It was as if the world was spinning spirals around me that got smaller and smaller, and more and more distant with every whirl until it was just a spec floating before me and I was nothing but an observer. I was no longer dancing circles in the center of it all, just to keep up. I was no longer a part of it. It’s like… I don’t know have you ever said a word so many times in a row that it stopped sounding like the thing you were describing, and instead started to sound like this separate alien entity? “Crayon, craaayon, crayooon, crayonnn” I used to do it all of the time when I was little… just repeat things until they weren’t even things! Or, when you stare at yourself in the mirror for so long that you start to question who or what is actually looking back at you… and you reach out and touch the glass and then you touch your face, just to believe it. Just to make it real. I felt my heart breaking inside of me, and then all of a sudden… nothing. I was dizzy for a moment; I felt the beginning of a headache let in but then… silence, silence of mind, silence of physicality. All was cut off. I was so numb. So separated. So tragically indifferent. It only felt like a moment’s time that I had sort of escaped my body, but when I finally came back... back to feeling… back to myself, the sun had gone down and I was alone in my tiny flat in London with the door locked, and a dresser lodged under the handle. All of the lights were off, and I was sweating. They say that by the time the police got there, twenty seven people were reported missing, and by the time they cleared my flat, twenty six body bags were sent away… Orange, black, orange, black, white, white, white. Bread. Bricks. Bars. Bolts. Locks. Keys. Psychiatrists… twice a day every day, “What do you remember from the night of the murders?” , “Why did you do it?” Some of them got so emotional, the men in blue escorted them out & I never saw them again. For the first couple of months I had a different psych every other day. But I’ve had the same lady for about eight years now and she hasn’t got a single thing outta me. Mostly because there’s nothing there. Have I thought about making up a memory and a motive? Sure. But, what if by some beautiful twist of fate, it wasn’t me. What if I was framed? What if I was drugged and the schizophrenia is just a misdiagnosis based on an event that had very little to do with me… I mean, I was the twenty seventh missing person… what if there were twenty eight of us in that room and the guy who offed those twenty six victims left me to cover his tracks? I think about it all of the time. Twenty four hours a day, for the past ten years. But I’m here. Here for life. “Most notorious serial killer in four decades.” I hear it every day. My name, and my face plastered all over weird, low rent books twisted teenagers dance rituals around or whatever. Me. The schizophrenic, ******, sociopath murderer. I was a normal kid. Went on dates at local coffee houses. Sang along to ****** rap songs in the back of my best friend’s car. Took beach vacations every summer. But now, now I had twenty six lives I made myself responsible for… and I haven’t had an episode since. Makes you question, ya know. Question everything. This life. These facts we learn and know to be true, the surroundings that we perceive to be reality… all of it, does it even exist? Do I even exist? Honestly, I think I’m dreaming. I’ve been dreaming for a while now. I just can’t figure out exactly how to wake up.

It was the weirdest thing, for a lack of a better term. Some would find it hilarious, I found it confusing. But she used to bring me flowers whenever we got into a fight. At my home, work, the barbershop. You name it.

-“Ottis your girl is here...and she bought you flowers!”

I didn’t know if I liked it, or if I should be giggling like a teenage girl whenever she showed up with fresh-cut daisies or a bouquet of roses at my doorstep. I would hang up the phone on her on some serious mental rage and I would get flowers the next day- “I am sorry baby” she would say, -“I love you!” -Was I THAT sensitive? Did I brought out the mom in her? Have our roles been reversed? Doesn’t she know that all men are just content and happy with the two B's? (Beer and *******) or has the great battle for equality between men and women finally come to an end in the form of a dewy-eyed, raven-haired woman that found it romantic to bring her man flowers? It’s widely known that the quickest way to a man’s heart is through his *****, then his stomach. So, WHAT IN THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THIS WOMAN? I would say to myself while gushing in pretend shock and saying to her “Aww, you shouldn’t have, they’re beautiful!”

She quickly became known among my friends as the Flower Girl. Her answer to all our problems where with flowers. She stands me up: flowers. She forgets to return my calls: flowers. She didn’t like my cooking: flowers. She disappears for a few days: flowers and more flowers. She used to carry my fragile woman-heart in her purse pocket. I unwillingly found myself wearing the skirt in the relationship before I knew it and it had to stop. I had to put my manly pants on, one leg at a time and stop letting them sag to her bidding. But they did smell nice though, and they were pretty, especially those yellowish-orange tulips she bought me that one time with that giant teddy bear with a giant heart-shaped card that read “Ottis” on it. That was nice.

-“Kara, listen to me, I don’t want anymore flowers, I’ve had it, they are nice and all, but I am the one that’s supposed to give you flowers!” -I said firmly and secure in the manliest tone I could mustard. -“But you never give me any” -she retorted with the sweetest, most adoring kind of voice that would make the softest of Care Bears look like ****-out gangsters. Needless to say I felt like a monster, like Charles Manson’s long lost child. I surrendered to her charm and became Silly Putty in her hands once more. But at least the flowers stopped after that day, so did the calls, the dates, the ***, her unparalleled lunacy, until we were nothing more than a memory in a pantheon of many. Last I heard, she went back to Switzerland, suffocating, bombarding and smothering the new poor schmuck she’s dating with, you guessed it, flowers.

Atlantic City, 2007.

Staring into a stream.
splashing
Side by side; it gets no better.

Eyes blur so pictures
walk across the page.
Side by side; it gets no better.

Roof is collapsing.
Floor is sinking .
Side by side; it gets no better.

It's a birthday.
It's an un-birthday.
Side by side; it gets no better.

Living together
while alone.
Side by side; it gets no better.

Underneath the sun.
Underneath the moon.
Side by side; it gets no better.

Many happy returns to your days.
Many happy returns to your nights
Side by side; they will get better.