I luxuriate in silky smooth sheets/ Until mud squishes through my fingers. Sliding from one tactile image directly into another felt dreamlike (and isn't the sensation of immersive reading just strong, lucid daydreaming?), the sensory equivalent of a portamento from a safe major to a sinister minor chord.

Seawater is no good to drink,
but red velvet delights my tongue
While bitter lemons yearn to become lemonade,
The iron tang of blood reminds me I’m alive.
--That I can taste these things, each on its own line and the tanginess overall—even over my morning coffee and morning breath— is signature of wonderful lines, my friend. (Why couldn't you have written a few lines about toothpaste for me? )

As eyes follow finger across yellowed pages Your mention of physical pages touches the hearts of many of us. Even though the medium has gone mostly digital—and for some very good reasonsit's just not the same as the feel of a book, the act of turning a page, the sensation of your finger on the page, the smell! (Goodness, I love the smell of a bookstore...)

...dreams of people/ Whom I shall never meet. That's it right there, isn't? We'll never know these characters, ride these seas, get shot at by these soldiers. But we were there anyway, and that lucky travel is what this poem is all about. Grab a book and travel, then come back unscathed. Mostly, anyway...

Hummingbird
The edge precision in Hummingbird is amazing. There is no bleed between the yellow and blue. If it were just a blue stripe on a yellow background, the lack of bleed would be impressive in and of itself. But this goes beyond the excellent technique. The sketch of the hummingbird and the flower are exquisite; to my eye, the proportion and dimension are perfect. This is one I'd buy and hang, no lie.

Walk in the Woods
There are three things that impress me in this picture: the person being identifiable as a person; depth of field; and tree-work.

     Person: Having mentioned my own painting, which features David (my friend) in the foreground, I know what a royal pain in a certain nether region sketching and/or painting people can be, especially with watercolor. Again, I struggle with bleed or blop—too much water or too much gooey paint. One is immediately able to recognize the form of a person and a dog, and you accomplished this without fussy detail.

     Depth of Field: If people are a pain, depth of field is a spear through chest. I can't draw it, can't paint it. Sometimes, I can't even write it! As dumb as it sounds, using more water for a gentler wash in the background is something that never even dawned on me—and it's perfect! It seems to communicate a soft morning mist, a larger field or clearing. I'm definitely going to remember this technique 8 or so years from now when I finally feel like pulling out my paints again.

     Tree-work: If the cartels get me and threaten to make me eat Brussels sprouts if I can't draw a tree, I'm going to be on a perpetual diet of nasty little alien heads, I fear. I make too many branches, or too thick; my leaves look like bad watercolor leaves. In Walk in the Woods, the variegation in color of that foreground tree is captivating, and it has a wonderfully full and 3-dimensional feel to it. Not just the look, but the feel. Another strength in the picture overall is that, while this is a scene of a walk in the woods, it is truly a portrait of one lovely tree. (You might be interested in one of my favorite short stories of all time, by Algernon Blackwood: "The Man Whom the Trees Loved" https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11377/pg11377...

Creek
Your tree work is good here, as well, but the rocks impress me more. Again, you have an eye for which color is right for bringing out all 3 dimensions. Of particular note, though, is the water. The colors and brush/wash techniques you have chosen truly give it the feeling of motion. I am fascinated by pictures that feel like they're living as I look at them.

Cormorant: That right wing wants to be a dorsal fin. Interestingly, the is the inverse of my biggest problem with trees—getting that damn back branch, on the other side of the tree, to a) have the correct dimension and shading, and b) stay on the back side of the tree! My trees all end up with side flippers in this same vein.

Wood Stork: Something is off with the legs. It's subtle enough I can't quite put my finger on what it is, but off enough that it's noticeable.

Hibiscuses: The only issue with these is that I didn't paint them.

We named this falling,/ but it’s really the sky/ learning to kneel.
Again, Bruce & Co. sang "Cain slew Abel 'neath the black rain/ At night he couldn't stand the guilt or the blame/ So he gave it a name."² When we name something, we name it for our own uses, not for the actuality that it is. "It isn't murder, it's self-defense. It isn't revenge, it's justice. It isn't falling..." I like how this is positioned. It may not be the author's intent, but I interpret an ironic barb there. "The ship's not sinking; we're all just very thirsty!"

