea always knows. It buries the masks that a coward still chose.

I won't join your herd. I won't live your lie. Some curses are broken the moment goodbye.

Ancient psychology— nothing has changed.

The ghosts keep the cowards.

The free walk away.

[corneliadedona]

The Keeper of Memory

Katya stopped trying to solve Tiki.

She stopped asking why he was angry.

Instead, she asked, "May I sit with you?"

Some afternoons they talked.

Most afternoons they didn't.

The fishing line drifted wherever the current carried it.

"I've been thinking," Katya said one evening.

"Dangerous habit."

"It is."

The corner of his mouth almost lifted.

"You always say everyone leaves."

"They do."

"I didn't."

He looked at her then—not with surprise, but with the quiet realization of someone noticing a star that had been there all along.

"No," he said softly. "You didn't."

The last light faded across the water.

"You know," Katya said, "I can't give you Bali back."

"I know."

"I can't bring back the fishermen."

"I know."

"I can't bring back the people you've loved."

"I know."

She leaned gently against his weathered ironwood shoulder.

"But I can come fishing tomorrow."

Silence settled between them.

Then Tiki reached for his rod.

"Tomorrow," he said, "the fish won't stand a chance."

Katya laughed.

"They never do."

It wasn't happiness.

Not yet.

But beneath the cracked ironwood, beneath the salt and the years, something loosened.

Not the past.

Only the future.

For now, that was enough.

After a while, Katya spoke again.

"Tell me about Bali."

So Tiki did.

He told her about dawn breaking over the sea, about fishermen who sang to the tide, about temples fragrant with incense, about laughter carried on warm island winds.

The stories didn't lessen his grief.

They didn't return what had been lost.

But for the first time in a very long while, someone was listening.

And for an old fisherman carved from ironwood, that was its own kind of home.

Perhaps that is the deepest kind of love.

…

[corneliadedona]

Anger Management

It came so slowly that Katya almost mistook it for weather.A passing mood.A season.But seasons end.This did not.Perhaps it had always been there.Or perhaps ironwood remembers what flesh forgets.Tiki had come from Bali long before Katya was born. Once he had watched fishermen push their boats into the sea before dawn. He remembered the scent of salt and incense mingling in the morning air, small woven offerings laid carefully on the sand before the day's work began. He remembered hands polished smooth by nets, laughter carried over water, and children who believed the ocean listened.He remembered being needed.Now he spent most days watching another horizon."They've changed the birds," he muttered one morning.Katya looked up."They're the same birds.""They're not the ones I knew."Everything disappointed him lately.The rain arrived incorrectly.The fish had lost their manners.People no longer listened.Yesterday was always more generous than today.His complaints gathered around him until they seemed to speak before he did.Katya found herself measuring every sentence.Walking on eggshells.An unfortunate skill for a cat.One afternoon she found him beside the water, his fishing line drifting without conviction."Tiki," she asked, "do you have a kill list?"For an instant, something bright crossed his face."I did.""What happened to it?""I outlived it."The smile disappeared as quietly as it had come."How's the fishing?""I'm not fishing.""Then what are you doing?""I'm remembering."The wind moved across the water.His body creaked—not like old bones, but like old timber that had crossed too many oceans."I think it's just old age, Katya."She wanted to believe him.Old age explained the cracks in the ironwood.It explained the slow movements.It explained why he needed longer silences.But it did not explain why every story began with a name no one else remembered.Or why every ending was a goodbye.Then Katya understood.No one person had broken Tiki's heart.Time had.Distance had.The sea between Bali and here had grown wider with every year, though the map insisted it had not moved at all.His anger was only the shell.Inside it was a fisherman still waiting for dawn on a beach that existed now only in memory, still listening for voices that had long since become waves.…

[corneliadedona]

Moving On

Friendship wasn't supposed to come with a loyalty oath.

Yet here we are where a handshake is a confession, a conversation is evidence, and guilt is assigned by association alone.

Some people don't change. They simply harden,

their hearts poured into concrete, their thoughts outsourced to whichever chorus is loudest this week.

They call it conviction. It looks more like surrender.

The crowd always needs a villain. If they can't find one, they'll invent one. Truth is negotiable; outrage is not.

The sharks never hunt alone. They circle, they scent weakness, they feed on reputations until nothing remains but bones polished clean by public approval.

