I met him on the Amtrak line to Central Jersey. His name was Walker, and his surname Norris. I thought there was a certain charm to that. He was a Texas man, and he fell right into my image of what a Texas man should look like. Walker was tall, about 6’4”, with wide shoulders and blue eyes. He had semi-long hair, tied into a weak ponytail that hung down from the wide brim hat he wore on his head. As for the hat, you could tell it had seen better days, and the brim was starting to droop slightly from excessive wear. Walker had on a childish smile that he seemed to wear perpetually, as if he were entirely unmoved by the negative experiences of his own life. I have often thought back to this smile, and wondered if I would trade places with him, knowing that I could be so unaffected by my suffering. I always end up choosing despair, though, because I am a writer, and so despair to me is but a reservoir of creativity. Still, there is a certain romance to the way Walker braved the world’s slings and arrows, almost oblivious to the cruel intentions with which they were sent at him.
“I never think people are out to get me.” I remember him saying, in the thick, rich, southern drawl with which he spoke, “Some people just get confused sometimes. Ma’ momma always used to tell me, ‘There ain’t nothing wrong with trustin’ everyone, but soon as you don’t trust someone trustworthy, then you’ve got another problem on your hands.’”—He was full of little gems like that.
As it turns out, Walker had traveled all the way from his hometown in Texas, in pursuit of his runaway girlfriend, who in a fit of frenzy, had run off with his car…and his heart. The town that he lived in was a small rinky-**** miner’s village that had been abandoned for years and had recently begun to repopulate. It had no train station and no bus stop, and so when Walker’s girlfriend decided to leave with his car, he was left struggling for transportation. This did not phase Walker however, who set out to look for his runaway lover in the only place he thought she might go to—her mother’s house.
So Walker started walking, and with only a few prized possessions, he set out for the East Coast, where he knew his girlfriend’s family lived. On his back, Walker carried a canvas bag with a few clothes, some soap, water and his knife in it. In his pocket, he carried $300, or everything he had that Lisa (his girlfriend) hadn’t stolen. The first leg of Walker’s odyssey he described as “the easy part.” He set out on U.S. 87, the highway closest to his village, and started walking, looking for a ride. He walked about 40 or 50 miles south, without crossing a single car, and stopping only once to get some water. It was hot and dry, and the Texas sun beat down on Walker’s pale white skin, but he kept walking, without once complaining. After hours of trekking on U.S. 87, Walker reached the passage to Interstate 20, where he was picked up by a man in a rust-red pickup truck. The man was headed towards Dallas, and agreed o take Walker that far, an offer that Walker graciously accepted.
“We rode for **** near five and a half hours on the highway to Dallas,” Walker would later tell me. “We didn’t stop for food, or drink or nuthin’. At one point the driver had to stop for a pisscall, that is, to use the bathroom, or at least that’s why I reckon we stopped; he didn’t speak but maybe three words the whole ride. He just stopped at this roadside gas station, went in for a few minutes and then back into the car and back on the road we went again. Real funny character the driver was, big bearded fellow with a mean look on his brow, but I never would have made it to Dallas if not for him, so I guess he can’t have been all that mean, huh?”
Walker finally arrived in Dallas as the nighttime reached the peak of its darkness. The driver of the pickup truck dropped him off without a word, at a corner bus stop in the middle of the city. Walker had no place to stay, nobody to call, and worst of all, no idea where he was at all. He walked from the corner bus stop to a run-down inn on the side of the road, and got himself a room for the night for $5. The beds were hard and the sheets were *****, and the room itself had no bathroom, but it served its purpose and it kept Walker out of the streets for the night.
The next morning, Texas Walker Norris woke up to a growl. It was his stomach, and suddenly, Walker remembered that he hadn’t eaten in almost two days. He checked out of the inn he had slept in, and stepped into the streets of Dallas, wearing the same clothes as he wore the day before, and carrying the same canvas bag with the soap and the knife in it. After about an hour or so of walking around the city, Walker came up to a small ***** restaurant that served food within his price range. He ordered Chicken Fried Steak with a side of home fries, and devoured them in seconds flat. After that, Walker took a stroll around the city, so as to take in the sights before he left. Eventually, he found his way to the city bus station, where he boarded a Greyhound bus to Tallahassee. It took him 26 hours to get there, and at the end of everything he vowed to never take a bus like that again.
“See I’m from Texas, and in Texas, everything is real big and free and stuff. So I ain’t used to being cooped up in nothin’ for a stended period of time. I tell you, I came off that bus shaking, sweating, you name it. The poor woman sitting next to me thought I was gunna have a heart attack.” Walker laughed.
