We used to thought they were some of them wildlife experts, or maybe some of them eggheads from the university, or else maybe government scientists working over at Fish & Game, just out for a stroll in their country casuals. Them two are always doing that, stopping and turning over logs, and getting down on their hams and probing around with sticks to see whatever creepy-crawlies was under there. Both of ’em talk a bunch of hifalutin knowledge about bugs and all things slimy. If it creeps or crawls and could fit under a rock, oh, them two‘re just tickled pink about it. But they’re not really experts or nothing. Not like we thought they was. Them two’s just hikers, same as us.

But all that stopping and the sciencey stuff—Who does that?

Yeah, well, anyway, after awhile, seeing them on this here trail this many times, I weren’t the only one got to wondering, How come those two can’t make up their damn minds? First they wanna hike, then they wanna hold hands, then they might as well go lay some pipe in the bushes for all the hanging and petting that they do, in SPITE of their age, which is kinda ridiculous, if you ask me. But then, here comes another rock or a log, and they become professor again. And it’s, here we go again. It’s them two. Minds or bodies—What’s it gonna be, folks?

Oh, here she goes talking. Listen to ’er about that salamander.

Looks like we’re gonna pass ’em.

“Hi.”

They’re friendly. But they’re easy to pass, if you see ‘em out here. Always stopping like ’at. See how she’s had that? See her going on and on? Don’t think she knows: it’s just a little-old SALAMANDER. And I gotta say, he’s even worse. Don’t get him going on no little critter, or else some bug-eatin’ plant, or he’s gotta tell ya it all, from seed to flower, so help me.

But get this—unless they got hold of something wiggly like that, then them two hardly ever say a word. Nah, nah, ’round town, they barely say a word.

In their own little world, them two.

See him still listening to her back there? Man, they are really getting into it.

Better we‘re ahead of them. That way, we don’t have to hear about the matin’ call of the Marrabatchi frog from all the way over on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean or wherever.

—What do they call a frog scientist? Herma—hermetologist. Like they was both professional hermetologists.—But that ain’t it. No. Not it at all.

They moved here a ways back. Mostly keep to themselves. But the fella, he teaches English over at the high school, yes; yes he does; and I see her down at the farmer's market. She got this booth; she sells these stuffed little animal thingies that she makes herself.

Naw, them two ain't hermetologists. No way in hell, they ain’t. They just play one up here on this trail, that’s all.

She was making scrambled eggs when he came up from behind, wrapped his arms around her, breathed in deeply the back of her gray-streaked hair, while she held the spatula in one hand and contentedly fingered his forearm with her other hand while absentmindedly watching the pan.

That was in the morning.

When, before the first bite of breakfast, he'd pinned her gently but forcefully against the refrigerator, knocking several magnets onto the floor, and kissed her hard with her back flat, flat and pressed up against the cold, metallic surface of the tall appliance, they were both warm, though they both tended to get a little colder these days.

He kept kissing her at random intervals, and it kept being the morning. He needed but the slightest provocation--and her provocations were not all that slight. They kissed and fondled in various rooms, over various pieces of furniture, and in between rooms. Always somewhat spontaneously. Just letting it happen. And it happened. Again and again with them, if they should both home at the same time on a given day.

Neither of their eyesights were what they used to be, but that didn't stop their lines of sight from racing up and down one another, all morning, all day, every day; practically every time they crossed paths through rooms or between rooms under this same roof.

His eyes were no longer trying to undress her for her delicate parts of her skin; his old eyes didn't do that kind of x-ray mapping anymore; his old eyes did what hers did to him anymore, these days: stare and stare and focus and stare, and then relax, and just let it happen, just let it come to you, let it come right into focus for you, all on its own--like those art-deco, multitudinous-pinprick images that show a picture of one thing one way--of one, obvious, aesthetically pleasing thing that was worthy of the frame and the hang on the wall all for itself--but then, built into the image as an added feature, just when you tilt your head and let your eyes relax and hang right there, relax your eyes on it just right--there: the hidden, other image-construct within: Just a soulful, meaningful, entirely different and correspondingly beautiful, higher-ordered, more ornate image built within the first. His younger eyes undressed her physical dimensions when she wasn't looking; his older eyes look to undress...these. Her existential dimensions. This time while she looks at him. And does the same right back at him.

