I didn't realize Janice took me away from my writing until it was as it my fingers were too stiff to clang about on my typewriter keys. I didn't realize a lot when I was with her. How I slowly made myself smaller, small enough to fit beside her as "big as the Sun" ego.

Pretty enough to look at, but look at it too long and you'll go blind. And I was blinded by something not quite love, but not quite "not love" either. Maybe that is why I find myself in front of my typewriter again.

I am writing again, yes, and I am writing to find myself too. I am looking for those parts I thought were too big to fit into my suitcase when I packed my life away to jet off to wherever Janice wanted to go. The point being, whatever SHE wanted.

What do I want? I look at the keys that used to be my refuge, my love wondering how I could have ever gone so long without their music in my life.

It is raining here. The window has fogged over from the Summer rain in this Savannah heat. A couple is running side by side under one of their jackets, too small and barely doing anything to keep them from the rain, but they don't seem to mind, lost as they are in their laughter.

I don't think I ever laughed like that with Janice. I think I imitated a laugh. Which sounds like something so hollow it felt as thought I was knocking on a door to a room, one I kept thinking, "When I finally open it, there will be something amazing there. Something worth staying for." T

There never was.

I don't think it was all Janice's fault. I should have run from her green eyes after she told me I spent too much time on my typewriter, yet never even thought to ask me, "What were you writing about?" which really translates to "What makes you tick? Where do you find wonder and joy? Why is it through your typewriter?"

But she never did and I gave up hoping for more long ago.

So I am back. The rain is a low thrum against my window and I finally am beginning to find parts of myself through the keys on my typewriter. The clacking is a familiar melody to the story of my life.

I may have strayed from the page for a while, but I am back and I will not be leaving my story unwritten, not anymore.

On the day your think you're better,

you envision a cliff and you are standing at its edge.

It is not a cliff for diving,

for it is too high up for that.

The force of impact when you hit the dark water below

would kill you instantly,

like the hard fall from a skyscraper,

only to find the remains of a desperate jumper

who met their fate against the city's sidewalk.

No, you are the focal point of this story.

And you are not the tragedy of a human you once were.

You are the hero standing at the cliff's edge

wearing some "Gone with the Wind" type dress.

You are now the person who can get through most mornings

without feeling sick to your stomach,

because you remembered all the regret you dreamed

from yet another black night of shaky sleep.

You are a new version of an old you,

you actually like,

before your fall.

Before the screaming with a closed mouth.

You are at the cliff's edge and you are not going to jump.

And your mom asks if you even need to keep seeing your therapist.

And you are actually able to answer, "Probably not?"

It is a question, because in this moment

you are checking to see if you are better,

that you are, in fact, once again "normal".

And your mom may not answer,

and your mom may just smile a genuine smile at you.

All the answers peeking through her white teeth,

reminding you of stark, white cliffs

against a dark sea.

And you may think that you are better.

Whatever that even means.

And maybe you are,

"better",

I mean.

Then you remember that sometimes

you still feel like that jumper.

The one policemen and women have nightmares about.

The one they have talked to for hours,

thinking that they are getting through to them.

Crying, "Think of all you have yet to be!"

And they mean these words.

They want the jumper to see beyond the dark water below.

Yet the jumper does the only thing they know how to in times like these.

They look into the policemen and women's eyes,

silently saying sorry

and

they

jump.

That night the policemen and women cry behind closed doors,

with naked dreams of black waters

against white cliffs too high to jump from.

And here you are,

thinking you are better,

wishing you didn't have to think of jumping in the first place.

Your eyes knew my heart as intimately as that mouth of yours.

Green. Your shade of green was a revelation to me. When I walked into the forest, the moss beneath my feet seemed to hum with the knowledge that beauty always comes with heartbreak.

If "you", the one reading this, were to ask, "How do you know?"

My only answer would be to ask the one with the green eyes, the one who held my heart only to give it back to me.

The one who I can no longer look at moss without weeping.

I tread not on soft ground where your body was a bed I found solace in.

Now I walk on stones, bloodied, and desperate to forget your shade of green.

The only green I ever see now.

My heart bleeds a melancholy green for you still

but

you are nowhere near to see it.

Come to the door of my youth.

Breathe into me all of your lies, all your pain.

Light the match you've kept in your back pocket.

Burn me to the ground baby, you know you can.

But I will not be buried in this wreckage. Charred and broken, I'll wash myself of your "love".

In the end, I'll leave this house in cinders

and I'll walk away clean.