When Walker laughed, you understood why Texans are so proud of where they live. His was a low, rumbling bellow that built up into a thunderous, booming laugh, finally fizzling into the raspy chuckle of a man who had spent his whole life smoking, yet in perfect health. When Walker laughed, you felt something inside you shake and vibrate, both in fear and utter admiration of the giant Texan man in front of you. If men were measured by their laughs, Walker would certainly be hailed as king amongst men; but he wasn’t. No, he was just another man, a lowly man with a perpetual childish grin, despite the godliness of his bellowing laughter.
“When I finally got to Tallahassee I didn’t know what to do. I sure as hell didn’t have my wits about me, so I just stumbled all around the city like a chick without its head on. I swear, people must a thought I was a madman with the way I was walkin’, all wide-eyed and frazzled and stuff. One guy even tried to mug me, ‘till he saw I didn’t have no money on me. Well that and I got my knife out of my bag right on time.” Another laugh. “You know I knew one thing though, which was I needed to find a place to stay the night.”
So Walker found himself a little pub in Tallahassee, where he ordered one beer and a shot of tequila. To go with that, he got himself a burger, which he remembered as being one of the better burgers he’d ever had. Of course, this could have just been due to the fact that he hadn’t eaten a real meal in so long. At some point during this meal, Walker turned to the bartender, an Irish man with short red hair and muttonchops, and asked him if he knew where someone could find a place to spend the night in town.
“Well there are a few hotels in the downtown area but ah wouldn’t recommend stayin’ in them. That is unless ye got enough money to jus’ throw away like that, which ah know ye don’t because ah jus’ saw ye take yer money out to pay for the burger. That an’ the beer an’ shot. Anyway, ye could always stay in one of the cheap motels or inns in Tallahassee. That’ll only cost ye a few dollars for the night, but ye might end up with bug bites or worse. Frankly, I don’t see many an option for ye, less you wanna stay here for the night, which’ll only cost ye’, oh, about nine-dollars-whattaya-say?”
Walker was stunned by the quickness of the Irishman’s speech. He had never heard such a quick tongue in Texas, and everyone knew Texas was auction-ville. He didn’t know whether to trust the Irishman or not, but he didn’t have the energy or patience to do otherwise, and so Walker Norris paid nine dollars to spend the night in the back room of a Tallahassee pub.
As it turns out, the Irishman’s name was Jeremy O’Neill, and he had just come to America about a year and a half ago. He had left his hometown in Dublin, where he owned a bar very similar to the one he owned now, in search of a girl he had met that said she lived in Florida. As it turns out, Florida was a great deal larger than Jeremy had expected, and so he spent the better part of that first year working odd jobs and drinking his pay away. He had worked in over 25 different cities in Florida, and on well over 55 different jobs, before giving up his search and moving to Tallahassee. Jeremy wrote home to his brother, who had been manning his bar in Dublin the whole time Jeremy was away, and asked for some money to help start himself off. His brother sent him the money, and after working a while longer as a painter for a local construction company, he raised enough money to buy a small run down bar in central Tallahassee, the bar he now ran and operated. Unfortunately, the purchase had left him in terrible debt, and so Jeremy had set up a bed in the back room, where he often housed overly drunk customers for a price. This way, he could make back the money to pay for the rest of the bar.
Walker sympathized with the Irishman’s story. In Jeremy, he saw a bit of himself; the tired, broken traveler, in search of a runaway love. Jeremy’s story depressed Walker though, who was truly convinced his own would end differently. He knew, he felt, that he would find Lisa in the end.
Walker hardly slept that night, despite having paid nine dollars for a comfortable bed. Instead, he got drunk with Jeremy, as the two of them downed a bottle of whisky together, while sitting on the floor of the pub, talking. They talked about love, and life, and the existence of God. They discussed their childhoods and their respective journeys away from their homes. They laughed as they spoke of the women they loved and they cried as they listened to each other’s stories. By the time Walker had sobered up, it was already morning, and time for a brand new start. Jeremy gave Walker a free bottle of whiskey, which after serious protest, Walker put in his bag, next to his knife and the soap. In exchange, Walker tried to give Jeremy some money, but Jeremy stubbornly refused, like any Irishman would, instead telling Walker to go **** himself, and to send him a postcard when he got to New York. Walker thanked Jeremy for his hospitality, and left the bar, wishing deeply that he had slept, but not regretting a minute of the night.
Little time was spent in Tallahassee that day. As soon as Walker got out on the streets, he asked around to find out where the closest highway was. A kind old woman with a cane and bonnet told him where to go, and Walker made it out to the city limits in no time. He didn’t even stop to look around a single time.