Another day of missing her

Business as usual

Furtive hurt

Remembrance Day in ambered time

So often repeated

pangs of regret

Take me to a place called Home

Blown opportunity

I did that

Tomorrow is a brand new day

Oh, squandered resources

Do your worst

But if I had never encountered her

I would never know

Love is real

Rarer than a living bigfoot

The chupacabra lives

And she loves

I have these visions

of my soul and her soul

after bathing together in wafting sunlight,

slowing our souls into a plasma slurry,

and beginning to wrap around,

hot, gooey, sticky-style

a plasmatic, inchoate, candy cane,

white-stripe me and red-stripe her.

Slowly we wrap our spirit selves

around and around each other,

then slowly we build up speed

in our spinning

around and around each other,

then our plasma slurry turns to smoke,

we spin up and away in spirit again,

nimbly, swiftly skyward.

Roman candles

rocketing round each other.

Spirits melded,

soul(s?) complete.

Complete at last.

Complete at last.

Thank God almighty,

complete at last.

She likes bugs and salamanders

Toads and frogs

Lizards in terrariums

Turtles on logs

She fishes with salmon eggs

For rainbow trout

She goes on hikes

Deodorant without

All things nature

She has interest in

Down to earth, deep

and utterly feminine

Brightly colored

Summer dresses

Sets things down

Leaves stacks and messes

She floats an idea

Then has it trail off

A flickering porch light

I'm drawn like a moth

She shoots guns and eats

Organic meats

Doesn’t compete with men

She complements, completes

Then she’ll shoot into

Metaphysics

I’m Champollion

For her hieroglyphics

I sleptwalked through life

I walked right through your loving arms

And walked right off a cliff

The fall didn't awaken me

Bouncing off those bristly, jagged branches didn't awaken me

The sudden stop at the bottom awakened me

Now here I am

--Oh

We still can talk, You and I

Just like old times

But now I'm lying down here

And you're still standing

Way up there

Gomez makes his way up Morticia’s arm

The moth flits, flits, flits at the porchlight

Hardcore bachelors, pick-up artists, and rakes

Say wisely, women are trouble

If it has tits or tires, you’re gonna have problems

That’s true for the rest

But this one has the other half of my soul

I’m trying to wrest it back

By being Gomez on her arm and neck

By sticking my nose up into her lamplight

Over, and over, and back again, I’m here again

Here again, here again

Again and again

Here at your interesting arm

HOW DID YOU GET SUCH AN INTERESTING ARM?

Your arm of light and sweat

That sweat! What is it?

That leads me up, kiss by kiss by kiss

To the lamplight of your soul

Morticia! You spoke French!

In my dreams, I’m doing those things

To you, my other M

Who speaketh forth my love language

Encountering another Her

Might as well expect to be struck by lightning

On a sunny, cloudless day

Lightning that never hurt anybody

But just made you warm and intelligent

And confident.

Encountering another Her

Try, like, jumping off a bridge of death

And surviving

Being given CPR by full lips

And feeling vulnerable but secure

And loved.

Being shot through the neck

Somehow surviving, it missed throat, spine, and jugular

By a millimeter or two

Stand the chances of meeting

Another even remotely like Her

One with the quirks, the humility!, so rare

As extinct

Oneitis is for fools

Oneitis leads to heartbreak, stupidity

Oneitis with blinders on

Oneitis leaves a man dependent, a sucker

Oneitis, but what, when there’s really

Only one?

Something that a post-epiphanal codependent must accept after coming to the horrifying epiphany that he or she has procreated…cough….has become...cough, gag...one flesh, and...choke, cough, gag, spit...has actually created offspring...cough, gag, fall down, cry, get up, pray to God, fall down again and weep….has actually created children with a narcissist, is that those children will now be subject to the same undermining, debilitating, demonically confusing brainwashing that you, the idiot codependent--as you now realize this with the whites of your eyes bulging in awakened, alarmed horror--had been subjected to for so long.