"One day, these knuckles/ will split into feathers."
I white-knuckle it a lot of the time. Holding back anger, holding back frustration, holding back in intolerant ignorance that wants to scream that if everyone would just act like me...!!! That there are feathers underneath is so soothing, that I might one day flew my hand in anger and find myself suddenly gliding above it all, the people, the problems, my anger. That I might, indeed, metamorphose.

Even silence, pressed to light,/ becomes a psalm.
That is so achingly beautiful that it is a poem all by itself. And in the best poetic way, I can't even articulate or enumerate the wonderful things about it. Gorgeous!

Fro-Yo
While I love frozen yogurt (which I've been craving like an addict for about a week now!), I was personally not able to connect with the first one; I can't do sweets on a hot day. I also have a slight nit on this one. Four adjectives in one line seem to be filler for syllables instead of real content. II know, I'm starting off a real ray of sunshine, ain't I?

The Eyes of a Dreamer
Holy cow. This hit directly home. First, this is exactly what happens to me much of the time. I can't remember the stories I dreamt come morning most of the time, sadly. This section works as Kimo, of course, but the phrasing and the vocabulary make it accessible for a reader no matter what style they're looking for.

Success Is In the Stars
When we focus on success, we can see the timeclock. When we truly reflect on ourselves, we see the universe. Gorgeous.

In Silence
I was immediately reminded of e.e. cummings' A Leaf Falls On Loneliness. Autumn is kind of a melancholy lonely time, I think. For me, the carpet fading beneath the speaker's feet represents a call back to the second section, the carpet fading, the dream state returning, the stories fading softly into dreams.

~ The everyday-ness of these lines are anchors the reader can hang onto. "Yeah, that's how my smartass buddy talks. I get this. This is real." Could the writer want anything more from the reader?

     ...a crayon—periwinkle, the label said... “You were right,” he said. “It is a bulls*** color.”

      ...dandelion seeds...“Plant these,” he’d written. “They’re assholes. They’ll outlive us all.”

~ "a town I’d buried a decade ago." I originally read this and was excited (talk about dark!) that there might be another Land to be explored. But as I thought about it, I recognized that the town referred to was a survivor guilt that had been accommodated long ago: the loss of Kevin and the speaker's own subsequent survival.

~ The telephone. The ubiquitous telephone. Nurses left voicemails; the vines drank those too. In this context, the speaker is withdrawing into himself getting ready for his own outward journey. The nurses trying to talk to him in his hospice bed no longer reach him; he is busy with more important things. He doesn't even try to keep their words in mind, because he knows they no longer have anything that will help.

~ Resin. I'm rather glad to see this one, although it goes by the name of "oil" here. Oil, resin, viscous phlegm filling the lungs. This having been such a prevalent icon in Relic, I feel validated that some of my interpretations of the symbology of that story were accurate.

~ Vines. The vines of orchids bind and clutch, as in Noctuary; these vines caress and protect. I'll admit, I think I'm a little late to the party in realizing that, in your writing, vines represent the reach of emotions post mortem. Again, the tying together of other stories is giddily exciting for artsy-fartsy old farts like me!

~ Mother. Her sachet, the somehow uncomfortable perspective of her belief in omens and such. She may not be as direct an agent in this story as she is in others, but there is a tinge of darkness to her. One must wonder if it was Mother's cigarettes the boys began smoking in the first place.

~ Dandelion seeds. This is such a complex and touching metaphor. They are inconvenient, a weed—much as the sick and dying often seem to those who are well. And the seeds themselves are dead, the color gone from the flower. But a slight wind will carry them away—a beautifully subtle reference to the frailty of cancer patients, many of whom look like a stiff wind really will blow them over. Let the wind blow; these seeds will make new lives just as the seeds of these men may likely have grown the new lives of children or grandchildren themselves. Yes, it is true that they will outlive us, these flowers from our own seeds. And yet, you slip the jab one last time, revealing some lingering bitterness that even the most sanguine of terminal patients must feel toward the active, vital, living individuals around them: "They're assholes."

~ "We chew the silence he left." I felt that. We had Dad, but the dining room table was often silent, tense. I so often tasted and swallowed that terrible absence of communication. Your metaphor is inspiringly universal while remaining unique to you.

~ "...the war ate his vowels..." Nothing but static, nothing but hissing and roaring. No one could hear the vowels of his screams, only the consonant force of the bomb. This, too, remains; every reminder of Father is a reminder of the explosion that took Father away. This absence of vowels speaks, too, to a certain white noise that grief can bring to a person's ears, similar to tinnitus, but low and harsh—like the auditory version of shock, blotting out, insulating, protecting.

