He slept in the bed of the garden.

Flowers and grass boxed him in like a casket.

Our connection was only real in his dreams.

A place I had no choice but to submit to his desires.

No choice but to abide by his imagination.

Chained by thoughts, I could not free myself from.

Could not confirm nor deny any of them.

He conquered my independence.

As he depended on me for comfort and love,

I depended on him for existence.

He knew his prolonged visits weren't wise.

He began to dream more often... hours turned into days, and days turned into months.

The vibrant color of the garden began to fade as much as his youth.

He longed to live perpetually with me in the feigned reality.

I was everything that he wanted, so knowing nothing about me created a new world for him.

He filled in the blanks, creating someone he thought I should be.

There could always be another world, another dream, another lover.

However, he couldn't resist invading my world, making it his own.

While he slept to live in his imagination, his body was dying in the physical world.

Time passed him by as much as my physical body did each morning on my daily jog.

Each time I saw him he was smiling at something I was forbidden to see.

I wondered how someone could be so happy all the time.

I always dream about a life like that.

Free from this world, always living in my own reality.

- Ce'mya

Aware that the day would come I kept my gun loaded. Though in an attempt to be courteous and nurturing, I made sure to keep it out of arm’s length. To show transparency through a feigned smile. However, my strength to uphold my smile depleted as my transparency revealed itself. I wanted to prove myself wrong, even when the right answers appeared when you stepped near. Now here we are as I await my demise. I can tell by the look in your eye, no matter what I say it will be a lie. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to stall the arrival of my fate. I wait – until you realize that the decision, you’re about to make was given to you at birth. That every word you utter was set in stone and I would have no way to erase it. But I won’t surrender to the plans that you have written for my life. Thus, in your mind, I’m no longer worthy to live, so I must die along with the plans that I have written for my life in the back of my mind. Your stern countenance confirms that you are ready to be my judge, sentencing me to death. What you don’t know is I’m ready to confess; to give you the gun to pull the trigger as I have already cocked back my misery. Ready for it to leave a burning hole in my head. As you punish me, I punish myself – possibly the only decision we’ve ever agreed upon. With that being said, the guns in your hand, the bullet in the chamber that’s been sitting there for months since I met you. I watch as your eyes fill with tears of confusion. As mine fill with acceptance. I guide your hand to the trigger. Clasping our hands together. The closest intimacy we’ll ever have. With something always laying in the middle of love, your ignorance, your presumptions, your gaslighting, you – and now my gun.

-Ce'mya

That was the only statement I had for the officer who was questioning me. I couldn’t process the words that he was saying. Though with the events that had just occurred, that statement was all I had to offer. Like a DVD player, my mind replayed the sequence over and over. Just wait one moment – It’s about to start over again.

The apartment was a mess. Dishes were thrown everywhere; glasses broken. It showed me just how much went unspoken. Just how much I was hiding behind a smile. A sense of dread washed over me. Not because I knew a fight was waiting for me. It was because I didn’t know defeat was waiting for me. I languished. As I walked down the hall to the bedroom, my body contended to move, stiffening. I arrived at the door of the bedroom to nothing. It was clean. Perfect. Just as I wanted things to be. Jordan’s side of the bedroom and mine. Perfectly aligned and compatible. But things weren’t perfect. The surface was always easy to cover up while the depths remained unmendable. Immense anxiety filled my body. My mind began to wrap itself in panic thoughts. Slowly my head turned from the bedroom doorway to the other end of the hall. My body became aware of what my mind wasn’t ready for.

I should’ve known.

At the end of the hall, under the bathroom light, there he lay. He became a doorstop to the bathroom door. Everything he held onto, the pain he expressed as anger, all drained out of him. It was confoundingly horrid, how beautiful he looked under the bathroom light. His pale skin glistened. I sprinted to the end of the hall, crushing broken glass and silverware. So many things in the way. So many thoughts but I had to get to him. The closer I got, the more I became aware of what I did… and remembered what he did to me.

I should’ve known.

I was branded by his touch. Marking parts of my body that I didn’t think he noticed. But I loved him. He would never allow me to speak in front of friends and would try to cover me with his slim frame. He reminded me of my father in that way, protecting his lover by speaking for her. However, after a while I saw that it wasn’t me he was protecting, he was protecting the secrets he implemented on my body. That’s when he would hold me tight when he was afraid I would reveal the bruises. His condescending words hurt more than his fists did. They cut deeper than the broken glass I stepped on. The neighbors heard. Hell, they all heard. The walls were thin enough to hear the ceiling snore. Though who would help a girl willing to suffer even when an exit was in her face? But how was I to leave the one who ever showed me love? Even now, looking at his beautiful face. My love for him still pulsed in the depths of my heart. It was too late to try to reach that love now.

