"well-" i hesitate

he look at me curiously

"it's a little weird"

i look at my phone furiously

as it vibrates again

"don't be angry"

he says gently

"poetry" I blurt out

but it pulls him in eventually

"angry but beautiful"

I describe with delight

"morbid but real"

the words set his face alight

"inspired, but original"

it's getting good now

"growing pains personified'

he asks me how

"my anger and my sadness

all of it at once"

he smiles at me

and asks me to read one

It used to be thought that I was somewhat psychically touched or somehow daft, until I came across some papers in my family's personal documents that changed everything we had known heretofore.

Mother had disappeared one day without explanation, without further contact. Father said she had walked out. Left us for Good. But he never cleared out her craft room. He passed away in January, leaving me the house. I pulled myself together to return there the first week of the following month. Going through the lower drawers of Mother's special sewing armoire, all the way in the back, behind random scraps of velvet, calico, satin and velour, and under a pair of rusted vintage scissors, I found one of those yellow colored interoffice document sized envelopes. The kind with a red thread that wraps around a comparably crimson paper button. The envelope itself was slotted, and I could see and feel there was something substantial in it, and tinged yellow with age. Automatically, I unwound the cotten string and pulled out the contents, (some stapled, some not). Glossed photos fell on the floor. Images I didn't recognize, hazy. They looked a lot like me, but maybe it was Mother; honestly it was confusing to everyone later as well. I looked at the document. It was red ink- marked CONFIDENTIAL! By all appearances it was a case file. It was labeled MK-ULTRA-7 and dated February the 7th... My heart began to race as I could see it was signed by Mother, and Father, and then subsequently only by Father... but it was definitely about me. I flipped frantically, seeing the incidents collected. Things I half recalled. Places I'd supposedly been to, things I had reportedly done and said. There was a peculiar postcard in the bottom of the envelope, sullied and worn, but extra thick and laminated. It read: "MKV-Agent is programmed to respond to power of Suggestion, regardless whether written, spoken, or thought. Triggers will yield Automatic reactionary behaviors as programmed by MK-U."

Then I saw the Final Order:

"For disposal of MKV-Agent use code:

#*0-0*!?!..... . . . . . . "