My first memory is of dying.
I felt like I'd lived a full life
And now I was gladly fading away.
My first last words were
"Tell Elizabeth I love her"
I don't remember knowing Elizabeth.
I love her though, or at least I did in that moment.

The next thing I recall is being twelve
Sitting on the toilet in the girls' room,
thinking to myself:
"It looks like there was a war in my ******"
I sat in there by myself until the last bell
Too embarrassed to face the classroom of sharks
With their hungry eyes fixed on me - bleeding in the water.

Which makes me think of another first -
I was eighteen, never smoked **** or even drank ***** before.
"Son, there's a time and place for everything - and that's college"
my dad always said. So I took his advice.
I ate like 3 of those mushrooms.
I saw music, like music notes, coming out out the stereo.
They tasted like stars - like longing and hope.

Like how felt outside of that reststop in North Dakota.
When I ran away from the boarding school with Sofia.
We sat there on that bench in the rain.
Hand in hand - a truest love we would let no adult tell us wasn't real.
We were whole in that moment.
A wholeness I'd never know again.
One time, after going down on me
She told me I tasted like music.
I laughed out loud
I didn't know why.

She broke my heart.
I was a business tycoon,
A man of great wealth
I could have anyone I wanted,
but not her.  
She didn't know what she wanted. She needed guidance.
So I found her, and we both got what we really wanted.
I always get what I want...
...I don't like this memory.

I was one hundred and thirty seven
Days sober.
When I got the news.
My only daughter -
Barely a woman.
My fragile little doll -
Was ripped to pieces  by monsters.
No reason.
Just evil being evil
No one can deny who they really are for too long.
Some people are serial killers,
Some are heroes,  
Some are alcoholics.

I don't remember much about that night.
I woke up the next day,
and I was 21 - officially.
I'd probably have felt better if I wasn't so hungover.

I'd puked in the store's bathroom.
My nerves were shot.
My body was shaking.
I couldn't believe what just happened
- this was just a part time job to pay off student loans.
This Is not the **** I signed up for-
The guy came in - skimask and all, like out of a ******* movie -
His gun pointed directly at my head.
demanding all of the money in the register.
I reached for the panic button, all subtle like they taught us in that half hour seminar...

"You press threat button kid, you die today - now give me the money and this will all be over soon -"
I recall saying in the most macho voice I could muster.
I didn't want to shoot her. Hell, she looked cute, I'd rather date her.
But that would be another life.
One I can't afford to ponder.
This was the reality.
I had to do this -
She had what I wanted - what I needed.
It's dog eat dog out here.

"Good girl"
Shadow dropped the bone at my feet.
I picked it up and tossed it back into the endless grass
As it spun like boomerang in the air -
For some reason, couldn't tell you why,  I thought about Frankenstein's Monster.

Some parts are really fuzzy,
I hold it close to me - the fuzzy parts against my skin.
It's a quilt blanket, stitched together of pieces and parts of found cloth.
My father made it for me.
My very last first birthday gift.
I cocoon myself in it like a womb.