It is quite possible that no one but God really knew him. This slow old man standing across the counter avoided direct eye contact as he placed two items to be purchased in in front of me. Having passed through the litany of first impressions and prejudiced notions about what I think he is, he lingers in my attention, maybe even just a half a second longer than is typical with this sort of interaction. One comes to realize when in the face of hundreds of strangers each day just how fleeting life can be. Entire persons, some beautiful, some not as much (to me anyway) passing through like a river, over a 9 hour period; ceaselessly moving in the door, through the store to checkout and off to the car. An assembly line designed subtly by minds much more focused than mine on efficiency.

And here was this man, buying a drill bit and a candybar, shuffling through his wallet to find the $4.29 he owes for the lot, having neglected to round up his change for charity. Counting out pennies now he mutters some quiet apology for how long this is taking and I quickly assure him that everything is just fine while glancing to the side at the line that was now forming. In this space of time, so many meaningful questions could be asked, so many statements of love and care, some good will established between two people but I just looked at him with impatience in my heart and a banal expression of non-threatening joyishness on my face suggesting that I really wouldn't mind if this took all day.

It takes effort to care about people. It's one thing to be kind and attentive, and to do your job in a professional manner. Those are important attributes in a healthy and productive life. But to care, actually care. Well I'm not so sure I even know how to do that. This guy in front of me may be so used to being invisible that this interaction would hold no bearing on him, even if it were his last. I wondered how little thought, how little time or devotion might have been spent on him, or the person behind him for that matter. And yet through this near-pity I still notice the uprising of impatient anger, the goal-oriented "I'm just trying to do my job" attitude that sort of molds my personality here at work and there isn't a second that I'm on the clock that it doesn't feel justifiable to think of these people as "customers". Nothing more than small separate goals accomplished through short scripted interactions. No relationships, no feelings, just "hello", "how are ya", "goodbye".

He actually looks at me:

"Looks like I'm gonna have to break a fifty"

"Not a problem sir,"

money is exchanged, and our hands touch briefly causing me to instantly think that I need to use some hand sanitizer, which I will promptly do as soon as I'm done here. His change is $45.71, I have to open a roll of quarters and a baby starts to cry from the back of the line. Some of the faces are becoming noticeably upset at having to wait more than 120 seconds to get through the checkout and I can't tell if they're upset with him or me.

As I reach out to give him the money he looks me dead in the eye and closes both hands around mine, folding my hand into a tight fist with the money inside. He doesn't smile, or say anything, he just puts a finger over his lips making this now an incredibly private moment despite the eyes of strangers on us.

It was the nicest thing a person had done for me in a long time.

by William Riling

The Romance of Jack O’Lantern

by Hercules Ellis

“Greater churl was never known,

On this earth than Stingy John;

From his door the poor were turned,

Unrelieved, cursed and spurned…

…Then since Jack is unfit for Heaven,

And hell won’t give him room,

His ghost is forced to walk the earth,

Until the day of doom:

A lantern in his hand he bears,

The way by night to show;

And, from its flame, he got the name

Of Jack O’Lantern now.”

For the past twelve years the Crow County Pumpkin Carving Contest has been won by one man, a peculiar man for sure, but with an artistry of sculpting the seasonal squash unmatched by mortal men. That’s not to say Jack McCarver was not of this world, but he certainly appeared to be treated as such by his neighbors and townsfolk alike, a spookish conjecture only to be speculated about for years to come.

Aside from his carvings, Jack Ichabob McCarver was a strange looking fellow in his own right. A circular head with the features of a ferret cramped into the center of his face, a set of hazel eyes impossible of acknowledging each other, it was no wonder he was a bachelor. He lived alone. He didn’t speak much. His dress was not untypical for the region, jean overalls over a long john T- shirt. He balanced a wide brimmed farmer’s hat over straight black hair and work boots laced to the ankles. He stands a lanky six foot tall with long arms and large thin hands that one would expect to be more calloused, him being a farmer and such, but they were smooth as a surgeon’s hands and by the quality of his pumpkin carving, just as precise.