Once at the city limits, Walker went into a small roadside gas station, where he had a microwavable burrito and a large 50-cent slushy for breakfast. He stocked up on chips and peanuts, knowing full well that this may have been his last meal that day, and set out once again, after filling up his water supply. Walker had no idea where to go from Tallahassee, but he knew that if he wanted to reach his girlfriend’s mother’s house, he had to go north. So Walker started walking north, on a road the gas station attendant called FL-61, or Thomasville Road. He walked for something like seven or eight miles, before a group of college kids driving a camper pulled up next to him. They were students at the University of Georgia and were heading back to Athens from a road trip they had taken to New Orleans. The students offered to take Walker that far, and Walker, knowing only that this took him north, agreed.
The students drove a large camper with a mini-bar built into it, which they had made themselves, and stacked with beer and water. They had been down in New Orleans for the Mardi Gras season, and were now returning, thought the party had hardly stopped for them. As they told Walker, they picked a new designated driver every day, and he was appointed the job of driving until he got bored, while all the others downed their beers in the back of the camper. Because their system relied on the driver’s patience, they had almost doubled the time they should have made on their trip, often stopping at roadside motels so that the driver could get his drink on too. These were their “pit-stops”, where they often made the decision to either eat or court some of the local girls drunkenly.
This leg of the trip Walker seemed to glaze over quickly. He didn’t talk much about the ride, the conversation, or the people, but from what I gathered, from his smile and the way his eyes wandered, I could tell it was a fun one. Basically, the college kids, of which I figure there were about five or six, got Walker drunk and drove him all the way to Athens, Georgia, where they took him to their campus and introduced him to all of their friends. The leader of the group, a tall, athletic boy with long brown hair and dimples, let him sleep in his dorm for the night, and set him up with a ride to the train station the next morning. There, Walker bought himself a ticket to Atlanta, and said his goodbyes. Apparently, the whole group of students followed him to the station, where they gave him some food and said goodbye to him. One student gave Walker his parent’s number, telling him to call them when he got to Atlanta, if he needed a place to sleep. Then, from one minute to the next, Walker was on the train and gone.
When Walker got to Atlanta, he did not call his friend’s family right away. Instead, he went to the first place he saw with food, which happened to be a small, rundown place that sold corndogs and coke for a dollar per item. Walker bought himself three corndogs and a coke, and strolled over to a nearby park, where, he sat down on a bench and ate. As Walker sat, dipping his corndogs into a paper plate covered in ketchup, an old woman took the seat directly next to him, and started writing in a paper notepad. He looked over at her, and tried to see what she was writing, but she covered up her pad and his efforts were wasted. Still, Walker kept trying, and eventually the woman got annoyed and mentioned it.
“Sir, I don’t mind if you are curious, but it is terribly, terribly rude to read over another person’s shoulder as they write.” The woman’s voice was rough and beautiful, changed by time, but bettered, like fine wine.
“I’m sorry ma’am, it’s just that I’ve been on the road for a while now, and I reckon I haven’t really read anything in, ****, probably longer than that. See I’m lookin’ to find my girlfriend up north, on account of she took my car and ran away from home and all.”
“Well that is certainly a shame, but I don’t see why that should rid you of your manners.” The woman scolded Walker.
“Yes ma’am, I’m sorry. What I meant to convey was that, I mean, I kind of just forgot I guess. I haven’t had too much time to exercise my manners and all, but I know my mother would have educated me better, so I apologize but I just wanted to read something, because I think that’s something important, you know? I’ll stop though, because I don’t want to annoy you, so sorry.”
The woman seemed amused by Walker, much as a parent finds amusement in the cuteness of another’s children. His childish, simple smile bore through her like a sword, and suddenly, her own smile softened, and she opened up to him.
“Oh, don’t be silly. All you had to do was ask, and not be so unnervingly discreet about it.” She replied, as she handed her pad over to Walker, so that he could read it. “I’m a poet, see, or rather, I like to write poetry, on my own time. It relaxes me, and makes me feel good about myself. Take a look.”
Walker took the pad from the woman’s hands. They were pale and wrinkly, but were held steady as a rock, almost as if the age displayed had not affected them at all. He opened the pad to a random page, and started reading one of the woman’s poems. I asked Walker to recite it for me, but he said he couldn’t remember it. He did, however, say that it was one of the most beautiful things he had ever read, a lyrical, flowing, ode to t

