My dear, I assure you, this was not my deed. No, my dear, I am innocent. I awoke this morning from a genius dream to darkness, as my windows were covered with grayed curtains from my mother’s gold childhood. I stepped out onto the terrace without notice of the body. Perhaps it was not there yet. However, doctors soon established the lady had been dead for more than thirteen hours. I was not aware of her presence the entire time I took eloquent drags from my cigarette, only noticing the smell of the pollen-filled wind and, now I know, mistaking the sound of her blood hitting the concrete tiles as a mild shower from the south. Had I been aware of her presence, I’d have saved her, separated the handle from the clench of her body, and called the authorities. I’d have cried if only I remembered how. I’d have made love to her while I was still alone. Let her rest in ecstasy.
          Do you understand now, my dear? Do you understand the good that lies within me? I am not a man of killing; perhaps somewhere, a man like me is, but not I, dear friend, not I. Do you believe me? My God, if only the officers believed me. Instead they tied my hands behind my back and forced my lips shut so that I can not even yell of my innocence, all while dragging me into a cellar that now I must call my home because of an action I did not commit. That I did not commit! That I would never dare to commit! Atrocious, they call me. Atrocious, I call them for engraving lies into my brain, fragile to dementia but not to crime. No, never to crime.
         My dear, please note, they say I am who I am not. Devils! They paint pictures of a filthy man unrecognizable and insist it is me. *******! I have felt my skin tingle in manners unimaginable and a sensation of a new body rise within me, a new body whose deeds I have no control over. I am not the producer of this crime. I am innocent. This was my only confession to the officers who came into my apartment due to the neighbors’ complaints of screams unlike those of ******* coming from somewhere near my establishment. Indeed, I found, along with my new workmates, a bloodied woman looking down to the floor, lipstick mouth and tired eyes, impaled. Horrific! Was written on the notepad of the chief of police. Now I am strained on electrical mattresses, obliged to believe what I never would have dared to believe, obliged to reminisce my last taste of self-government: as I stood in the doorway of my terrace along with five police officers realizing they were not prepared for this grotesque imagery, I became aware of a fragile young woman, perhaps in her early 20s, hanging upside down with a rotten handle sticking from her mouth. Indeed, around her disentangled body were the satin sheets of my bed, drenched in her brown substance that shimmered in the snug afternoon sunlight. The officers hurriedly disregarded this fact and focused on the removal of the woman’s body from the handle, only to have her legs detach and fall onto the wet concrete. An officer yelled. Another grimaced. I giggled, watched, focused, determined. Upon further distant inspection, I observed that the handle had been ferociously inserted into her soft, delicate genital, forced through her dry ******, passing along the large and small intestines, only to finally pierce her stomach and come back up through her mouth. The beauty of the crime was terrifying.
          The beauty of the crime is terrifying. It is a blissful poem written by finesse, workmanship, delicacy. There is no manner for this legendary craft to be produced by me: I am a sufferer of mediocrity and its dreadful boredom. The father of the crime was a genius, the one I have always dreamt of being. Now, my friend, since my last day of freedom, I have no beauty to witness anymore. Confined, I befriend insects whose exoskeletons allow for strength and resistance to remain a part of them. I am incompatible to these powers; I am innocent. At many times, I howl for a touch at night; I awake with cut nails and scars between my thighs. Guards insist on restraining me. They sabotage me until I see Hell. Then, I am finally able to stay calm. No more do I sporadically feel my skin tear from my bones as if it were attempting to evaporate from me as a slight sting overcomes these unfamiliar ligaments. They ask me how? They ask me why? I remain silent fore I do not recall how or why. I remain silent fore I desire to know how or why. I desire the brilliance of the unspeakable act. Unspeakable in its grandeur; unspeakable in its cruelty. The filthy man the officers paint now becomes attributed to the crime’s brilliance to me. I see him more everyday. He wanders in mirrors and speaks to me when I am not aware of time and presence.
        However, disappointed, I remain with no explanation for the officers but that sunsets are composed of separations of wavelengths that shine differently onto each ray of existence than onto any other globular star. And, as this occurs, the identical wavelengths spray themselves among the individuals who are most vulnerable to hysteria in order to reflect themselves in unsuitable manners. That is how my mother explained to me the illness her womb inflicted onto my sacred hemisphere. That is how I began to call the foul insects who dared to climb into my cellar, my sole companions.

Leora,
when you sing,


God comes and listens.



And your father,
red headed, 

red bearded,
full of joy and 

loving,
tender pride,
visits us.



Where he lives now,


in the heaven neighborhood of 

my own parents,
singing this good 

is still special.
Only humans made into angels

 know how to make those sounds.

Leora,


when you sing,


the clouds dance 

above us,


and joy, pride,
nachus,


is all we feel.

I am the wolf who
Lives in you dreams and nightmares
feasting on your fears.

I am the eyes that
You see in the darkness too
Feeding forever.

Who are you to me
To feast on eternally
For all the nights.

For I am the wolf of fear
~Leora Cheney