Tiff Catheryn

Portfolio

Scarlet Crescendos

Daughter's Padded Mind

Morning Eyes

Two Weeks

Poem beginning and ending with a line from Cummings

Response

Butterfly

Naked Accuracy

Water

About

"Tiffany to me is strength. She keeps going. Trying. Becoming more than she was the day before. She is laughter and silliness. She is love and light. I never feel like I have to be anything or anyone other than who I am when I’m with my friend Tiffany. "

"Tiffany is truly an inspiration. Her dedication to others shines through brightly to all that have the pleasure of meeting her. She is a fierce mother that would do anything for her child, a caring nurse that goes above and beyond for her patients, a devoted wife to a grateful husband, and a brilliant mind who is full of humor, charm and occasionally wit. "

"I met Tiff at college when the universe put us together as suitemates. There we found our separate creativity and weirdness blended well together. We made it through CMU, her move to Chicago, moving back in together for a while in a teeny tiny house, later nursing school, boards and career. It's been many years of ups and downs, Stephen Kellogg concerts, road trips and tear producing laughter. "

"Tiff is pretty much just your average bookworm/coffee shop fiend. She enjoys reading, riding her Peloton, yoga, chia tea, anything pumpkin spice, snuggles with her daughter, and watching Law and Order in her pajamas "

Water

Water was her savior, her secret, her answer. I used to think of how fitting it was; almost poetic, almost beautiful. She had always been almost there. Her skin, like clear liquid, was just shallow enough to enclose her brittle bones. It hung onto her like a dripping faucet, not wanting to be cast away like all the rest. Her hair was a clean, gentle white. It seemed nearly jealous that, it too, could not become transparent. Like feathers, knotted repeatedly over and over, it reached out in tuffs toward the bruised clouds. When the wind caught her it danced just like rain.

I liked to watch her. She wore 3 different pink t-shirts every week. They blended with her lightly blushed skin. Her jeans hung on her hips like fishhooks, lifeless. A thick black belt was always there, clutching at her absent body. When she walked, the few white hairs above her shadow-cast eyes would furrow with concentration. She had an unsteady sway to her stride, like an ocean's tide. Any moment, it seemed she would crash.

I wondered if she realized she was disintegrating. That she was no longer here with us. It is difficult to imagine that once we were little girls, praying for the strawberry lip-gloss that drove the boys wild. We ate lunch together at noon from plastic Barbie lunchboxes and passed crumpled notes underneath the teacher's nose.

I smiled at her frequently because I feared she'd disappear. On just another insignificant hot July afternoon, while the sun finally rested after its long trek across the eastern sky, she might simply evaporate into nothing. Wobbling on her spindly legs, avoiding cracks in the sidewalk, careful not to slip through one into the earth. The sun would begin to draw out the gallon of tap water she swallowed after breakfast. Or the swimming pool she had for lunch, to flush out everything. And as little droplets formed on her translucent skin, she would just keep turning over and over and over again, until nothing was left. Just a mist with no goodbyes or explanations.

Neighbors, friends, and family would put her face on milk cartons and send flyers in the mail. Strain the rivers and puddles for her lifeless body. But there would be no kidnapper, no body. Soon it would be like she never existed. All they would find would be their own guilty reflections.