If I am made from of all people I've loved, this quilt was here before I ever was born.

I was but a speck on God’s horizon and the frame of my quilt already here.

If we are to talk of love we must talk from all the beginnings. And there is never just one.

I used to think that I loved too loudly. Now, I know it was only a small yawn in comparison to the love I have received in return.

Late night phone calls, whispers of comfort, showing up in the middle of the night, in the middle of their day to help me, when I was a puddle of melancholy on the floor. Celebrating my little victories and the very, very big ones too. What is this if not love sewn together making my patchwork heart beat.

I think the rest of my life will be loving them back in return, will be making their quilt so colorful, so bold, so full, they will feel this warmth for the rest of their days.

Wet caverns of want

Between thighs, my lover lies

There now... ecstasy.

I needed 2 more words to get this to publish so please disregard this line :)

"When I first met Anna, hold on, when was that exactly?" I trailed off.

"You've always known me, silly" Anna sat there, knees tucked under folded hands on a yellow floral loveseat, eyes wide and a smile that had seen better days.

I cleared my throat, "Of course, yes how silly of me. Let me start again. Today is October 3, 2024, and I am interviewing Anna, for anonymity we are not sharing her full name."

Anna nods but look away, as if she is afraid, as if... no, we cannot go there yet.

"Okay, Anna, we've known each other for a while now. I hope you are comfortable with me in your home..."

Anna looks at me then, her eyes are a blue that can only be described as bright with white flecks, "Like waves crashing..." I shake my head, that memory is not meant for this interview.

She nods again, waiting for me to begin.

"We are speaking today because of a project I am working on, telling your story, practicing for an autobiography."

She stares at me for a second before saying, "You mean 'our' autobiography."

"I, er, yes you're right 'our autobiography.'" I stammer. "If you had to describe yourself in your autobiography, what would you think of first to illustrate who you are?"

Anna looked out her window then and sighed. She did not answer for a minute, and I knew better than to interrupt her thoughts.

She looked back at me again, "Can I tell you a story?"

"Uh, I mean, yes of course, this is what this space is for, please go ahead." I shrug and wave a hand, motioning for her to continue.

"Well, let's begin at the beginning, shall we?"

Anna became very animated then. She spoke of her early memories in Lafayette, Indiana, of when she first remembered being truly afraid and then when she first remembered feeling truly safe. I noted how fear came first.

She went through her childhood in a sweep of words, painting pictures of a stout little girl with a blunt bob, barefoot and always in motion, chasing her 3 brothers around their yard, and "making friends with the night" as she put it.

Then she paused, "But as you know, this girl could not keep her innocence for long. She had to grow up very quickly."

I nodded all of a sudden feeling choked up.

"Little girls... well we don't really get to take this girlish/wide eyed view of the world with us into adulthood. We pack up these little dreams and pretend they will come back to us, and maybe they do, but only in our dreams." She looks out the window again, her eyes glazing over, "I am ready to tell you the real beginning of my life now."

I found her eyes then and said, "We can be ready together Anna, after all we were there together."

Anna looked at me sadly, "Yes, I suppose we were." She paused, "Then you know there were many years where we were right next to each other, but always out of reach, right?"

I looked away, "That would be my fault, I did not want to see you during that time, it was... it was too much."

"I know. It was tough for both of us." She smoothed her hands over her legs as if it soothe the churning emotions welling inside her. She looked up again, "It was when me/you were raped." She paused, letting that sentence seep into the air. "I remember you were above it when it happened. You saw it all, I can't attest to anything more than what was through your eyes."

"We don't need to go through the details," she trailed off. "All they need to know is that after, well after we were separate. I became the old Anna full of hurt, and you got to move forward. I will be stuck in one place for the rest of my life, but you...

you get to move forward."

"Anna, wait no, they are not ready to hear this."

"No, you aren't ready to hear this." My former self looked at my fiercely.

She seemed to vibrate an anger I only sometimes still feel. As if she is trying to claw her way out of my subconscious and burn the whole world down.

When I imagine a conversation with this former Anna, it always seems to go like this.

A past and present me converging, and always it feels messy and dark, and I end up wondering when it will ever just be simple.

I am sitting in a Cafe, as I write this. My mind, so good at disassociating, went far away for a little while, my fingers typing faster and faster, thinking,

"Maybe this time I will write my story out of the tomb of memories it seems to be lost in. Maybe, I will be able to find that Anna again. All of them. Maybe I will get to meet them again, greet them at my table, hug each of them, tell them I am so sorry. Tell them you did nothing wrong, and when you did you always asked for forgivingness and that counts for something.

It has to.

Right?"

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.