The kids chemically induced
Reduced to ego threnody.

Amidst chaos he possessed influence.
Would disregard coincidence
And curse at the omnipotent.
Known as lonely pessimist
Could laugh at their own ignorance.
Pops was drunk.
Waved goodbye
to any kind of innocence.
Patronized
Sympathized
Irrelevant
Sunk below the sediment.
If humans could be celibate
This death would have ended it
Instead of only him.

“I may be grown up but I’m only seventeen.”
The faded blue chairs were in rows, as could be expected. The building was old and the air was littered with dust; just like you would expect. The light shimmied through the draperies and tapestries and slithered across the floor in tiny slits that cut the room into pieces. The dark worn floors boasted years of scuffs and scratches. They were no longer mahogany for they were nearly black with age and dirt. The whole place was frozen in time. Even the air was reminiscent of years gone by. When you walked in you could expect to find memories nestled in corners or peeping out from one of the many books strewn around. The place breathed nostalgic fumes. Some might have called it “stale,” but many others would prefer to call it “alluring” or “curious.”

This was not her case. The door ****** the life out of the place as it slammed shut. The reverberations could be felt throughout the entire structure. Her anger fueled her along at a violent pace, sending chills up the drapes and swirling the dust into tornadoes of chaos. The floorboards rumbled and squealed in sheer terror under her feet. If you were here you would likely have tread softly and listened carefully just because you hoped the place was talking to you. But since this is her story and not yours, that is not the case.
She threw her body into the nearest chair and the force almost sent her backwards. The girl and the chair hung in time for a single moment, teetering on the edge of balance, but nothing happened. She kicked her feet up on to the chair in front of her out of utter disrespect.

Each breath that she blew carried venomous thought. Every air molecule expelled from her nose was laced with despise until it fell to the floor, devoid of life. You could feel the place shuddering with every breath. Or maybe she was shuddering. But it wasn’t important.
The girl let one lonesome anguished tear roll off her face, but since she was too strong for crying, she ****** her body out of the chair with every ounce of hatred she had inside. In one swift motion she swathed her face with her shirt to obscure and erase the tear. She stood there, filtering the air through her shirt, refusing to acknowledge everything the place had to offer. She dropped the weight of her head into her palms and bit her lip against the pain. She pulled her face back only to check the shirt. She knew it would be stained. She knew because every other time before it had been stained. She listened for a moment before she glided across the floor toward the nearest window.
When she finally came to a moment of rest, the place sighed in relief. The dust rested and the floorboards managed to quiet themselves. The drapes relaxed and everything paused again, settling back into a time of long ago. The place embraced her like the wind embraces a leaf. It helped her along gently as she was carried away.

