20 years of dizzying changes gone by.

I miss our times together my brother.

The old wounds have faded and gone

soft in my heart.

I know they were never deeper than my

over sensitive skin anyway. To hear your

voice on the phone every few years is

nice, but I love to see your great big smile

dance across your face and hear that deep

so true laugh rise from your chest.

We parted ways on uncertain terms, but there

was not malice in me when you got

on that lonely Greyhound bound for the deep

South. I’ve missed you over the years as I left

our Northwestern home state and moved across

the world to my Far East destination.

I should have reached farther. I should have reached

out sooner. The bridge isn’t burned, but I can see tiny

tendrils of smoke rising in the distance and I worry.

#poetry #poem #loss #family #grief

You’re always too far to hear me.

And I’m wondering,

If I whisper to the sun

As it kisses the bronze out from under my skin

If it will carry that whisper back to you

When it leaves me for the night to head for you.

If I whisper, I miss you

When you wake in early morning light

Will you hear it?

Quiet and dream like

You, just barely touching the edges of morning

And rays of light,

Carrying my words

To crawl across your skin

Creeping in your veins,

After passing through your ears

Things I’ve lost:

my mind

my figure

that one

sock

Those

Miu Miu glasses

Well:

I gave good face

once

I focus on that damn sock:

lost in tangled bedsheets

like the thoughts

on my tripped

up tongue

Gone to the dryer

in heat

like myself:

We are both strung up

to dry

Everytime I think I’ve

Found

the right words

I’m overextended on the metaphors:

I become a meta whore

Well:

Losing your life is a sure path to

Sainthood

Finding a penny’s

A sure sign to do good

And lost socks sit silent

Wherever they go:

Warm heart

Cold feet

with nothing to show

It was fall, when I first saw him.

He was beautiful. Eyes the color of caramelized peaches. Salty brown hair. He was drinking lemonade, even though the weather was turning sour.

My hands fumbled around the nickels I was counting, and they clattered onto the counter. The woman I was gathering change for, a little old lady holding a grumpy white dog, eyed me with distaste. I handed her the change as quickly as I could. It wasn’t accurate, I forgot a dime, but she didn’t count.

I locked eyes with him–– his honey on my earl grey. But then the ice-lady’s dog shit on the floor, and when I looked up after cleaning it up, he was gone.

There was something right about him. That little voice, the one that whispers things in the back of my head said, “him”.

And so it was him.

*

He started to come to the cafe after that. He paid in exact change, always got a lavender lemonade and a glazed donut. He’d begin munching it as soon as I handed it to him, and stare at me with his puppy-dog eyes.

The fourth time he came, he called me pretty. I blushed, played the game, fluttered my lashes and giggled like a school girl. The voice was more insistent, "Him. This boy. Right here. Him.".

His name was Simon, he told me. He called me Alice, because of my nametag, and I didn't correct him, even though that wasn't my name. He liked to skateboard, he told me. He liked Steven King, he liked the Killers. He didn't like brussel sprouts. He went to a community college in the area, biding his time until he had enough money to transfer. He was a normal boy.

He thought he knew me, collected kernels of knowledge every time we spoke. Is your hair naturally that white? (a nod) Do you like sherbet? (a nod) Are you in school near here? (a nod) Do you have a boyfriend? (a thin-lipped, brutal smile)

I never said yes. It isn't my fault he made assumptions.

The twelfth time he visited, he ordered a lemonade, a donut, and my number. Like this, "Can I get a lemonade, a donut, and your number?"

He was nervous, jittery. His palms left perspiration marks on the counter-top.

I blinked once, twice, just to make him sweat.

Then, "okay".

His smile was hot sun, like something shiny-new, like summertime in a breath. His eyes glowed with excitement. "Okay!"

I wrote my phone number down on a napkin for him. He texted me three times that night.

I responded. Witty, light, the right flavor of interested.

*

I'll admit to being nervous for our date. He was taking me to dinner, then a walk around the park. I wore a nice blouse, did my hair up, packed my purse like I'd practiced.

I let him order for me. He didn't know what to get me–– he ordered lobster at first, then spied the price and changed it to pasta.

He looked nice in his checkered shirt. His eyes sparkled when he saw me. He was new at this, at this dance. It was endearing. Lovely, even. I liked how green he was at everything.

He talked through dinner, told me about his childhood in Chicago, his dreams of art school. He asked me questions I dodged. I don't talk about myself.

He paid the bill in exact change. I saw his coin purse. It was embroidered, like an old woman's.

