Memory lilac mixed like time mist like a rose by another name unkissed

left leg forward with a lisp like you can’t miss this, flick of the wrist

balisong of a tryst;

finest point comes from the fingers through the wrist like the penumbra of the solar eclipse whose light she always ellipse…

I’m the one being sectioned. I called the behavioral health number and said come get me.

I walked up and handed the officer my cigarettes and he held it while another one frisked me near the entrance to my apartment complex and they formed a phalanx around me till the Cataldo came and got me.

A Black woman walked by and checked in on me and said “ya’ll having a party and you didn’t invite me” and it was the kindest thing a stranger could do for me in that moment but I said “you can hang around if you want” to defuse tension and cause that is how I talk and then locked up in McClean I often thought of my poor word choice, my poor life choices, et. cetera.

I wasn’t alone in a crowd there, cause a stranger stopped by but I was alone physically with only Dr. Solomon who taught me about choice on the line and God above when I walked into the Atlantic and was baby fragments mm abptized

turn autocorrect into hooked on phonics like I was schooled in Ebonics but I digress, to address the prompt; distressing as it was to walk into the sea surrounded by disconnected people all near me who could sea and hear the silent tears streaming down my face as I thought of Rumi and enlarging my soul and the gospel about the house not being big enough and the possibility of escape to oppose a sea of troubles and to take arms against them when it gets to be too much to take and then I thought of a feeling that wasn’t fake and I stepped into the sea inside and died easily to be reborn sea breezily.

I felt alone then but I clearly wasn’t.

And when I die alone or I die alone in a crowd of people I won’t be alone and it ain’t because I’ll have a loved one or the doctor on the phone or by my side but because we are never really alone on this ride.

Before the ground was grounding and the sky wasn’t a ceiling but a comforter over our heads to keep the monsters under the bed; before the sky, well.

Every story starts “and then, the sky fell” cause absolutely-fucking-no-one, nobody no how, wants to talk about how things are now.

After.

After the sky, literally, fell.

Fucking hell. There is one ring we wish unrung but damn it all, don’t you know, the church bell fell and it cracked that son of gun.

Don't break small rules when you break big ones.

You're carrying a class A narcotic with intent to distribute. You are crossing the street. Why would you wait for the crosswalk? Why wait for the flashing orange hand to turn to a little striding white man (racist), why so serious about it?

Jaywalk son, everyone does!

Wouldn't you? Why so serious?

Me. I'm not. But I am. Listen.

I cross in the crosswalk and only on the walk signal.

I take it serious as shit even if I have to wait for a bit

but I also know that to live on the

Wilde side I have to remember that life is "far to important a thing to be taken seriously" so I'm not always so serious wit it and I member time was I got turned round with weight in the trunk and accidently ended up driving in circles around Jake's parking lot on the way to drop in off for the college kids near Villanova and I chased streetlamps and played cards like a cereal killer whose verbosity was inversely proportional to the chemical aftertaste internal mind escapes from frosted special K flakes that stayed on me like dandruff, cause you know I lived a bit rough and only money and white privilege saved ya boi, so know the mental is like a koi pond and I be swimming in the beyond, no seriously, nothing is wrong, just nuffin bruv, to speak on how we dance from song to song and shuffle along this mortal coil, chortle as we cut our noses to spite our face to face with myself I can't held but look a garden sentence in the face off with one another and come together to all split the sumptuous prize money between 218 and county 3 dollars is what ladies and whatever who cars about gender at this fucking point, why so serious? party people I know I'm definitely not serious

except when I need to be.

I am watching the bowl and I saw you pick this up so now you are it. Either you walk out of here with another person's pinky to deposit in your kitchen garbage disposal before midnight tonight or you deposit you own pinky in the kitchen garbage disposal by midnight tonight. Failure to do either of these options will result in your death in 3 days.

All I knew was Tommy said something. That was all she said. Was they were getting ready for Church and Tommy said something. Because I never thought there was anything wrong in y'all's family, y'know, and I told Phil, before Sean, well you know, that Tommy seemed like the perfect Father caused he never raised his voice and I was always getting on Phil cause he always was yelling at Sean and even slapped him once but they got along fairly well, but I think I yelled at Phil more than anything, but the thing of it was that Tommy called me looking for her and he said that he hadn't seen her in three days and I just thought that was odd.