Norman Morris always hated crowds. To be honest Norman didn't like crowds, because Norman did not like other humans very much at all. The only thing Norman liked about them was witnessing the life leaving their eyes as he killed them. Only then did Norman's whole body feel as if it had come alive, finally.

But that feeling only lasted for those few, precious seconds and then... nothing. Back to living in boredom and annoyance at the inconvenience of living around people.

He had never met another being quite like him. His family had long since paid the price of trying to paint their handsome son as normal to the outside world. Norman supposed carving out the intestines of their precious pets growing up was outside the realm of "normal."

However, being incredibly handsome did help with much of his masking. Pretty people seem to have an easier time getting what they wanted and Norman almost always got what he wanted. Which could be tiresome from time to time as Norman did like a challenge.

Speaking of a challenge, Norman's thoughts moved to the only news that had kept his mind consistently occupied since his last kill.

She was coming.

Norman has met many lunatics in his day, after being stuffed into an asylum when he was young around 10 years of age. He hasn't spoken to his mother and father since his release, not that they mind.

But she... she found him in a chat forum for Serial Killer fanatics. She seemed to understand what it meant to live with many masks.

And here she was.

"Are you Norman?" The mousy brunette asked in a clipped tone with her wool skirt and button up white shirt. She looked straight out of a library from the 50s.

"Yes, and you are...?" He had to be sure she was the right person.

Her eyes seemed to narrow and a spark filled her hazel eyes. The ones that looked full of boredom just moments before.

Interesting...

"Now, Norman, don't play coy with me. You know who I am."

"Ah, well Cassandra, I suppose I didn't expect such a beautiful woman such as yourself to meet with me in this drab diner."

"Tsk tsk Norman darling, you're trying too hard. You know what this little costume is really for. An unassuming woman asks for help with her groceries. Or helps a young lady find the right bar late at night when all the other men leer at her...Surely you must know..." She trails off and as she does she seems to lean in closer finally falling into the booth across from him.

It was a test. She was playing the part and gauging all of his expressions. Her eyes seemed to miss nothing.

To be fair, Norman was testing her too.

"I suppose, your real face will come out to play soon enough. In the forum, you were pretty quiet until I made comments on the "theoretical" ways to kill a man. Then out comes a young woman, with full knowledge comparable to a surgeon who happens to work at an insurance company."

"Hmmm," she draws out the 'hmm' almost seductively as she trailed her slender fingers along the silver chain necklace skimming her lovely collar bones, "you know how to get a woman worked up with such talk. Come now, you must have got the inkling of WHY I knew so much about... well." She trails off.

This felt like foreplay. A kind of foreplay Norman had never experienced with an actual living, breathing woman. Usually they were all but dead when he finally felt excited. Always a shame really.

Norman leaned closer, coffee had seemed to magically appear in their mugs. They had missed the waitress completely during their exchange.

This was a first for Norman as he usually missed nothing, one of his great traits especially when grooming a subject he had decided would be his next target.

Cassandra sighed in mock irritation, "If we keep testing each other like this we will never get to talk about the 'good stuff'".

"The 'good stuff'? Cassandra, whatever do you mean?" Norman said drawing out each word like linen on a clothesline, while drumming his fingers on the table until her cheeks seemed to flush from excitement. "How do I know you actually know anything about the art of hunting? I mean, how do I know you aren't just all talk?"

This seemed to invigorate and infuriate Cassandra all at once.

"How about I tell you a little story hmm?"

The waitress came back and asked for their orders, both gave them in blank, bored tones having glanced at the menu once. It seemed they both had the gift of a photographic memory.

"By all means..."

"Well, all fiction of course." She winks and dabs her mouth with her napkin daintily.

"Of course."

Cassandra dove into a story about what must've been about her younger self. Drawing out the theatrics of the study up on what kind of "hunter" she wanted to be and the fascination with human anatomy growing up. How excited she always felt when she saw a pool of blood leaking out of a dead body, when studying cadavers in her med school classes. How she never had met any other human being like her and how even after completing Med school she didn't pursue medicine because, as she puts it, she really wasn't in the business of "saving lives" as she was in "taking them".

Norman had never seen anything as beautiful as Cassandra talk about her first kills. He had never experienced such a kindred romance with another living being. Ever.

If Norman was capable of loving, he was sure that this would be it. They seemed to stare at each other for a long moment after she finished her "story".

"So," she paused looking at Normal expectantly, "real enough for you?"

Norman shook his head, while she frowned, he answered, "That was the most truth anyone has ever spoken to me. How about you and me go for a hunt?"