His farm lay on the outskirts of Crow, Idaho. There, he slaughtered his own pigs and chickens, drew milk from a lone dairy cow, but his specialty was that he grew his own pumpkins. His pumpkin patch was dedicated to growing the county’s best, not necessarily the largest pumpkins around. Each Halloween he seemed to prove that point when his crop sold out.

It was late October and I saw him as the perfect subject matter for a story for The Crow Caller, our town’s local newspaper. I just started working for them only three months out of high school. I received one hundred dollars for a story I wrote about the influx of migrant workers at the meat packing plant and how the industry was exploiting minors by hiring them illegally. Pretty heavy stuff for a high schooler, I know, but my friend Eduardo Lopez suddenly stopped coming to class and I had learned why and wrote the expose for the high school paper. The Crow Caller picked it up and reprinted it and offered me a job.

Now, I needed another 100 bucks with Christmas coming up so I could get my girlfriend Sarah something nice. With Halloween right around the corner I thought why not find something not just seasonal but a bit scary to write about. There were many Legends about Jack McCarver the Pumpkin Carver.

Jack lived alone on his three acre farm and was rare to venture far from it. Except every Halloween Eve his 1950’s Black Ford pickup truck would pull into the county fairgrounds for our annual Oktoberfest and deliver the last of his crop of pumpkins along with his haunting masterpiece of a Jack O’Lantern. The contest offered a $500 dollar prize, which Jack has claimed for the past dozen and one years.

His farm was in a half mile of dirt road off the main highway. It consisted of a two story, asymmetrical, clapboard house with the gable at the front and a porch. The wood, grayed and weather beaten was built in the early part of the last century. The barn nearby just as gray but seemed to stand purely out of stubbornness rather than solid construction. Mailmen and Amazon delivery men practically threw the packages out of their trucks without stopping. People said he murdered his own parents and dines along with their corpses in the evenings like some kind of Norman Bates/Norman Rockwell supper.

Others say that they’re buried in his pumpkin patch and their spirit haunts each pumpkin grown. He sells his “haunted” pumpkins on a stand he constructed at the end of his driveway and it’s on the honor system. Leave the money, take a pumpkin. Nobody has had the guts to break the rule. Add to that the rumors he once cannibalized a census taker, when he went to cut his cable service, he hatcheted a cable man into pieces or the tale of the missing girl scout troop fed to his hogs, cookies and all and you can see there were a lot of folktales behind the legend of Jack McCarver pumpkin carver.

My car was in the shop. I had a Mini Cooper I purchased used in Junior High and let’s just say it’s cost me a mini fortune in repairs. I had to borrow my sister’s bike. It was a Schwinn, a yellow Wayfarer step-thru with a back rack. The eight mile trip to the McCarver place took about thirty five minutes and I had left at four. In the back of my mind, I was hoping I didn’t catch him and his “Weekend at Bernie’s” parents just sitting down for dinner. Or him baking actual girl scouts into cookies. Or a half dozen other scenarios gleaned from ever Saw movie I ever watched. My goal was to interview him about his art, his pumpkin sculpting. Learn his process, tools he used and how he became so interested in the art form. Look, in Crow Idaho, how far you can spit is considered an art, this made pumpkin carving high art.

I arrived in time to see his black Ford pickup come barreling down his driveway and pull out in front of me and drive towards town. I didn’t even have time to call out “Mr. McCarver!” or “Slow down, you idiot, you almost hit me!” I watched as he disappeared into the distance. I looked at the lonely farmhouse, I know it’s weird, but it gave off the same vibe of seeing a puppy dog watching it’s master leave it behind chained to a tree in the middle of nowhere. There was still light left to the day. I figured I could wait on the porch for his return.