~ "...a river of black cursive./ I drink it. Let his joy rot me from within." Oh, how beautiful! So many ways to read this.

            +  "Cursive." "Curse-ive." Who is cursed, who is cursing? Death a curse, loss is a curse, survival, remaining, lingering is a curse.

            +  But then: "cursive"—a complex intaglio of communication, unique to each individual. This grief is twisted and complicated, and it is mine and mine alone! It's all that remains, so let me consume it as it consumes me.

            +  Or "cursive:" a signature. Father's signature. The grief on this tape is my signature on a goodbye note to Father, but I am not ready to say goodbye, so I take it back, I won't sign off on his loss!

            +  The contrast of joy causing rot is a dull, dim, ugly palette for guilt, the perfect colors. I couldn't bring him home, couldn't keep home, wasn't enough for him to choose over war; so I don't deserve the memory of his happiness, and I will—can—only accept it as self-consuming blame.

            +  And last is the silence implied with the whole metaphor. Because silence is all that remains, not laughter, and to break it is to break the only bond that is keeping Father here, to hear his laughter is to profane his absence.

~ Mother shining his boots—that choked me up, man. Too real.

~ Staring numbly at an untuned TV: the numb, crackling, aimlessness of shock and grief, physically manifested. This is a real reaction, so we can really sink our emotional and analytical teeth into it.

~ "His face...is the roadside bomb’s/ white flash." ****ing genius. The face is always empty, always black in our dreams, it seems: the blackness of nothing, of missing, of absent. But here...oh, here! Father's face is the face of tragedy, and the tragedy was explosion and shrapnel; the memory is explosion and shrapnel. Seeing the face as presence of negativity instead of absence of positivity is such an incredible choice. That's my favorite line from the whole poem.

~ Prune. What can the poem do without? Can it do with out some articles? Is every "the" needed? Can lines be concentrated together? For example: "You claimed love./ You promised love." could also be expressed as, "You claimed love, promised love." The second version has a little more immediacy because the full stop is removed, the pace of the emotion unbroken.

~ Conjunctionitis. I'm surprised I haven't been lynched for this yet. Ask yourself if the reader needs every "and," "but," and "so." They usually don't, and removing many of them can make the others more effective. I'm a total hypocrite on this because I loooove me my conjunctions!!! It really is better to use them sparingly, though, especially in poetry.

~ Write, Rinse, Repeat. Do any of your stanzas say essentially the same thing as other stanzas? I'm not sure I see any instances of that here, but you know your poem and your intent. Even if it doesn't apply to this poem, perhaps it's a tool you can use later.

~ Pace Myself. You did a very good job with this, so I wanted to note it. Using punctuation in poetry is as distinct and flexible as the poem itself. However, we are taught to pause, stop, stutter, turn based on punctuation in writing. Peots can control how their readers consume the content by using punctuation like long-dashes, semicolons, periods. You gave me chances to breathe, to consider, to raise my eyebrows in sympathy—all without breaking the flow of the poem. Very nicely done.

~ "...Almost isn’t a place. It’s a verb." My absolute favorite. This concept blew me away. The inverse of "Give 110%," this admonishes the reader that a lack of 100% commitment is a choice, not a happenstance. So often have I almost-ed... Crushingly accurate.

~ "Regret is a cannibal..." Watch me swoon again! Cannibals eat each other; therefore, we must embody regret (not almost it, but truly be it)in order to recognize it in ourselves in our memories and reflections. At which time, we begin to devour ourselves with guilt and shame and more regret. This is a poetically succinct demonstration of the downward spiral of negative emotions.

~ "- Last breath before the word 'terminal.'" The moment before one act or word changes our lives is always remembered, yes— but here we compound that with the moment before the shock set in, before the numb static started, before Lila's breakdown. "Some remember exactly where they were when Kennedy was shot. Well I remember exactly where I was in the last breath before I began go gently mad." It hit me like a gut-punch.

~ "This is the sound of an almost... 'Why keep it?'...Because someone must." This choked me up for some reason, every time I read it. It touches me personally, sad to say. Among many other mottos that could be applied to me is: "Success is momentary; failures are forever." I must remember my failures—and therefore, I must risk this terrible unstable journey that Lila takes. Touching the reader with shards from your own soul. Wow, and then some!

~"The seam of summa cum laude..." Another almost. Almost the best, almost perfect, almost a lifetime achievement, almost a lifetime of love, almost diagnosed in time, almost survivable. Such a fine line between perfect and fatally flawed. This subtly stated distinction is quite clever.