Norman, although not normal, was still good at masking as a gentleman and in this case, with a kindred spirit like Cassandra, it wasn't really a mask anymore. He paid the check and took her hand. They walked out of the diner smiling real smiles for the first time, possibly ever in their lives.

And if you must know what became of them...

the rest,

sadly,

is history.

Give me your hand.

Bring me to the edge of that round goodness and dangle me over that edge.

Make me question if you will let

go.

Let the mystery of all things quiet if only for one song

where you gave me a chance to shine,

at the center of that great world that no one knows.

When the song ends, and shadows begin to creep and this round, good world seems to flatten, let me remember this moment when the world and I danced for what seemed like

forever.

Why did I try for you?

I never once read you right, did I?

You have never thought of me that way. Why would I presume to know you. Why would I presume to not feel anything but complacent hope. Sometimes, when I think back on my memories of you, I realize that I cannot love someone who thinks of me as an afterthought. I think it means a great deal to be in the moment of your longing and realize you’re not the one for the one you want.

Why do I want the ones that do not want me back?

My innermost voice begins to bellow:

"Don’t you realize you deserve better than this? Why do you try to hold onto what you think the world wants from you, do you know what it means to love less loudly?"

___________________________________________________________________

I did it, it hurt but I did it--GO ANNA

I wandered into my liking of you in a way I did not expect. I began to look into the heart of every movement you made and would wonder if you wanted my lips as much as I wanted yours, or maybe not even your lips but your words.

I felt like taking the lead in a dance I had never learned before. You were going to follow, or at least I assumed you would.

But that night, when I finally worked up the nerve to see if maybe, just maybe you would like me too, I was a bundle of nerves- rapid firing. Wondering if I could receive a love that I knew I deserved.

It never happened, because practical and good you told me that you do not see that love with me. The kind that means we dance together with lips and love in locked teeth.

I guess that is fine. It has to be. I looked at my nervous questions and my “what ifs” and could finally breathe, because at least now I know there is nothing more to read there.

There are things about you I will take with me. I will take them and remember that these are traits that maybe a “someday partner” will have. And you will be as you are in my mind, a friend who ignited in me the desire to want someone again.

I suppose that makes you a gift, even if you are not a gift I can keep.

"No, THANK you."

I was struck by the emphasis on "thank" considering the stranger in front of me was obviously pissed the fuck off. All I did was ask the dude to move to the side to make room in line for an elderly woman trying to get out from the November cold.

I suppose he doesn't have much to be thankful for...

I sigh, remembering it is Thanksgiving after all- give him my most sarcastic smile and snarl,

"Thanks for the reminder of why I am so thankful for assholes like yourself to show us how NOT to act."

Remember when you first stole?

A hummingbird for a heart

You shook.

Hands slick with sweat.

You’ve never known a fear this real.

How it invigorated you.

The chance of deception,

the price of pain.

You’ve known both.

Doubly aching for a penance

you know you cannot pay.

Remember who you stole from?

Your eyes twitch in annoyance.

Guilt was never your strong suit.

There are some hurts too deep to carry.

You know this deep down.

Past your plastic smile,

you chafe from the facade

you’ve presented the world for so long.

You don’t even know what it means to smile for real.

But you remember me.

I know you do.

You remember.

And everyday

I pray to forget.

Tell the gardener we only need two shovels. One for you and one for me.

Today, you will dig my grave. I will help you.

The gardener brings the shovels. They are long with wide ends, as if they knew we need the sturdiest tools for the job ahead.

You don't know it yet- because how can you foresee death? But you smile at the way the sky seems to have cleared and you live with the bright possibility that today could be beautiful.

I am sad I will end this hope for you. I can't yet apologize for my part in your sadness you don't know is coming.

So today when we dig this hole you think is for a rosebush, I will be wearing my funeral dress, blood red, no white for purity. For I am no pure woman. I know Death as if it were my lover and I have seen my end. I am just sorry I have designated you my executioner.

Don't worry darling, it will be me in the end who pulls the trigger.

Death is coming, as I have seen since childhood. Visions in my periphery, visions in my dreams- the voices tell me it is time to go. Don't ask me why this is. Some things are not to be understood, only taken as truth. This is my truth.

The sky is now gray, you frown at the change of weather. I take a deep breath, It is time.

And I say to you, "Listen now lover, put down your shovel for a moment. Don’t worry, you will have to pick up the shovel again to bury me from the world once more.

But for now, it is time to say goodbye."