Not wanting to be discovered, and not wanting to overstay her welcome, the girl carefully hid her soul behind the heaviest drape and emptily marched towards the door. She traced her finger along the scorch marks that marred the wood. The scars ran deep, evidencing a strong fire that had ravaged the place years before. The door oozed sympathy as the young girl shared her pain. Her heartbeat pounded out her sadness and resounded through the door and back to her. She clutched the **** in her hand and pushed it open. She slid through to the outside. She did not look over her shoulder. She did not carry a glimpse of hope within her. The flame in her heart was extinguished with the closing click of the door. She was outside. She watched as the place got smaller as she walked away.

His name was Devlin. “Dev” for short. It could’ve been “Devil.” It should have been “Devil.” He was the one who called the shots. This was his game; his rules. She was just a player who could be benched at any minute; suspended from the league in the blink of an eye. He knew the world. He had been learning it for years. As if the world was something that could be learned; that could be acquired. He missed the most important lesson for he never learned how to love. He had mastered affection and words spilled off his lips like honey. But love was not yet something he had come to possess.

Regardless of his material possessions, Dev knew he was missing something. He didn’t know what it was or how it could be acquired, or if it could be acquired. He only knew that the gaping black hole inside him was consuming him. There was no fulfilling this insatiable hunger. There seemed to be no solution. Only temporary fixes could easy the longing but with every dose the hole grew deeper.

           She too, knew that beneath his smile there was blackness. Not emptiness. Just blackness. There was no value, no gradation. No. There was nothing to hold on to, nothing to hope for. She would have enough black to cover the entire world if she had wanted to paint. But she was honestly looking to survive.


                Time had gone by, but only by the measure of light. Time had not elapsed to heal her wounds. She had covered miles on the feet of one thought. She had traversed only into one idea during her journey and yet she had already reached her destination. It was easy to fall to your subconscious when your body was tattered. When she stepped through the threshold she almost imagined the place. But she stopped herself because she didn’t want to take the chance of contaminating it.

                Her eyes were closing and the soft carpet looking appealing in all its graying and deterioration. The couch and bed looked inviting but that was suicide. She was fighting the urge. She had too. She had tried to purge her mind but one insignificant monstrous thought plagued her. “Don’t go to sleep until I get back.” Her eyes lingered closed for a moment. How beautiful and welcoming this blackness was. It was gentle and comforting. Her eyes jumped open. How long had they been closed? Surely no more than a few minutes. Fate laughed in her face once again. “I told you: Don’t get to sleep until I get back.”
                The first one was the most painful. Even though her eyes were blurred from pain she could still see the look in his eyes. She had to look. The simple thought of closing her eyes would earn her several more. She clutched the threadbare carpet with all the dignity she could muster and stood like a soldier before a firing squad. Every wince squeezed the tears in her eyes closer and closer to escape, but she held on through the miserable pain. It wasn’t even his hands that hurt anymore. No, it was the iron, or the bat, or even the brick that hurt. When it was his hands, he sympathized with the contortions of her body. He felt her pain. When it was some other object, there was distance between them. Six, five, four, three, two… She could time the blows. When he wasn’t so angry they came faster, just to put the girl in her place. When he was enraged, they came slower. Each hit was followed by an explanation or justification. “You have to learn the hard way.” or “How dare you get blood on your clothes?” The indignation in his voice made her sick. “Don’t look at me like that!” “I love you.” Over time she had learned to smile over time. To lessen the pain.