As I sat on the weathered steps an autumnal wind blew steady across the porch, and I was startled by the creak of the front door. Either the wind had pushed it open, or someone was inside inviting me into the dark. The reporter in me took over and I did the thing they tell you never to do in horror movies; ask who’s there? Then go and find out who. I stepped in and jumped at hearing a tea pot from the kitchen scream it was ready. True to the trope, I went to investigate.

I stepped through the kitchen door relieved not to see his parents having tea and biscuits with rats crawling from their mouths. I turned off the gas under the teapot and watched the steam dissipate like a genie returning to its bottle. I thought I heard a sound. A knocking sound. It was coming from the basement. I open the door and flicked on the light switch. Nothing happened. Still, it was dark and still spooky. I’m not going down there. Then as I closed the door, I noticed behind it on a shelf a lantern and a pack of matches. The house was getting darker by the second, against my better judgement, I lit the damn thing and reopened the goddam door. I knew I would make an ace reporter someday or qualify to replace Freddy on Scooby Doo.

I crept down the basement stairs, only because the sound of every bending creak and crack demanded I creep. Surely, these were the original stairs from pioneer days when this farm must have been constructed and would give way at any moment. There was a smell of mildew and wet clay coming off the walls of stones placed in lazy patterns upon each other until forming what could loosely be considered a room. Along the ceiling heavy wood beam rafters strained to keep the rest of the house from collapsing in. Wooden shelves of dust and cobwebs held and assortment of pottery, glassware, mason jars of varying sizes, paint cans, oil cans and miscellaneous items from decades ago. A small window was covered with dirt and dust so little light filtered through, especially this far into fall when the sun set around five. The outside wind was pushing it causing the source of the banging noise.

Past the shelving, in the center of the long basement, I made out what I thought was the shadow of a man hunched down. Stepping forward, my lantern illuminated a leg shape and then revealed the rest of what turned out to be a wooden table, or a work bench. On it, a perfectly shaped pumpkin still with vine attached, looked to have been freshly picked from the patch. On the table on a leather bib spread out neat with, by order of size, were what I guessed to be the tools Jack must use for his carving. There were metal sculpting loops, steel loops the size of a thumbnail attached to a wooden handle. An Exacto knife, a putty knife, a drywall saw with what looked like prehistoric teeth, a large spoon with serrated edges kind of like a spork. Set apart and above on the leather bib, a filet knife with a wood handle and intricate runes carved into it. It looked sharp enough to cut you by just looking at it.

I held up my lantern to a shock I will never forget. The stark light from my lamp fell upon wooden shelves of about a dozen mason jars lined up in two rows. Each jar contained a liquid I guessed was formaldehyde. Floating in the liquid of each one was a severed head. Each head; eyes opened, mouth agape, features contorted. I stumbled back and almost fell into a cistern I hadn't seen. I caught myself on the edge turning to look down into the black abyss. Holding up my lantern, it revealed it to be about six feet deep. Any water once in there was gone now replaced by bones, glowing white by my light. Rib cages, and hip bones and femurs and fibulas piled a foot high in a heap.

I looked back at the macabre pantry of beheaded people and realized at that moment what Jack McCarver’s secret of success was. Those winning entries he submitted each year in the Jack O’Lantern carving contest were not pumpkin carvings as you and I have come to know them, these were the death masks of his victims, carved with the same blade Jack used to carve up his victims. A filet knife of exquisite sharpness in the precise hands of a madman and his tools, a drywall saw used to behead and dismember, spoons to remove brains, sculpting loops to flay skin, the uses were infinite.

That’s when I heard the pickup truck outside. At least that was my guess. It certainly wasn’t an Uber driver come to pick me up. I put the wick out on the lantern and placed it on the shelf trying to hide it behind one of the grisly mason jars staring back at me. The room was now virtually pitch black and I needed to hide. I felt my way around the table over to the cistern. I climbed over the edge and lowered myself into the pile of death, decay and bone. Then I remembered my sister’s bike and realized I was screwed.