After dinner, we walked around the park and he took my hand. I had long since slipped on gloves, the night had a bite to it. Underfoot, leaves the color of wet earth crunched, dispelling the scent of mulch. On the crook of my arm, my purse hung, the contents clunking with displeasure at every step.

We reached an isolated grove of trees. They looked as if the sunset was growing from finger-bones. The trees cast nightmare shadows on the ground. Cicadas made up a choral in the background.

Simon turned to me, "May I kiss you?"

And I nodded.

So he kissed me, his hands on my waist, his eyes pressed shut in concentration. It was a nice kiss. Sweet.

I reached into my purse, wrapped my eager fingers around the hilt of a gun. Flicked off the safety, pressed the muzzle into his soft underbelly. He pulled back a little then, eyebrows drawn together in confusion. "What are you––"

I shot him in the stomach.

The silencer I'd purchased worked, no gunshot rang out. Only the soft sound of a bullet sinking through skin, tissue, organs, and whistling out the other side.

Simon stumbled back, hands pressed against the hole in his stomach. Blood burbled out of his mouth, slid down his chin and neck in rivulets. In the moonlight, it looked almost black.

I'd never killed someone before. I'd thought about it, but I had never gathered the nerve. Now, all the waiting, all that build-up, all the violence I'd had to release on myself was worth it. I watched Simon crumple to the ground, watch him turn from a person to a thing.

I watched him there, lying on the ground for as moment. Prodded him with the toe of my boot. He didn't move. Blood was pooling around his motionless figure. He was dead.

I peeled off my wool gloves, revealing the latex ones that were hiding underneath. I sealed the wool ones into a plastic baggie and slid that into my purse. With the latex gloves, I fished out the largest pieces of shell casings from his body and the surrounding floor and placed them into my purse as well. The latex gloves were taken off too, placed inside-out in a side pocket. I'd grind the gloves, both pairs, in my garbage disposal when I got home. The shell casings would go into a baggie that once held Scrabble tiles, and that would go under a floorboard in the left-hand corner of my closet.

I sent one last look toward the boy I killed.

A smile tugged across my lips. It felt real, more genuine than anything else had in a long time.

*

I went back to work the next day. The voice that whispered was quiet. My bones felt calm. My co-worker asked me where "that cute boy, the one with those eyes" was. Something brutal inside me fizzed, alight with ectasy. I shrugged and finished swirling whipped cream on the hot chocolate I was making.

The door chimed as it opened, admitting a girl with fire-engine hair in a messy braid.

"Her next."

That was the beginning.

"I am not a murderer.

A strange way to start this off, but I feel it is important to get that out of the way. I am not a serial killer, I do not relish in the feeling of blood on my hands, and, god forbid, I do not find sexual pleasure in death.

No, no, none of that describes me or my job.

I am a contract killer. After high school, the realization that I was not actually good at anything came. Unable to get a job, I ended up homeless for a while. I floated between shelters when I could, became a quasi-religious soup-kitchen enthusiast and raider of food banks.

Then, I had the misfortune of I finding out that I was rather skilled with a knife. And a gun. And various other weapons. Which was interesting.

And then I found out that assassin-for-hire was a rather lucrative job market. So, I did what any person with nothing to lose does: I jumped on the bandwagon.

Was it a good idea? No. Did I do it anyway? Yeah. I mean, I was desperate. I only had two pairs of socks. No one realizes how much they love socks until they only have two.

The first time I killed someone was before I stepped into this line of work. It was in self defense. A man tried to rape me, which is not uncommon for homeless folk such as I was. I had a knife which I had stolen from a food bank, and I stabbed him with it. How I felt when I saw the blood bloom from his stomach, when I saw him turn from a person into a thing had no parallel. Don’t get me wrong, it was horrifying. But at the same time, I had never felt as powerful as I did then. The death went unnoticed, which goes without saying. No one has a care for the homeless, especially not law enforcement.

I did a little research at the library (free internet!) and found out how much money killers-for-hire make. And it was a lot.

It should be understandable that I decided to try my hand at it.

I found a website one of the articles had said that the assassins found their work at. I haunted it for a couple of weeks until the library asked me to stop coming, so I moved my operation to an internet cafe (a dying breed). Finally, someone contacted me (@devilmaycare666, which was a little spot-on for my liking) and offered me a job.