                …Her face was burning. Every fiber in her body wrenched with pain. Every breath brought tears to her eyes. The shaking was uncontrollable. She never should
have fallen asleep…

                You see on the inside he was just a child who never knew love. But that was her job. To love him. He was one of those “monsters,” or rather a vortex, something to be awed and feared. A display of powerful destruction. But that was the point. He was ******* up everything good while furthering his own self-destruction. He would eventually collapse in on himself. It was inevitable. It was not a matter of time. It was not some probability that fate would determine. It was not plausible to think, no matter what length of time you were thinking for, that time could, and would, heal all wounds. This was not something that would fade into the background and blend into a dull gray. This was not something that could be fixed by a miracle of God. There was no twelve step program with guaranteed results. The only thing that could happen was the elimination of time. If this happened, then there could be change.  


                She had figured it out some time ago. A long while back before she knew the place. The only answer was destruction. You might even call it ******. But since it involved no bloodshed or munitions or hatred, it seemed to be a good idea. Even the victim was ultimately willing to go through with it. The only factor stopping the girl was love. Her love for him. She did love him. She truly and justly loved him. She loved everything about him. She loved him for chaos and instability. The only solution was to destroy time. Without time, there is no way to measure. There is no structure. There are no rules. The only structure is what you make in your mind. That was the easiest way to escape, the easiest way to ignore the pain, to ignore the love.        


                  However much she thought about it, she never thought about it enough. The hours she spent on the floor in utter stillness were useless. When her breath was shallow enough, she nearly died. Her shirt was stained with blood. It was severed from her hip to her elbow. Her face was swollen purple and blue. Four of her ribs were shattered. Her left ankle was swollen. Her eyes were sealed shut by dried tears. Her lips were pale and chapped. She could not breathe out of her nose. It was filled with blood. Her pants were a rolled in a crumpled ****** mess several feet away from her. Her legs were patched with bruises. Her fingernails had blood under them.


This was love.


Eventually. Not relative to time. Not relative to the beating, but relative to her. She crawled over to her pants and began to restore her dignity until a foot crashed down upon her hand, jarring her body into a fetal position on the floor. She forced her eyes to stare at her hand turning from pink to white to purple. She hung her head in shame and hoped for mercy or forgiveness. The crushing weight of the foot began to ease the slightest bit. “You didn’t learn. You never do.” She stood perfectly still, waiting. The foot lifted. He pulled her to her feet and bestowed a kiss upon her forehead. “That’s why I am here: To teach you.” He took the crumpled pants from the floor and removed her bloodied shirt. Then with **** of his head he motioned to the floor. “You will learn the meaning of humble today.” She lay back down and tried to glean warmth from the carpet. She was cold. Desperately cold.

My mother raised me under the belief that monotony was a worse state than death and she lived her life accordingly. She taught me to do the same. About five years ago, my mother died. Her death steered my course from any sort of seated, settled life and into a spiral of new experiences.
For months after she left, I skulked about each day feeling slumped and cynical and finding everything and everyone coated in the sickly metallic taste of loss. I noticed that without her I had allowed myself to settle into a routine of mourning. I pitied myself, knowing what she would have thought.  Life was already so different without her there and I couldn’t continue with life as if nothing had happened, so I jumped from my stagnancy in attempts to forget my mother’s name and to destroy the mundane just like she had taught me to. I had to learn how to live again, and I wanted to find something that would always be there if she wouldn’t. I had a purpose. I tried to start anew and drown myself in change by throwing all that I knew to the wind and leaving my life behind.