I heard the click of the light switch. The stairs creaked at a much quicker rate than when I took them, so someone had more confidence in them than I had. I tried not to breathe. Maybe he’ll check the rest of the house and I could make a break for it while he was upstairs. No such luck. The room lit bright, the new light even reaching into the pit. I pressed against the side of the cistern still in darkness. I peeked to see a lightbulb swinging from a ceiling wire socket. Did he just leave the farm to buy a lightbulb? No. That’s crazy.

Jack McCarver spoke to me. “You can come out now, young man.” The voice was frog throated and sounded as if it was dragged across sandpaper. I was ready to piss myself. I did not answer.

“Or I can drag you out.” His response to my silence.

I stuttered. “I… I’m coming out.” No sense in getting physical at this stage of our meeting. I stood crunching the bone and marrow beneath my feet. I was able to jump and pull myself up, claw over the rim of the cistern and with a thrusting scramble from my feet, roll onto the floor landing behind him. I stood, shaking, aware I was cold and sweating. I heard the sound I’ll never forget. Stainless steel piercing pumpkin. Chik! In this environment it was truly an unnerving sound.

McCarver continued, his back to me. “Do you hear that sound? Cold steel stabbing into this pumpkin? Listen as I slice its flesh to remove the top so I can spoon out the insides, gutting it into a hollow shell that will become my canvas.” He stop speaking so I could hear. There was a sucking sound as he pulled off the top. He spoke again. “Did you know stabbing a human has a very similar sound and feel to it”

I watched as McCarver removed the pumpkin’s insides with a spoon, scraping and shoveling a pile of pumpkin guts onto his work bench. “It’s that moment when I stab them when my models realize I intend to gut their very souls from them. That’s when I capture the expression needed to bring my sculptures to life.”

He turned to me holding up a candle. The most important factor is the light.” McCarver lit the candle. You control the light by the depth of your carving, remove less here and more there and you create dimension, shading and shape to the art.”

McCarver set the candle down. “But the real secret? He began to pick seeds one by one out of the innards piled outside the pumpkins. These are the seeds I use for my next crop, the bloodline, so to speak, continues.” He opened his palm and showed me his “blood” seeds. He closed a fist and turned away.

He turned back to me. McCarver had picked up a knife. “Let me show you.”

I went to run, and he blocked the path to exit.

McCarver thrust his hand out, grabbing me by the neck and pinned me to the wall. I weighed half as much and a good six inches shorter. He banged my head against the wall with enough force to stun me close to unconsciousness. He spun me around and locked my arms behind my back. I felt the tightening of a zip tie and was spun round to face him again.

His smile revealed teeth as crooked as a broken fence. He held up a blade. “This is a filet knife. It is used by the top chef’s in the world. You won’t feel a thing, at first.” Jack McCarver’s Hazel eyes were otherworldly, the pupils dilated to the size of a button with a black found only in the coal mines of hell. His ferret sneer almost drooled as he pulled my shirt up and slowly began to push the knife into my gut.

He was right. Whether it was adrenaline or out right terror I didn’t feel it as inch by inch it sunk into my belly with the same sickening sound I heard earlier. My hands were locked together but I still had a free foot. I kicked at the shelving unit containing the heads and the lantern. A domino effect took place as mason jar bumped mason jar knocking the lantern down onto the candle. An explosion of flame distracted McCarver who pulled out the knife to attend to the fire. I dropped to a knee.

The drywall saw tumbled from the table to the floor laying teeth up. I dropped backwards onto it feeling the blades bite into my back. I gaged where a sawtooth was and used it to slice my plastic bonds.

McCarver almost had the fire out when I stood, and this time I pulled the shelves of the disembodied heads down. The jars burst open, and the formaldehyde exploded. I pushed through the growing fire knocking McCarver into the cistern, I made for the stairs holding my wounded torso. I heard him screaming but didn’t look back. The whole basement and its ancient artifacts were exploding and bursting into flame. The fire was racing across the rafters. I ran so fast I don’t remember touching the stairs so there was no fear of collapse.