~ "The sea parts." One of the most ubiquitous and accessible symbols of biblical salvation, this screams that Lira has decided "almost" is not enough for her; she is putting her faith in something better than this dream-cope twilight of grief. Whether it be God or love or life or some compulsion like the Ancient Mariner's—to tell others what not to do, Lira chooses that salvation over slowly wasting away through grief into a shadow of herself that her wife would never have wanted.

~ There is still a history of conflict with mother and comfort from father.

~ Lila is female, as are most of your characters.

~ The spousal relationship around which the story revolves is same-sex again—wives. In fact, even in The Noctuary, the relationship was a close same-sex relationship, albeit sisters. One wonders if this dynamic is symbolic (Eve vs Eve, perhaps, in which no one can ever win?) or if it is a reflection of the writer's real life.

~ This is where I see forward motion in the stories of your "world:" the spouse who has departed is not angry or indifferent this time. She was supportive and loving, contrasting against bitterness, betrayal, and unfairness in other stories. And one infers that this is what enabled Lira to dive down to some sort of serenity at the end.

~ The dog that was never named from strophe XIII (I simply can't call them chapters; they're too achingly poetic) connects to the dog int he Epilogue. Lira has found a way to close that circle, to move forward, to hurt gently.

~ The use of the word "terminal" throughout the story is semantic symbolism at its best. Terminal disease, the terminal of a journey, the termination of life or the termination of grief (Lila's choice). As the reader progresses through the story, the meanings and shades of "terminal" open like a flower—like an orchid perhaps?

~ The mercury in the Parlor (XI) and the mirrors in teh Maze (XV). Our reflections of the past and of ourselves is so often distorted. Both the mercury in the Parlor and the mirror in the Maze liquefy for Lira, distorting her reflections of what was and what could have been. (Or perhaps clarifying them, as blinking a watery eye can sometimes bring things more clearly into focus?)

~ Least important first last line in the Parlor: “She’s not your ghost,” the Ferryman warns. “She’s yours.” I'm not sure who owns what or what represent which, here.

~ Geography. I drew Lira's journey out. It nagged at me as I was reading it, so I had to test it. Her journey is not geographically linear, or even logical.
     ++ For one thing, what the heck is a market doing on a boat? Jarred me a little.
     ++ Once she reaches the old town, she bounces all over the place, even revisiting places. For instance, she visits the Garden, then the lighthouse, chapel, and parlor...then returns to the garden to visit the well. Wouldn't she have seen the well when she was in the garden the first time?
     ++ Where is the parlor in relation to everything else? You have defined a general physical geography, but this parlor has no home. It felt afterthoughtish because of that.
     ++ Was the Archive of Last Breaths (XIII) supposed to be in the basement of the Asylum? Because right now, it seems to be sharing the basement of the Lighthouse with the Archive of Unwritten Letters (VIII). It seems to make more sense for both the psychological journey and the symbolically physical journey.

~ I have this underlined in two different places in my notes. At the end, why does she write?! Writing is not motioned anywhere else int eh story, not in connection with her or with her wife. What is she writing? Why? It's the only loose end, and since it's at the end...well, it feels kind of open-ended.

Setting: 4 stars
I can see the uncared-for bachelor-esque office. There's an empty sense to the office, although there's an unkempt feel to the desk. It smells of fresh citrus, old dust, and an undertone something dank and musty. Although not specified, for some reason, the office feels hot and stuffy to me; I think an environmental tactile sensation would help the reader. All this is to say that I can drop right into your story and accompany the character around—although I'm not really sure whether to sweat or shiver.

Overall Theme: 4 stars
It's only 4 stars because it's not done yet; that's a given. I can tell it's going to include a to of elements of Robert Parker's Spenser and the unexpectedly gifted cop in Dean Koontz's Hardshell. The incorporation of horror/paranormal into a detective story can be tricky, but it's a nice cross-pollination of concepts when executed well. Judgment is is suspended in this case.

Characters: 4 stars
The characters are not yet defined enough for the reader to invest in them one way or the other.
         Protagonist: The pessimistic but doggedly determined detective-without-a-name in your story is a pleasure to read, reinforcing the audience's desire to be a tough guy that is willing to do unpleasant and unlikely jobs. So far, he suffers from a lack of dimension, however. This may be addressed in future chapters, but right now he's kind of a cutout.
         Antagonist: The menacing and supernatural enemy-without-a-face is not defined yet, either. That's because you're not done with the story yet; I get it.
         Catalyst: Charlie, the customer-who-isn't-there is also without dimension. We are left wondering if it is Charlie himself who is the bad guy. He drives the protagonist's action, leading to conflict with the antagonist, but there is too little of him yet for us to get a good grip on him, so to speak.