I was running away from the fact that she had died for a long time. When I first picked up and left, I befriended the ocean and for many months I soaked my sorrows in salt water and *****, hoping to forget. I repressed my thoughts. Mom’s Gone would paint the inside of my mind and I would cover it up with parties and Polynesian women.
I was the sand on the shores of Tahiti, living on the waves of my own freedom. A freedom I had borrowed from nature. A gift that had been given to me by my birth, by my mother. I tried to lose myself in those waves and they treated me with limited respect. More often than not, they kicked me up against their black walls of water. They were made of such immense freedom that many times made me scream and **** my pants in fear, but they shoved loads that fear into my arms and forced me to eventually overcome the burden.
As time slipped by unnoticed, I created routine around the unpredictability of the tides and the cycle of developing alcoholism. One night after a full day of making love to the Tahitian waters, my buddies and I celebrated the big waves by filling our aching bodies with a good bit of Bourbon. By morning time, a good bit of Bourbon had become a fog of drink after drink of not-so-good *****? Gin maybe? I awoke to the sight of the godly sunrise glinting off of the wet beach around me, pitying my trouser-less hungover self. With sand in every orifice, I took a swim to wash me of the night before. I floated on my back in silence while the birds taunted me. I felt the ocean fill every nook and cranny of my body, each pulse of my heartbeat sending ripples through it. My heart was the moon that pressed the waves of my freedom onward and it was sore for different waters. The ache for elsewhere was coming back, and the hole she left in my gut that was once filled with Tahiti was now almost gaping. It had been a beautiful ride in Tahiti but I had not found solace, only distraction. The currents were shifting towards something new.
She had always said that the mountains brought her a solace that she never felt in church. They were her place to pray and they were the gods that fulfilled her. She told me this under the sheets at bedtime as if it were her biggest secret. I had delusional hope that she might be somewhere, she might not be gone. I thought if I would find her anywhere it would be there, up in the clouds on the highest peaks.
The next day, I was on the plane back to the States where I would gather gear. The mountains had called and left a needy voicemail, so I told them I was on my way.

In Bozeman, the home I had run from when I left, every street and friend was a reminder of my childhood and of her. I was only there to trade out my dive mask for my goggles. I had sold most of my stuff and had no house, apartment, or any place of residence to return to except for a small public storage unit where I’d stashed the rest of my goods. Almost everything I owned was kept in a roomy 25 square foot space, the rest was in my duffel. I’d left my pick-up in the hands of my good man, Max, and he returned her to me *****, gleaming, and with the tank full. I took her down to the storage yard and opened my unit to see that everything remained untouched. Beautifully, gracefully, precariously piled just as it was when I left. I transitioned what I carried in my duffel from surf to snow. I made my trades: flip flops for boots, bare chest for base layers, board shorts for snow pants, and of course, board for skis. Ah, my skis… sweet and tender pieces of soulful engineering, how I missed them. They still suffered core-shots and scratches from last season. I embraced them like the old friends they were.
I loaded up the pick-up with all the necessities and hit the road before anyone could give me condolences for a loss I didn’t want to believe. I could not stray from my path to forget her or find her or figure out how to live again. I did not know exactly what I wanted but I could not let myself hear my mother’s name. She was not a constant; that was now true.  