I got safely to the kitchen. Before exiting I stopped at the stove and turned on the gas while putting the flame and pilot out with water from the nearby kettle. I let the gas run. I stumbled to the door, but not before the flames ripped out of the basement and now began to burn with purpose.

I crashed from the house holding my wound tumbling down the wooden porch stairs. My face connecting with hardened earth and dust. I could hear the flames crackle and snap behind me and feel the heat from the increasing blaze on my back. I crawled forward in pain and nausea. I tried to get as far away as possible. I tried to stand but continued to stumble.

Exhausted and losing blood I leaned on an elbow and turned to look back at the conflagration. The burning house took on the same orange glow of a jack o’lantern, the collapsing porch railings resembling McCarver’s own teeth. The hollowed darkness of the front door and empty second story windows formed the eyes and the nose. As the house disintegrated McCarver’s screaming stopped. Then came the explosion.

It only took about thirteen minutes for the emergency vehicles to show. I was lucky, the blade had missed perforating anything of life threatening importance and I only lost a pint and a half of blood. I would be out of the hospital in a day. Plenty of time to write my article for the Halloween edition.

I was a town hero, reluctant, of course. I had been paid for my story and received even more notoriety when contacted by talk shows and podcasts across the country to retell the Halloween Legend of Jack McCarver. I was a celebrity and Sarah seemed pleased with that, insisting we attend Oktoberfest to know what it feels like to be treated like royalty. I prefer a quieter, humbler existence, but Sarah’s never even been out of Crow County, so I wanted her to feel special if that’s what she desired.

Besides, with the ghost of Jack McCarver’s evil doings behind us, the quiet hamlet of Crow, Idaho could return to the normalcy of beer drinking, pie eating contests and wearing lederhosen in October. I stopped to get Sarah a candy apple. I reached in my pocket for cash. I felt something strange. What I pulled out nearly stopped my heart. I had to get over to the pumpkin carving contest. I ran through the crowd pulling Sarah after me. We arrived at the display. I froze in place.

The center pumpkin on the top tier already had the first place ribbon attached. The image carved so intricately, backlit with the amber glow of hot embers, detailed to perfection on the orb shape, with translucent highlights, was a face I can never get out of my mind. It was MY face. The face I must have had as Jack McCarver penetrated my abdomen with his filet knife and held it there waiting for me to realize I was about to die. A face twisting in fear, contorting in question and bewilderment. Despite the fact I fought back and survived, I knew he got from me what he wanted and now was taking first prize for a fourteenth year.

The entry was submitted by a Jim Smith who never claimed the prize. Only I knew "Jim" could be an acronym for Jack Ichabob McCarver. The Halloween legend lives on because of three things I knew to be true; Jack McCarver’s body was never found, the blade that did the bulk of his artistry is still missing and I have no idea how thirteen pumpkin seeds ended up in my pocket.

Douglas and Lisa knew their time was short. They had been putting off this decision for quite some time. They talked about it on end. They found a way to bring it up in conversation morning, noon, and night. The offer expired tonight and they were expected to make their decision by that time.

At first, the offer seemed repulsive. Who would want to participate in such an activity? Douglas heard of such people who did and Lisa read about this in one of her romance novels, but that was fantasy. Lisa and Douglas lived in reality. People like them didn’t do these things.

But the memory of that night, that single moment where they made the proposition still lingered in Lisa’s mind. She was disturbed at first, but with each passing day, she became more intrigued. Mark was certainly capable of providing the services he offered and Lisa believed the time Douglas and Glynnis spent together at work would make the transition easier, but, and there always was that but, Lisa and Douglas were married and had always respected their vows.

But that was then and tonight was approaching.

Playing Devil’s advocate, Douglas said they should purchase the required attire. Who knows? If he and Lisa should chicken out, they may try this lifestyle on their own. Having the correct clothing (and the other new equipment) might add a certain spice to their life.