It was low-profile, they said. An average Joe that owed some money. He had been warned but refused to pay the loan shark back, and now they wanted someone to take him out. I decided not to tell them that this was my first real time, because I needed the money. The shelters I frequented had barred their doors when they found out I had been stealing from them. I hadn’t slept in a real bed in two weeks, and cardboard mattresses aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

My first kill was pretty sloppy, but I got the job done. Broke in through a window, found the guy asleep in a tornado of chinese takeout boxes. I wanted to slit his throat all classy-like, like in the movies, but I found it doesn’t work that way. Had to hack through his windpipe, which is as messy as it sounds. I threw up in his bathtub after. Then I stole his cash and socks. It was necessity.

That hit paid for a stay in a cheap motel where I researched the real ways to kill a man. My next hit paid for a nicer hotel, and the next one an even nicer one.

I ended up a proper entrepreneur. I had a skill-set that certain people required, and I marketed that skill-set accordingly. I ended up with some job offers from some mafias (the most interesting way I was almost recruited was a letter in some matzo-ball soup. The Jewish mafia has an odd sense of humor), but I always stayed free-lance. Made more money that way, you see.

And money was all that mattered to me, because I had none for so long. When I fell asleep on my memory-foam mattress, I remembered the asphalt of the elementary school that I slept by. When I had shark-fin soup, I remembered the thin tomato that the soup kitchens offered. When I slid my cashmere socks on every morning, I laughed.

Everything fell apart three years ago. By then, I owned a brownstone in Brooklyn with my ex-model wife and our three Persian Greyhounds. My wife grew nationally-recognized orchids since retiring (we didn’t need the extra income). She knew nothing of my line of work and was happy with that. I am ashamed to say that she was a much of a symbol of wealth to me as my dogs were. I’d never met her parents. I didn’t know her favorite place or food or smell or anything. She had told me she wanted to adopt kids, like Angelina Jolie, and I had laughed. We slept in separate beds. She spent of her time relishing in my wealth, not caring where it came from, and I spent most of my time making more of it.

I was efficient in my killings now. No more windpipe-hacking. I aimed for the jugular, wore gloves, never left a print or a hair behind. Still, the police found me.

They took the prints off of my first hit, linked them to a DUI I had gotten (in my bullet-gray Ashton-Martin, gorgeous). I wasn’t that surprised when they came for me. My wife shed crocodile tears as I was cuffed. The dogs shit all over the hand-knotted kashmir carpet.

In prison, the guards brought me some of the tabloids. My wife, splashed across covers (I didn’t know he was a killer!, etc.). I tore the pages out and used them as toliet paper. She would have done the same. We were both opportunists.

I suppose it’s fitting, me sitting here, waiting for the fatal injection. A sort of poetic irony. After years of fighting it in court, the police linked my prints and methods to hundreds of murders around the country. They missed some, too. I was sentenced to death.

And here I am, waiting to die.

Still, I maintain that I am not a murderer. I did not kill for fun, or for sport. I killed because it was the only choice I had. The blood of those I killed lays not on my hands, but on those who paid me. I am not a murderer so much as a knife or a gun is. I am a tool that was put in the wrong hands.

I suppose it is not my choice to make. Though I believe that I am an innocent, the law disagrees. That’s fine. I guess those I killed felt they were innocent as well."

Noah Lablos, on his deathbed, 16/9/2018. He leaves all his money to his dogs, in hopes that they grow to be as fat and rich as he was.

I am filled with kisses and dream washed wishes

two hearts skip over beats incomplete

symphony is their destiny

eyes too full of an accidental angle

builds  an arch of flesh that bridges

lips all blushed and blown

it is an ache

a fake Gloria

a shake of substance

that takes me away on

a wave of gentle sways

In one of My Writings, The Man said to another Man, “It does Not Really Work like that. And that is Not How it Goes. And Life is More Complicated than that. It’s More Complicated than that. And yet it’s Not that Complicated. It’s Not that Simple. It’s Not that Easy. And yet it’s Not that Hard. And We are More Proactive than that. And We are More Complicated than that. And We are also More Intelligent and More Knowledgeable than that. We are Intelligent. And We are also Knowledgeable. And that is Just The Reality. And that is Just The Reality of The Situation. And that’s Just the Way that it is. Ok?”    

i never loved you but i loved

the way your hands felt,

pressed against my ribcage so i could

touch you without breathing.

i think back now

on all the things i never

asked you to do,

when we were alone and together.

you burn in my memory,

blue hair in the static city light

fading over the harbour,

where someone drowned in the dark.

sitting in an empty motel

after the summer girls have gone,

i feel like warm rain on black asphalt,

a memory in fast-forward.

it is far too hard

to turn the porch light on

without the sound of your crying

against my shoulder.

this time, i am putting

bare skin to white marble

and leaving the rose-petals here,

in the ocean, floating.