I remember the place. I remember it. We went back when I was older as a family with my dad because my first memory of the cabin was being in it with both of them. The carpet had knots in it that caught little particles of dust and skin like delicately tied flies cast upon a river and they had bought me a k'nex toy, a big one, that had a motor that I could assemble into a variety of things.

That is weird that you went back.

Well, it was a nice vacation spot. It was nice. The cabins. It was in Minnesota or somewhere. But I know exactly what happened even though I have no memory of the first time because it was always the same. We must have been getting ready to go to that mega church. I liked that one because the guy told nice stories about being nice even though I didn't like the whole intensity of the place and they never answered my questions in the youth group and they smiled too vapidly, I never liked the churches, even when we moved and tried all the other ones later, I always found God in church basements or in the hopeless places more than I found him/her/them/whatever in the pews. But regardless, it must have just been a stress thing because it was always about keeping up appearances and we were probably late and they got in a fight and she took off with me and didn't call to spite him and I don't know if he was still drinking back then but maybe he went on a bender but who knows it was probably that type of thing.

Oh. Well, I guess that makes sense. Cause I always thought it was weird. Y'all seemed so put together.

I remember going there with both of them. We went fishing. That is were I developed my fear of fish. That is why I'm so fucking scared of fish. Can't even deal with minnows cause we were in that little canoe and the pike that my Father reeled in was on the bottom thrashing around and the teeth gnashing around and

I bet

So I don't remember the first trip at all. Remember how I went to that place and they gave me those diagnoses and how they don't call it PTSD they call it complex PTSD, as if it is complex, and not quite so simple and I aint trying to get into the whole thing but like that is part of it was it jus things being all unstable and shit

So you don't remember

No, I didn't even know we went until you said that Tommy had called looking for her. I remember bits of the second one but it is interesting that the only memory you have of a crack in the surface is a memory that I don't have, because from the outside I bet it looked varnished as shit though because I thought if I kept up the outside image it would fix it inside our house and inside me.

The high life.

Yup.

Well, they did the best they could I guess.

I think they did. They were fucked up from what they went through which, as you know, was no fucking picnic, and I'm fucked up and I know that I'm way more fucked up than them. And they've been patient with me. They've shown grace. I took their issues and doubled, quadrupled down on them and I'm beyond fucked up at this point but I'm working on it.

I guess that is all you can do. How is the budgeting going?

Not well. But I'm okay with it. I wanted to live by the beach and now I live by the beach. And I'm relying a lot less on them for any financial support so I can meet them on more equal terms and maybe we do some family therapy but either way I'm going to do my therapy or die trying. Like a 50 cent type of thing.

Like the rapper?

Yeah, do you listen to him?

No, I don't really like rap. Your Daddy knows, Phil and I always liked Country, or Classic Rock. Sometimes showtunes. Dodo, liked fancy music, whatever the people downtown in the fancy clubs were listening at the moment, that's what she said she liked.

Man, we got the issues like tissues. Pulling em out of the box. Coming by it honest, at least.

Are you still afraid of fish?

Sometimes. And sharks. They live on the Cape and the Cape has sharks. Where I live has shit in the water and needles on the beach sometimes but they try to clean the beach up. But the sunrise and sunset is nice and moon on the water is reflective.

Do you go in the water?

All the time.

All the time?

All the time.

How do you want to go?

I ask every single one of them that question. I give them all, no matter who they are or what they did, that courtesy and then I arrange it like that.

What is life anyway but a series of arrangements? We enter into arrangements with one another. Contracts. Promises. And so there are accepted upon exchange rates the world over, under, above, and of course, below.

Why do you think I was destined for hell in the first place?

He asked go where.

The amount of them that ask go where would surprise you. It is not nearly as high as you would think. Most people get it. I give off a certain vibe.

You've seen me. I usually do recon by inhabiting people nearby for a bit before going in and you know me because you've seen me in people. You can feel me when I go by and you can smell me in the air.

I linger.

This particular iteration of me is less than ideal.