Douglas went along with the offer, in principle, as long as Lisa had no objections. Lisa knew she should be the one to draw the line in the sand, but she almost found herself excited with each passing moment. Mark and Glynnis chose this time because of the special lights Mark installed just for this occasion. That and their home was the last on the block and no one could “accidentally” peek at the progress of the four.

Should there actually be any progress.

Douglas and Lisa decided to don their new clothing and walk quickly to their hosts. It would be dangerous to do so, but it might make breaking the ice between the two couples easier. Douglas was ready for the sweaty evening ahead. Lisa felt somewhat exposed by the shortness of her skirt and the grip Mark promised to show her on his shaft. Memories of him whispering, “It is all about control” and “Pace yourself, this will be a long evening” kept running through her mind. Lisa’s face began divulging her eagerness to participate.

Just before they exited their own home, Douglas gave his wife of seven years a small kiss and a grab of her exposure to confirm what they both already knew. No excuses. No hang-ups. No morning lamentations. Lisa’s flushed face agreed. She wanted Mark, tonight, as her partner. Glynnis said he was patient and caring when she would need it; powerful as a bull, when she deserved it. Douglas would find Glynnis to possess the athleticism to offer Douglas a new perspective in a game he thought he had mastered.

Walking quickly, avoiding the looks from neighbors, Douglas and Lisa boldly went forward tonight.

It was not the first time they played tennis at night. It would be the first time they played mixed doubles with nationally ranked pros. They could only get better with such assistance.

Last night, I was a 9 year-old 3rd grader who just finished his math homework. I went to sleep without a care in the world.

This morning, I am a 59 year-old math teacher who has 116 math exams to grade and I do have cares.

In 1973, I had buttered toast, orange juice, one slice of bacon, and an egg for breakfast.

In 2023, the butter, bacon, and eggs are cardio-vascular nightmares. The bread better be made from gluten-free wheat, and I am an ogre for even thinking about purchasing orange juice from a non-sustainable growing region of the world that doesn’t pay its employees a living wage and conform to the latest “flavor-of-the-month” government directive.

In 1973, my father watched me eat breakfast while he drank black coffee.

In 2023, I have a 1000 yard stare into oblivion drinking the same black coffee.

I have become someone I am not, not what I was supposed to be, just not who I am.

So where did my 50 years go?

I was supposed to have two Nobel prizes by now. I was supposed to be retired and traveling the world.

Now I read ingredient lists from cereal boxes.

By 2000, we were supposed to have flying cars and vacations on Mars. I had plans to slam dunk a basketball on the Moon because of its diminished gravity.

In 2000, I was using the lesson plans I used in 1999, that I used in 1998, that I wrote in 1997, that I would use again in 2001.

Where did my 50 years go?

In 50 years, I could start and finish pre-med AND medical school FIVE times. I could have worked for the Army and the Navy and received pensions from both. I could have walked around the Earth, and set foot on every continent (twice).

In 50 years, I should have written the Great American novel, rewritten it as a hit movie, and then become a recluse from all of the media that made me who I am.

In 50 years, I would have cured cancer, or another disease, or any disease by now.

Something I was expected to do never happened because I never did it.

Why?

Because, there is always time.

Because, life begins at 60.

Because, I listened to the wrong advice I gave myself.

And that is the truth. I am my own worst enemy.

I made plans to pillage all opportunities and choke them for every essence of life.

I settled for a comfortable couch, a remote control, and a well-rehearsed litany of excuses that I could easily justify, but couldn’t defend.

My life became what I made it. For what it’s worth, my life is the collection of all of the decisions I have every made from my first breath on.

And I am nowhere close to my first breath.

And while we haven’t met yet, I know where my last breath resides.

And I know that when he will come to visit, it will be to ensure it is (indeed) my last.

My fingertips. Trace the lines of what was your favorite tattoo.

I relish the memory of you exploring those inked on boundaries.

My heart sinks when it recalls the pain that seeped from the wound of your departure.