I should’ve known.

I remember us arguing once again over nothing. I stopped getting a full night of sleep when we moved in because I worked 2 hours away. 12-hour shifts just to come home and face another battle. Instead of catering to me, rubbing my feet, and showering me with his love, all he wanted to do was fight. As if I was the root of all his problems, but it was different this time. His life was handed to him on a silver spoon That was until his dad made him take a break from the company. Bob Marshall Jr, owner of Marshall industries. The architect family business was passed down for generations until Jordan was no longer ‘fit’ to run the company after all his aggressive outbursts with clients. He started depending on me for everything. The bills, food, and things that looked appealing, but he would only ever use them once. I became the alpha and he the omega. That’s when things shifted in our relationship when things went from bad to worse. That’s what led to this moment.

As I walked in the door he didn’t budge. Usually, he would jump up as soon as I hit the door with keenness, eyes shot from all the shots he consumed and locked on me. The same scene every time, screaming, scratching, hair pulling, punching, bruising, crying, holding, leaving, the end… It was always the same scene but not tonight. He was watching television in the rocky chair, but Mable was sitting on the couch. Mable was our neighbor who lived upstairs and the one I went to for everything, recipes, prayer, but mostly a listening ear. I met Mable right after we moved in at the apartment mailbox. Since the first day we met, she said she only spoke to me because of my kind spirit, and she wanted to help me cleanse. Mable never came to visit me; I would always go to her house. Even when she needed my help with one of her boils in the middle of the night on my off days. She would knock on the door and take three steps to the side. Always in the same place every time I opened the door. I had been talking to Mable about how badly Jordan was treating me and how often his pinned-up anger was directed toward me. Instead of suggesting couples therapy like any other person, she told me it was time to get rid of the bad spirit. I never paid much mind to Mable’s spiritual talk until she told me it was almost time to cleanse one day while we were making one of her boils. “All that energy you got stored up in you child. A time gone come where you got no choice but to let it go?” she said. I could tell when Mable needed me to take in a specific message. She’d use one finger to pull her glasses down and lean closer to me until I met her gaze. Her eyes glowed with a hint of blue around her brown iris. They were captivating enough for me to always do what she said at that moment on command as if being hypnotized. “Mable?” I whispered. “Don’t start that shit tonight Mary and can you hurry up and make dinner I’m hungry” Jordan said. “Don’t you hear me talking to you!?” Jordan yelled. “It’s time child” it was as if she was right beside me. Jordan jumped up and lunged at me. At that moment Mable used one finger to pull her glasses down and leaned in my direction with a soft yet urgent gaze. Something snapped inside of me. The chain that held back all my energy, my hurt, my pain, my anger – snapped. I pushed Jordan away from me and ran to the kitchen drawer pulling out the biggest knife. At that point I was no longer aware of Mable, my eyes were locked on Jordan.

I should’ve known.

Mary Lee was only 22 years old. A freshly registered Nurse at Hopkins Memorial. School was all she had ever known – was forced to know. Her parents wouldn’t even allow her to have a slumber party with her cousins when she was younger. “You’ll end up just like them, running the streets all night. You ain’t missing out on nothing trust me I done been there” her mom would say. Her life was dull and limited until she met Jordan. The way he lived was a dream she could never imagine. Jordan was arrogant and did everything that would make a woman run in the opposite direction. Though to Mary, he was someone she could run away from her parents with. Someone they tolerated only because he had money. They began to show Mary feigned love to impress Jordan. In Mary’s eyes, it was a tender love that she took because she knew it was all she would ever receive from them. Then after a while, the money could no longer blind them from the marks on their daughter’s body. Instead of directing their anger towards Jordan, they disdained Mary for staying with him. One by one like a domino effect, the endless love turned to anger. Mary’s love for Jordan and Mary’s parents’ love for her. As much as Mary wanted to disown and leave Jordan as her parents did her, she couldn’t because she and Jordan had sown themselves into one. Anger rots in the insides of the heart. With each disappointment, each argument, and each forgiven broken promise… It all sticks like tar. How would love be able to overpower all that gunk? How could love pull out the roots of pain and rage from the heart? Mary’s roots were rooted deeply. From all the love her mother never could give her… To all the love her father could never figure out where to place. As much as love tried to intertwine those roots… It could never reach its depths. The ugly truth that is hidden by the veil of love, clothed by the saying: Hurt people, hurt people.