Last century has been lackluster in terms of the death and destruction given that I'm literally only inhabiting the body of the Grim Reaper and his consciousness to avoid being hell-bound myself and when I was in the business of taking life on Earth is was for monetary gain, pure and simple. It was business'. I took no pleasure in it and if I had been born with a silver spoon in my mouth then maybe I wouldn't have reached for a gun with my hand.

I'm worried about the next guy they got coming up; apparently he is already looking to extend his contract. Trying to be Rookie of the Year Reaper. MVP. Says, "big things in 2024, huge."

But I still got one last King of Rock and Roll to show the door before I go so as I was saying I asked how he wanted to go and once he understood the concept I was assuming he would say something like, giant rock and roll party which would be easy enough.

But he didn't want that. He wanted to die by a single gunshot wound to his medulla oblongata and he wanted to donate his body to the organ transplant list and he wanted me to promise him, to promise him on my word of honor as a Grim Reaper, as a kindred spirit, a fellow traveler who has walked the dark and lonely path, that his liver and lungs and heart and kidneys would all be used by someone.

He said lots of other stuff but it was mostly around how we could get more drugs and alcohol in the meantime before we had to do the whole dying thing, he wasn't fussed about it, but he did have a fairly decent buzz going and he was rather keen to keep that apparently.

Everyone knows that if you meet the devil at a crossroads and he offers you something the price will be your soul.

Everyone thinks that when the Grim Reaper shows up you get a chance to play him for your soul like that painting by Retzsch.

Niet.

When I show up it is checkmate. I take your life and bring you whether you like it or not.

There is no debating moving on with a Grim Reaper. Flee a Grim Reaper, wind up in Samarra.

There is no fighting a Grim Reaper.

I will arrive to the King of Rock and Roll. A Grim Reaper always arrives and takes life. I will arrive as a heart attack or an aspiration from an overdose or an armed robbery white tile stained red .380 casing clatters like an 808.

Except, in the event that a Grim Reaper offers a choice. Then the arrangement changes and even I can't change it back.

If I offer you a choice then I can only take you if I take you according to your wishes otherwise I can't take you.

But most people don't know second part. In fac, we actively discourage people knowing that part. You should forget about that part and you should definitely not tell anyone. For sure, do not tell more than 13 people about it otherwise, you know what, never mind, you do you boo-boo.

Anyway, in 99 out of 100 times thus far this has not been a problem.

I mean basically, here is how it goes, broken down in steps:

1. I show up.

2. I look like that.

3. Not like that.

4. Like that.

5. They believe right away or they need to look into my eyes and then they believe immediately.

6. I tell them I am here to take them. Some ask where, even though they know where, they still ask, which is why the number who ask is not as high as you would think. They are asking after they have looked into my eyes. They know where exactly where they are going.

7. They plan their exit.

Now, drug addled or not this guys exit wasn't the problem. It was, in my corporeal form, the easiest culmination of 100 souls a guy could ask for, I mean, come on, I had a nice little Glock 17 in the Mitsubishi Eclipse outside and he was literally already in a seated position in a place where it would be easy to clean up.

I had no qualms about the killing or how he wanted it done but I knew that there was know what I could honor stipulations that would follow his demise.

His kidneys wouldn't fetch a nickel on the black market, that heart was worth only the memories it held, those lungs which would have carried ten other men to Everest ten times over were all spent from pumping tar back and forth, and the liver; well, the liver was basically chopped liver.

My Ma used to say, "what am I, chopped liver?" when she felt ignored. God, she was a great Ma. Worked hard to put food on the table.

But anyway, I can technically send him off packing but his meaty parts aren't worth dogmeat scraps and because of that I can't fulfill the second part of his request necessary for the requiescat in pace to work now that I offered the choice and changed the arrangement.

So anyway, we are hitting 90 meetings in 90 days and then we will see how the recovery tour goes, hopefully we can generate enough revenue through that for the surgeries and treatments.

I, personally, can't wait till this guy gets his career in order, gets healthy, gets sober, gets happy, gets his body right so I can fucking shoot him in the back of the head and get on with my afterlife.

Tellez told a tale

Lather and Nothing Else. And

In that story I

I am both Barber and the

Capitán A.M to P.M