Character Interaction: 3 stars
         Detective: The detective is much too accepting of a ghost in his office. Unless he has dealt with the paranormal before, he probably would have soiled himself. Gamely going along with a disembodied voice's desires rings incomplete and too much for the audience to willingly suspend disbelief. Also, the detective is broke; he'd not only demand but also need the money up front to facilitate his investigation.
         Charlie: This former person doesn't even try to explain himself in any detail or put the live human at ease. He seems to expect the detective to simply accept a ghostly customer at face value.
         The Bad Dude: While the repetition of "punk" a few times lends a certain dry humor to the situation, the menacing non-entity seems to overuse it a bit, assigning a cowardly or underhanded attribute to the detective that has not yet even been intimated. Otherwise, since the story is just getting started, he (or she) is still too undefined to love or hate.

Action: 4.5 stars
The details of the peeling the oranges and struggling to cut the excessive crime scene tape give a unique feel to this. Just the office, a trip across town, and entering a door would have been far too little to be interesting. As another detail (this is editorial opinion only), perhaps the detective is so broke from his business drought that he has no car and has to take a taxi for transportation, setting up some obstacles for later in the story. Purely an unsolicited thought.

Writing Style: 3.5
         Your sentences, most of them anyway, are very short and choppy. I am thinking this might be to emulate the noir style. "The door was closed. It was hot. And the blond across from me only made the room hotter." That staccato rhythm fits noir well. Used so constantly, however, it gives the story a simple feel, rather hinting to the reader that it's going to be boring or tedious.
         Your paragraph breaks are very good, though, and the vocabulary you use fits the private detective style perfectly.
         The depth of each scene is lacking for me. It feels very high-level. It moves fast, has little detail, and offers almost no explanation about the paranormal aspects of it. I recognize that it is likely because the work is still under construction.

Presentation: 5 stars
Your font size and line-spacing made this very comfortable to read. That's very important to me, and has turned me off some works that have probably been very good otherwise. Excellent choices.

Overall Thoughts:
Would you believe, after all that, I quite like the story? I'm a casual fan of detective stories, enjoying many of the Spenser novels and his own ironic sense of humor. So I am interested to see where this goes and to stop in from time to time to see the progress. As the story develops and you make choices (or not) to edit or adjust, I will likely leave other reviews, which will erase this one and make it obsolete. This review is only evaluating the story as it stands right now!

"Orchids hung from rusted chains, their blooms withering as Elara approached..." where "Vines pulsed with a light that mirrored her pulse."

~ What did Lila mean when she asked Elara why she didn't stay? Stay where? And why is she smiling when her bushy avatar asks?

~ What does the mercury represent? Mercury is sometimes used to indicate capriciousness, like the ancient god, or quickness. But I don't catch either of those allusions here. Is it maybe an exotic type of poison that reflects herself back to her while killing her, metaphorically?

~ Why is the Keeper genderless? This might be a totally personal thing, but the use of the third-person indistinct pronoun They/Them/Their threw me. I thought "It" fit better. I wonder at the reason you went this direction.

~ "OPEN BETWEEN MIDNIGHT AND NEVER" When do we face our fears and guilt and insecurities most but in the middle of the night? And far away is forgiveness when you've wronged family? Never, one supposes.

~ "The air tasted of jasmine and wet ink." Excellent foreshadowing, as we find out later that she stole the written work of her sisters floral research. No wonder those smells haunt her!

~ "Elara waters the weed daily. It thrives on silence." Oh how a lie does thrive on silence! And only if we water it with justification and denial will it continue to exist and protect us…even while it simultaneously damns us.

~ This is a little thing, but when "The full-grown man weakened his grasp on the mayor and did as he was bidden…" the word "bidden" is usually used as a command to be obligatorily obeyed. "Requested," maybe?

~ The Wee Mayor states that they can no long "live under your rule!" If Ron didn't know they were there, how could he be ruling them? What situiations and scenarios are they complaining about?

~ The Wee Ones killed Ruthless Ron and stripped of his clothes for their village, ostensibly. But…what did they do with the body? Did they just move out of Ron's house? Now they Ron the Rotting, and that can't be good, either.