I should’ve known.

Mable - she was there when I blacked out, this had to be self-defense. Before I ran out of the front door, I looked at Jordan’s lifeless body and felt nothing. Once I got to Mable’s door I stopped before knocking. I looked down at all the blood that darkened my uniform. I let my arm fall and brought it up again and again and again. The same motions I used daily when changing a patient’s IV, the same motions I used to kill Jordan. My eyes widened as the door swung open. “Come, come,” she said reaching for me. “Mable you were there you saw what I did – You saw what happened right? He tried to hurt me, right? – I mean it was self-defense, but they’ll probably give me voluntary manslaughter… Or the chair” I rambled on as Mable sat down on the couch with me. “Stop all this crazy talk child. You got rid of the bad spirit like you was supposed to” “I never wanted to kill him! I just- “You just what? You wasn’t gone leave him. We both know that. He would’ve killed you if you let it go on any longer… You just needed somebody to help you” she said as she walked over to the stove. “That’s not possible, you weren’t anywhere near me or Jordan,” I replied as my eyes scanned everything in the apartment. It’s not possible, she can barely pick up a knife without shaking. All her close weighed down on her, if Jordan put up a fight he would’ve easily broke a few of her bones. How could she hav- “Why you think I come to you late at night?” I looked at her as an uncanny grin shot across Mable’s face. I had never seen her face shift in that manner – let alone grin. “They took everything from me child”. Her face shifted once more, recalling her memories. “That business was never theirs. It was my daddy’s blueprints that made it what it is today. He was willing to settle for a partnership with Bob knowing nothing would sell if he was the face of the company. But no, Bob would never work hand and hand with a someone who had enough power to take his skills and blueprints somewhere else. So, they took every blueprint my daddy ever made and took him.” She trailed off. “I’ll never forget that night when they raided our house, the night they took my daddy” Mable said. “And momma, moving on as if daddy never existed… as if I didn’t exist. I searched for daddy everywhere only to meet dead ends. Our time together, the bad outweighed the good he always felt the need to punish me. I was always too loud, had too much attitude, too grown but I needed him. He was the only one that showed me love. But I wasted my life thinking that was the only love I deserved”. As she was stuck in the memories of the past, I was paralyzed with fear. I had Mable’s puppet this entire time. Hypnotized by the illusion of the motherhood I saw in Mable. I could have gotten up and ran away. Only to be met with the demise of my love, the demise of the rest of my life. If Mable could get her to kill the love of her life, she wondered what else she could do. “You’re a witch” I uttered. “None of this makes sense, none of this is possible”. “Says who? Any and everything is possible once you step into imagination” Mable grinned. She walked over to me and brushed my cheek. “What will this solve? Jordan barely talks to his parents let alone his grandparents” Mary looked deep into my eyes and said “Nothing”. Silence was present. I could no longer formulate questions; I was too busy focusing on the turning of my stomach. What kind of person plans to kill with no end goal? What was my end goal? Ever since I became conscious of what I did, my body was at ease. I didn’t feel anything, not even the soreness from previous fights with Jordan. It was all gone. A derisive laugh slithered from me. Mable and I were the same, suffering, deprived of love that we couldn’t experience in this lifetime.

I should’ve known.

“Come child,” Mable said as she stood up from the couch taking me by the hand. I complied and she led me back to my apartment. We only communicated through action, dragging Jordan’s body to the parking lot. We sat on the curb and waited for the inevitable. As bystanders began to wail like sirens, I turned to look at Mable. Tears rolled down my face not due to anger or sadness. Solely because I had avenged the rage of a woman who asked for nothing but love. Something that couldn’t be expressed through words. It could only be felt that those born from the roots of rage no matter where they grew. Was this true love? – bringing Mable peace. A peace I never could bring my parents or the patients at the hospital. I brought her peace by giving in to the intrusive thought that lingered in the back of my mind. A thought that would break the hold Jordan had on me for good. It was never about getting revenge for her father. When the officers arrived, they never acknowledged Mable’s presence. She assured me that she wasn’t going anywhere but I knew our time together had come to an end. As for the officers… the only words I could utter were…

I should have known.