And you, my friend, mistook the feeding frenzy for fellowship.

You believed loyalty could survive politics. You believed history, shared laughter, and years of trust could outweigh a rumor, a headline, or someone else's permission.

You were wrong.

The jury had already spoken. The sentence was exile. The evidence never mattered.

So blow them a kiss as they climb over one another to claim the moral high ground, measuring virtue by how completely they erase the people they once embraced.

Bow deeply if you must. Open your wallet if that's the admission price. Repeat the approved lines, wear the approved colors, hate the approved enemies.

They'll call it integrity.

Until the day the spotlight turns, the script is rewritten, and they discover they were never members of the jury

only the next defendant.

That is the bargain of every political arena: today's victor, tomorrow's sacrifice.

The crowd never loved anyone.

It only loved the spectacle.

[corneliadedona]

Déjà Vu

Once again, Katya pads softly through the cracks in destiny.

She has done this before for Gina, and now another trail of sorrow catches her keen green eyes. This time, it winds its way to Darrin and Julia.

Waiting beside the gleaming time machine is her oldest companion, Tiki, the Indonesian Fishing Master. Though carved from ancient ironwood, Tiki walks with surprising grace, speaks with the calm wisdom of the sea, and laughs like bamboo chimes in a tropical breeze. Long ago, the spirits of the islands breathed life into the weathered fisherman, and ever since he has navigated not only oceans but the currents of time itself.

"Every river finds the sea," Tiki often says. "Time is simply the longest river of them all."

With hands as steady as a seasoned helmsman, the wooden fisherman guides the time machine through invisible tides, 

avoiding whirlpools of paradox and reefs where history might splinter.

Cats have a gift for discovering what others hide.

Katya finds the hidden truth—a pharmaceutical executive who buried promising clinical trial results beneath mountains of greed, locking hope in a vault where profits spoke louder than conscience. The cure wasn't lost.

It was imprisoned.

With a quiet nod from Tiki, the time machine slips silently into the perfect moment.

Like moonlight flowing through a forest, Katya glides unnoticed into history, placing the forgotten research into the hands of a rival laboratory years before anyone realizes it belongs there. Truth awakens like a seed after the first monsoon rain, breaking through 

the hardest stone.

The scientists follow its promise.

The treatment reaches the world in time.

A child destined for suffering instead greets each sunrise with laughter.

One tiny heartbeat becomes the first ripple that transforms an entire river.

Without impossible medical bills crushing him, Darrin never wanders into desperation. The temptation of insider trading never crosses his path. There is no investigation, no disgrace, no courtroom.

Julia never has to wonder whether the man she loves has become someone else.

Instead, Darrin remains the honorable young stockbroker he was always meant to be, facing only the ordinary challenges that honest people overcome every day.

Their home fills with laughter instead of worry.

Their baby grows strong and healthy, a living blossom nourished by truth instead of shadow.

Katya never tears apart the tapestry of the universe.

She simply finds the loose thread and gently weaves it back where it belongs.

Tiki never forces the river of time.

He merely keeps the boat true to its course.

The universe needs no rewriting.

Only an occasional course correction.

A gentle paw.

A steady wooden hand upon the helm.

Justice purrs.

Hope blossoms.

As the first light of dawn spills across eternity, Tiki turns the shining vessel toward home. His carved face, worn smooth by centuries of wind and wisdom, bears the quiet smile of one who knows that even the smallest change can rescue generations.

Beside him, Katya curls comfortably on the polished deck, her emerald eyes reflecting stars that have witnessed every story ever told.

Tomorrow another underdog will need a champion.

Tomorrow another wrong will ask to be made right.

And together—the clever cat and the wooden fisherman—they will once again sail the endless river of time, leaving behind no footprints except lives quietly restored to the way they were always meant to be.

[corneliadedona]

No One Comes Knocking

They keep waiting

for opportunity to knock like a polite stranger.

It doesn't.

It slips in through a cracked window, wearing dirty boots, looking like another bad day.

Most people call it bad luck.

They call it bad timing.

They call it everything except the thing standing right in front of them.

You can spend your life staring at a locked door,

or you can notice the fence was never that high.

Blindness has little to do with the eyes.

It's believing the room you're standing in is the whole damn house.