The codependent will now have to make a grueling decision: Which is worse?--A) to divorce, and begin the long, grueling, attritional trudge of parallel parenting "with" the narcissist (note: there is no such thing as co-parenting with a narcissist, only parallel parenting), or B) to stick around and allow one's children to see the spectacle of a codependent being manipulated and abused in myriad narcy ways, thereby providing for one's children a terrible, codependent model of marriage for them to likely emulate later in their adult lives.

For very nearly all codependents who come to the true knowledge of their own codependency and the diabolical monster they have married, the answer is clear: As is the saying in the narcissistic-abuse-survivor community: "When you know, go."

Tragic as it is, children or no children, the codependent must get out of there, because the codependent, once truly awakened, can no longer go back to being a groveling doormat, and a groveling doormat is the only thing that can stay married to a narcissist without daily, or at least bi-weekly, World-War-III battles occurring in the home.

Thus, we are left with divorce and parallel-parenting as the only viable option. It doesn't get any better or any easier, but at least nobody goes to jail and nobody dies in a violent conflagration.

Well, in those terms, if one looks at it that way, then perhaps it does get a bit better. But, arguably, it doesn't help the children stand any more chance of success in life than if the codependent had stuck around for more regular, button-pushing abuse in front of them from the narc.

For the narcissist will now have at least half the time with the children in all likelihood; with you, the codependent, no longer there at all during that half-span of time; and in classical, universal narcissistic behavior, the codependent can and should expect that the narcissistic parent will include the children in the narcissist's predictable campaign of slander against the codependent parent. The children will be too young to comprehend, or at least to fully comprehend, that the narcissistic parent is being vicious and malignant and traitorous against their other, saner parent, especially since the demonic entity that inhabits the empty, bombed-out, fleshly husk of the narcissist will have been exquisitely subtle and well-practiced by then in the art of slandering someone that has caught on to them and is no longer putting up with their utterly evil, petty-sneaky ways.

The codependent just has to "ride this one out" and let their kinder, much more honest actions speak for themselves with their children during the periods of time that the codependent has them, because, as all narcissistic-abuse survivors know, trying to defend one's self verbally against the demonic attack of a narcissistic slander campaign only plays right into the hands of the narcissist by making the victim of the abuse appear to be the crazy one, and the demonically cool, calm, and smirking narcissist look like the saner one by comparison. So, the former codependent parent must "allow time to do its thing," and hopefully--and we can probably even say probably--the narcissist will eventually show their true, rotten, selfish colors to the children, and the kinder, more honest, more loving codependent, if he or she can just "keep a cool head" during a long, miserable storm to follow, will be vindicated and will eventually win back the allegiance of his or her children.

That is not to say that the children will not have scars, however. A narcissistic parent will invariably leave terrible, lifelong scars on their own children. For starters, the greatest and most imminent concern for the former codependent parent should be the very real likelihood that the demon infecting the narcissistic parent will jump down the line into the next generation and infect/inhabit one or more of the children, turning them also into either an NPD or BPD. For it has been long observed that narcissism is often a recurring, generational issue (dare we say "curse"?) within certain family lines.—In such an unfortunate dilemma, this writer considers it highly advisable to pray to the Lord God Almighty for spiritual protection over one's children, for when the children are not with you, then that is all you shall have protecting them.—

Assuming that the Lord God Almighty looks down in his omnipotence, omniscience, and mercy, and decides to protect one's children from the narcissist, there is still the ever-present problem of the multitudinous other ways in which the narcissist will psychologically hamstring and hobble the children for life.