The hurt ebbs and flows like the tides on a moonless night.

Darkness shrink wrapped my heart.

Enrobed and encased in black, it absorbs the light others seek to give.

Love and Affection are figments of a forgotten world.

Only knowing. Never again, will I fall for those shiny things.

Today

she wept for me

because she couldn’t comprehend

how incapable I was

at seeing the genius she sees

in her besotted stare.

Her face became

an estuary

where pity

flowed into disdain

as she was forced to remain a spectator

of my demise,

witnessing me

“Loving myself”

through sabotage

and degradation

while avoiding the mirror

like it was the plague.

I wallowed in it,

transfixed

by the destructive vortex

hellbent on sucking me under

instead of the line

she threw in

to save me,

one that would've incontestably

saved me.

And she stood there,

makeup smeared,

holding a limp rope

feeling lonely, scathed

and powerless

because the whole time

I’d been hurling the preserver

back at her

choosing to surrender

to drowning

over her loving embrace.

And I know it.

And it hurts me too.

And I’m sorry.

I regret it every time.

Today

my wife mourned me

because she didn’t understand

the darkness I live with

or how it sometimes

swallows me whole

where neither of us know

if it will spit me back out,

or take me under for good,

but mostly

she wept for herself

because I left her alone

again

to attend my funeral

for the three-hundredth time

and she

was just as heartbroken

as the first.

When will I learn

I need to kill the termites

eating away our foundation

before it all comes

crumbling down around us?

When will I learn to grab the rope?

Her throat rattles from the closet, alerting me it’s midnight. She’s coming. I face away. Melatonin hasn’t kicked in so I count backward trying to flee. Five. The door groans. I shrink into the mattress, paralyzed. My therapist said, "Breathe slowly," but broken fingernails scraping bedrails induce hyperventilating. Four. Crippled limbs crackle closer. She wheezes onto my toes. I retract them. Three. Sheets tugging, I pull firm! Another tug, then Another! Two. The bedframe squeaks. Her weight becomes enormous. I suck empty air. Clicking grows louder. She sniffs at my ear.

One. I have to look…

Jawbone unhinged; She screeches!

Its 6:48, your on my mind,

on my mind like a never ending song. I loved you, I love you, learning new things everyday even though its been 5 years. Learning another language that I should have learned as a child just for you. Embracing my culture even more till the day I die because of you. I miss you I think of everything you once said even though my memory has burned us like a dumpster fire getting rid of all the trash that was there. we were getting ready to crash down a slippery path not being able to catch each other, you escaping my grasp. I Remember those nights where I played you my music as I cried and cried over the problems I had in my life. Como dice el canción de Kevin Kaarl “No quiero que nos veamos por última vez

Quiero que esto sea para siempre

No me abandones tú también

No seas tan falsa como las demás

Que tu amor sea verdadero y no de papel” to say I wish it had been like this is not a lie.

The translation for the song is her

“I don't want us to see each other for the last time I want this to be forever

Don't abandon me too

Don't be as fake as the others

May your love be true and not made of paper”

Evolved dorsal convexities

Involve ventral concavities

Bilaterally frame the headwinds

Forward-forcing æther's airfins

...Differentially

Turbulence begets sky's lift

Friction regrets, plies rifts

Wings are castanets of motion

Percussing silent airwaved ocean

...Tangentially

Upward tilted wings

Invisible buoyant strings

Force fliers ninety degrees

Above the nascent breeze

...Preferentially

Aerofoils

Ne'er toils

Symbols—freedom, peace, and hope

O'erhead our feathered horoscope

...Inferentially

Surveying from above

Dinosaurs disposed of

Ocular acuity is

Predator reality

...Intentionally

Songs forever sung

Nests built for ever-young

Our ground, underfoot, full stops us

Their world, all else, atops us

...Two-dimensionally

Flight — a forever, forbidden fancy

Of those who dream of necromancy

The beauty of the gift

Is in the lift

...Quintessentially

......existentially

............providentially