Stacked Neat, Leaning Slightly
I didn’t know it would be the last time.
June 12th. No anniversary. No guest. Just a Sunday. I made Mickey Mouse pancakes like I always did.
Three circles: one big, two small. A golden silhouette leaned slightly to one side like it always did when the batter behaved. I added fruit. Poured the coffee slow. Ate off the same plate I’d used since I was a kid. The one my mom made in 1989, my name painted in red. Still intact.
No fanfare. Just the soft, sinking sense that something was folding in on itself. I didn’t name it. But my body felt it.
You wouldn’t guess what was coming by looking at the place.
It was a quiet townhouse in Salt Lake. My first adult home that actually felt like mine. I’d just bought furniture for the first time not from goodwill; clean lines, a mustard chair, plants I kept alive. Mickey was tucked into every corner: flash on the walls, stitched into pillows, peeking out of mugs. Not as a bit. As a tether. A thing I didn’t outgrow.
There was a quiet pride to the way I arranged it. A kind of: maybe this time, I can stay.
The pancakes became part of that rhythm. A winter ritual that stuck. Sunday mornings turned into slow, sticky affirmations. Bacon. Eggs. Berries. Stacks of Mickeys. Sometimes solo. Sometimes shared. Always with the Dalmatian curled nearby. Always plated like it mattered.
I didn’t know I was documenting something that was already leaving.
But that’s the thing about survival. Sometimes you don’t notice the house is sinking. You just keep decorating.
By winter, I was living somewhere else.
The storm had moved through, and I moved with it. Still bleeding, still pretending I wasn’t. But I made pancakes again. Twice. Enough to feel the echo. Enough to know it wasn’t the same.
I even had a friend come over to take photos.
It wasn’t for a post. I just realized I didn’t have any pictures of me—only selfies and tattoos. I said, half-joking, “In case I die.” She laughed. I did too.
But I wasn’t really kidding.
My head was freshly tattooed. The patterns still raised, tender across my scalp like armor I hadn’t earned. It was the first thing I’d done for myself in a long time. Not for show. Not for anyone else. Just because it made sense.
The kitchen wasn’t the same. The house wasn’t the same. Neither was I.
But I was still making pancakes.
The tear didn’t make sense.
I wasn’t maxing out. I wasn’t even lifting heavy. I was warming up. Light curls. Same movement I’d done a thousand times. Then: a shift. A snap. Something giving.
No pain. No drama. Just the kind of silence that leaves no doubt.
I still went to work. Still tattooed. Still smiled. And I still made pancakes that weekend.
What the photos don’t show is how far gone I already was. You see a man laughing in Mickey pajama pants with a dog curled up nearby. But beneath that? I was unraveling. Quietly. Dangerously. Bleeding into muscle and memory.
And yet, somehow, I looked more like myself than I had in years.
The pancakes. The pajamas. The mug. They weren’t kitsch. They were proof. Anchors in the drift.
I drew her the day before surgery.
I hadn’t picked up a pencil in years. Tattooing had trained my hand to move different. But that day, I taped down paper fast, grabbed a board, and let it rip. I was late for work. I didn’t care. I had to get it out before I couldn’t.
The arm was already torn, but I could still use it. I didn’t know that window was closing.
She wasn’t perfect. But she was mine. A mad dash. A flare in the fog.
She made it out with me.
I didn’t know it then, but she was the end of one thing, and the beginning of another.
The women who came after? That’s another story.
This was the moment the ground cracked.
1 month post surgery