For with certitude it may be said that the LAST thing a narcissist, as well as a borderline, wants is a family member achieving a high level of success in any endeavor whatsoever in life. Now, the NPD and the BPD will likely have mastered the ability to PRETEND to be the “perfect parent” who only wishes the best for their children, but like everything else in the life of a personality-disordered person, it’s all a lie, and all they really care about (in their cold, black, missing heart) is themselves. The narc wants family members who are LACKING in confidence, LACKING in success, and yes, most certainly, even family members with substance-abuse addictions are much preferable to a narc than seeing their children (or their spouse) truly succeed at anything that would garner that family member any kind of attention. In short, the narc must have family members who are LESSER THAN THE NARC. Remember: the narcissist has only retained two genuine human emotions: jealousy and rage; and any budding sign that a family member is succeeding at anything, any budding sign that that family member may be receiving attention someday that will not be going directly to the narc, will be perceived by the narc as a mortal threat to their own hysterically selfish narcissistic supply. The narc’s boundless well of toxic jealousy will thus be tapped and will flow forth abundantly; not that the narc will be obvious about it; no, no—narcs are almost never obvious. Narcs practice the art of subtlety too much. The narcissist will begin a subtle campaign of demonic, psychological warfare against the family member who has shown, or is showing, success in any given area of life. Being careful to always keep one foothold on plausible deniability in any situation, the narcissist will begin pick-pick-picking at that family member through mean, malicious, cutting little words or deeds, and with subtle, negative, psychological behavior-training, until the confidence of that family member is stamped out even for that singular endeavor for which that family member had been demonstrating aptitude and success. The narcissist views any sign of success within the family—if it is done by anyone except themselves—as a sure sign that that family member will someday use that success to “abandon” the narcissist. It will never cross the mind of the narcissist that their child may someday grow to be able to use that success and prowess in that given field of life—success that a loving, sane parent would have encouraged in their child—to someday reach back and reward their parent with some of the excess abundance from that success.

Nope. Not going to happen. All the evil, childish, demonic narcissistic parent can ever think of, and ever will think of, is ME, ME, ME!—NOW, NOW, NOW!

On the extremely rare occasions when a formerly codependent, parallel-parenting parent has somehow managed to overcome all of the undermining and sabotaging of the children’s confidence by the perfect-in-appearances-only narc parent, or if the child of a narcissist manages to somehow pull off the impossible and manifest actual success at something in spite of the narc parent, then a truly sickening phenomenon is certain to be made manifest:

When it comes time for a family member of a narc—who SOMEHOW has survived all of the gaslighting and the lying and the mean, undermining cruelties of narc abuse—to publicly demonstrate their skills at an endeavor that they have somehow achieved, notwithstanding the subtle abuses of their narcissistic parent (or spouse), THEN YOU CAN BE GUARANTEED THAT THE NARCISSISTIC PARENT (OR SPOUSE) WILL SUDDENLY AND PROMINENTLY APPEAR BEFORE THE PUBLIC TO SOAK UP AS MUCH OF THE CREDIT FOR HIM OR HERSELF—ideally, for the narcissist, they will be successful in soaking up ALL of the credit for their family member’s success, for having “taught them all they know” and such other gaslighting lies.

Don’t worry. This hardly ever happens, though. Narcissists are usually quite successful in hobbling the budding talents and confidences of family members, long before it ever gets to that point.

I have chunky ankles, she said.

Oh, that's terrible, he said, shaking his head. Just, just terrible.

I have a messed-up nose, she said.

Oh, that's too bad, he said. How sad.

I sweat a lot. In my sleep, I sweat.

Oh, now that one really is a deal-breaker, he said, grinning a little when he said it.

I don't speak loud, and I kind of ramble—to myself. It annoys people.

Absolutely tragic, he said.

I'm a mess. And I'm messy. I'm all over the place, she said.

Shame on you, he said.

Look at my skin pigmentation, she said. It's inconsistent. Weird, isn't it?

Yeah, he said. That's weird, all right.

I got these lips, she said. Can you believe these lips?

Most unfortunate, he said, shaking his head.

I've kind of got these snaggleteeth, see?

Bummer, he said, examining her mouth. That's a real bummer.

Wish I had bigger boobs. Or a big butt. Sometimes I think that, she said.

Yeah, well, we can't have everything, he said.

No, she agreed.

Hey, he said.

Yes?

I'm broke, he said.

I know, she said.

I mean, not all the way, he said. But compared to what you're used to, I’m—

I know, she said.

They touched foreheads. Invisible to the exquisitely limited range of perception among mortals, their souls kissed, their souls intertwined, and their souls rapidly spun off together in multitudinous directions and dimensions, ceaselessly intertwining, ceaselessly kissing, ceaselessly neverminding each and every one of their fleshly insecurities.