Seeing is stepping into the dark before the light agrees with you.

It's taking the road that doesn't promise a thing except another mile.

Faith isn't certainty.

It's striking the match when all you've got is wind.

And maybe

an easy life was never easy at all.

Maybe it only looked that way because someone else kept walking while everybody else was busy counting reasons to stand still.

[corneliadedona]

Insider Trading

Katya shook her head.

Why is it some people slip through every crack, while others can't even jaywalk without the universe keeping score?

Her newest client belonged to the second kind.

He looked guilty even when innocence sat beside him.

Katya had rules. First, listen. Then decide whether fate itself needed a correction.

His story landed like broken glass.

He had married young. He loved his wife. Their child was ill, and the bills rose faster than hope.

Somewhere, the universe had tilted.

Katya and Tiki had a time machine, not for changing history, but for nudging it back into alignment.

Yet every answer carried a price.

Do they save the child by finding the hidden mutation before it awakens?

Do they expose Darrin's secret before it becomes insider trading?

Does Julia discover a truth that sends her walking away?

Or is the real culprit someone who hasn't even entered the story?

The timeline refuses to answer.

It only asks riddles.

Some debts are paid with money. Some with time. Some with love.

And somewhere between one heartbeat and the next,

Katya must decide

which future deserves to exist.

[corneliadedona]

Satisfaction

For a cat, satisfaction means three square meals, a sunbeam that arrives on schedule, a comfortable place to sprawl with theatrical indifference, and a scratching post positioned like a penthouse office overseeing the daily collapse of squirrel civilization.

Katya had earned her afternoon.

She stretched across the windowsill like a queen draped over her kingdom, her tail a punctuation mark announcing that all business was temporarily adjourned. The world chased headlines, stock tickers, and breaking news. Katya chased none of them. She watched them parade past beneath her whiskers.

Gina was safe now, rescued from the sort of doom that clung to people the way static clings to sweaters. One life untangled. One impossible knot patiently picked apart.

That left the next file.

A Wall Street stockbroker had floated to the top of the pile—a man whose confidence had dropped faster than a meme stock after the internet found a newer distraction. His portfolio looked like someone had mistaken it for a scratching post. Every financial channel had an opinion. Every pundit claimed they'd predicted today's market wobble all along. Funny how prophets always arrive after the flood.

Katya considered her options.

She could investigate his investments.

She could investigate his enemies.

Or, far more likely, she could investigate why every human insisted on making catastrophes so unnecessarily complicated when half of life's problems could be solved with a nap, a snack, and refusing to answer emails after sunset.

Cats understood asset allocation.

Keep your naps diversified.

Never chase laser pointers you can't own.

And always maintain sufficient liquidity—in gravy.

Katya herself was prosperity incarnate. She wasn't merely living her best life; she was a velvet cloud that had declared gravity optional. She drifted from cushion to windowsill the way a billionaire drifts from yacht to yacht, except with considerably better balance and fewer tax lawyers. Her purr was an idling luxury engine that ran exclusively on tuna and compliments. Every stretch looked less like exercise than a ribbon deciding to become a living creature. If confidence had fur, it would borrow Katya's.

She yawned with the majestic seriousness of a lion addressing parliament.

Determining her strategy would be half the fun.

The other half would be watching bewildered humans discover they'd been looking at the wrong numbers all along.

In the meantime, there were priorities.

"I'm going to see if Tiki has caught us some lunch," Katya murmured.

Markets could wait.

Fresh fish had opening hours.

[corneliadedona]

Black Swan

We planned for tomorrowas if tomorrowhad signed a contract. Then came the black swan—quiet,unexpected,unmovedby our careful plans. How quickly the expertsexplain what happenedonce it is over. How p…

[corneliadedona]

The Butterfly Effect

Katya didn't speak for a long time.

The Time Machine hummed softly, waiting.

Tiki finally asked,

"So...

what now?"

Katya opened another file.

Not a birth.

Not a childhood.

A college campus.

Autumn.

Students hurried through rain, coffee cups and backpacks everywhere.

A younger Gina laughed with friends.

Across the quad...

Anthony.

Still a stranger.

Katya zoomed in.

Not their first date.

Not their wedding.

The first five seconds.

The moment their eyes would meet.

"So," Tiki said,

"you aren't changing Gina."

Katya shook her head.

"I'm changing a choice."

She watched the timeline.

Anthony turned.

Gina looked up.

History leaned forward.

Katya pressed

one key.

A cyclist, running late, sped between them.

"Sorry!"

The bicycle blocked their view for barely two seconds.

Anthony kept walking.

Gina never saw him.

She stopped instead

at a campus bulletin board.

A flyer caught her eye.

Volunteer Needed for the Animal Shelter.

She smiled.

"I've always wanted to do that."

She pulled off the tab.

The timeline

shivered.

Not violently.

Not angrily.

Like a sigh.

Days later,

Gina met people who loved animals.

Months later,

she adopted an elderly dog nobody else wanted.

Years later,

she laughed in a home filled with warmth instead of fear.

No shouting.

No bruises.

No walking on eggshells.

Anthony lived an entirely different life,

never knowing the woman he almost met.

Katya watched the future settle.

No paradox.

No collapse.

Just...

a different path.

Tiki looked at the glowing timeline.

"So that's it?"

Katya smiled for the first time

in days.

"No."

"What is it?"

"I didn't rewrite who Gina was."

She watched the older Gina laugh without flinching

at sudden noises.

"I just made sure the worst person she would ever meet...

remained a stranger."

[corneliadedona]

Rewinding Fate—Take Three

Katya stopped crossing out meetings.

Stopped moving houses.

Stopped rerouting school buses.

She looked instead

at a photograph.

A hospital room.

A woman holding a newborn.

Gina.

Tiki's ears flattened.

"Oh."

Katya nodded.

"If history keeps introducing Anthony..."

she said,

"...then maybe history starts too late."

Silence.

"What if..."

she whispered.

"...Gina has different parents?"

Even the Time Machine

hesitated.

The air inside the cockpit

felt heavier.

Tiki didn't joke.

"You know what that means."

Katya kept staring at the photograph.

"A different family."

"A different childhood."

"A different face, maybe."

"A different laugh."

"A different favorite song."

She swallowed.

"But she'd be safe."

Tiki walked over.

"Gina wouldn't be safe."

Katya frowned.

"She wouldn't be Gina."

The words

landed

harder than gravity.

Katya reached for the controls.

Her paw

stopped

an inch away.

Because changing

a meeting

still left Gina.

Changing

her hometown

still left Gina.

Changing

her parents...

left someone else.

The machine offered the jump anyway.

Coordinates glowed.

Hospital.

Delivery room.

Three minutes before birth.

History held its breath.

Katya lifted her paw.

Then lowered it.

Quietly,

she deleted the destination.

Tiki looked at her.

"I thought you'd do it."

"So did I."

The Time Machine turned away from the hospital.

For the first time,

Katya realized

there was a line

between

saving someone's life

and

erasing the person whose life you meant to save.

Destiny, it seemed,

wasn't protecting Anthony.

It was protecting

Gina.

[corneliadedona]

Rewinding Fate--Take Two

Rewinding Fate—Take Two

[corneliadedona]

My Book is on sale during July.

Letters to a Prisoner

Letters to a Prisoner is a look into the mind of the Enabler. the Enabler can be ANYONE; male or female. The Enabler can also assume the gui

[corneliadedona]

Rewinding Fate—Take One

Only it wasn’t Anthony

Anthony was dead.

This guy was somebody else.

Katya's calculations were elegant.

Almost.

If Gina never met Anthony,

there would be no falling in love.

No impossible future.

No time machine.

No cat with opinions about quantum mechanics.

Simple.

Except...

Gina and Anthony didn't meet by accident.

They met through friends.

Which meant there wasn't one moment to stop.

There were dozens.

A picnic.

A concert.

A borrowed canoe.

Somebody's birthday.

Somebody else's barbecue.

An invitation nobody remembered sending.

History, it turned out, had excellent networking skills.

Katya kept crossing out one rendezvous after another,

while Fate, without even looking up, wrote in another.

Tiki watched the list getting longer.

"So..."

he said.

"We're not changing history."

Katya flattened her ears.

"We're editing."

"Looks more like history's editing us."

The Time Machine kept circling the Gunks,

patient as a vulture,

waiting for somebody to admit

that destiny

had mutual friends.