My truck made it half way there and across the Canadian border before I had to set her free. She had been my stallion for some time, but her miles got the best of her. It was only another loss, another betrayal of constancy. I walked with everything on my back until I eventually thumbed my way to the edge of the wild forest beneath the mountains that I had dreamt of. They were looming ahead but I swore I caught a whiff of hope in their cool breeze.
With skis and skins strapped to my feet, I took off into the wilderness. My eyes were peeled looking for something more than myself, and I found some things. There were icy streams and a few fattened birds and hidden rocks and tracks from wolves and barks of their pups off in the distance. But what I found within all of these things was just the constant reminder of my own loneliness.
I spent the days pushing on towards some unknown relief from the pain. On good days there fresh snow to carry me and on most days storms came and pounded me further into my seclusion. The trees bowed heavy to me as I inched forward on my skis, my only loyal companions; I only hoped they would not betray me on this journey. I could not afford to lose any more, I was alone enough. My mother was no where to be found. The snow seemed to miss her too and sometimes I think it sympathized with me.
I spent the nights warmed with a whimpy fire lying on my back in wait hoping that from out of the darkness she would speak to me, give me some guidance or explanation on how I could live happily and wildly without her. Where was this solace she had spoken of? Where was she? She was not with me, yet everything told me about her. The sun sparkled with her laughter, the air was as crisp as her wit, the cold carried her scent. I could feel her embrace around me in her hand-me-downs that I wore. They were family heirlooms that had been passed to her through generations, and then to me. The lives that had been lived in these jackets and sweaters were lived on through me. Though the stories hidden in the seams of these Greats had long been forgotten, died off with their original masters, I could feel the warmth of their memories cradle me whenever I wore them. I cringed to think about what was lost from their lives that did not live on. I was the only one left of my family to tell the world of the things they had done. I was all that was left of my mother. She had left her mark on the world, that was clear. It was a mark that stained my existence.
These forested mountain hills held a tragic beauty that I wish I could have appreciated more, but I felt heavy with heartache. Nature was not always sweet to me. For days storms surged without end and I coughed up crystals, feeling the snowflake’s dendrites tickle at my throat. I had gotten a cold. Snot oozed from my nostrils, my eyes itched, my schnoz glowed pink, my voice was hoarse, and I wanted nothing but to go home to a home that no longer existed. But I chose to go it alone on this quest and I knew the dangers in the freedom of going solo. The winds were strong and the snow was sharp. New ice glazed once powdery fields and the storms of yesterday came again and there was nothing I could do except cower at the magnificence of Nature’s sword: a thing so grand and powerful that it has slayed armies of men with merely a windy slash. I was nature’s *****. I felt no promise in pressing on, but I did so only to keep the snow from burying me alive in my tent.
And I am so glad that I did, because when the great storm finally passed I looked up to see the sky so hopeful and blue bordering the mountains I knew to be the ones I was searching for. I recognized them from the bedtime stories. She had said that when she saw them for the first time that she felt a sudden understanding that all the many hundred miles she’d ever walked were supposed to take her here. She said that the mere sight of them gave her purpose. These were those mountains. I knew because the purpose I had lost sight of came bubbling back out of my aching heart, just as it had for her.

These peaks as barren as plucked pelicans and peacocks, but as beautiful as the feathers taken from them, were beacons in the night for those in search of a world of dreams in which to create a new reality. From them I heard laughter jiggle and echo, hefty and deep in the stomachs of the only people truly living it seemed. When I was scouring the vastness of this wilderness for a sign or a purpose, I followed the scent of their delicious living and I guess my nose led me well.
A glide and a hop further on my skis, there the trees parted and powder deepened and sun shone just a bit brighter. Behind the blinding glare of the snow, faces gleamed from tents and huts and igloos and hammocks. Shrieks of children swinging from branches tickled my ears, which had grown accustomed to the silence of winter. As I approached this camp, I saw they were not kids but grown men and women. It seemed I had stumbled down a rabbit hole while following the tracks of a white jackalope. I had found my world of dreams. I had found them. I had found a home.
I was escaping my lonely, wintery existence into a shared haven perfectly placed beneath the peaks that had plagued my dreams. A place where the only directions that existed were up and down the slopes and forwards to the future. Never Eat Soggy Waffles did not matter anymore. By the end of my time there, I had even forgotten my lefts and rights. The camp had been assembled with the leftovers of the modern world and looked like a puzzle with mismatched pieces from fifty different pictures. At first glance, it could have been a snow covered trash heap, but there was a sentimental glow on each broken appliance that told me otherwise. Everything had a use, though it was not usually what was intended. The homes of these families and friends were made of tarp or blankets or animal hides and had smelly socks or utensils or boots or bones hanging from their openings. There were homemade hot springs made of bathtubs placed above fires with water bubbling. Unplugged ovens buried in snow and ice kept the beer cooled. Trees doubled as diving boards for jumping into the deep pits of powder around them. The masterminds behind this camp were geniuses of invention and creation. Their most impressive creation was their lifestyle; it was one that had been deemed impossible by society. This place promised the solace I had been searching for.
A hefty mass of man and dogs galumphed its way through the snow. Rosy cheeks and big hands came to greet me. This was Angus. His face grew a beard that scratched the skies; it was a doppelganger to the mossy branches above us. But his smile shone through the hairs like the moon. There are people in this world whose presence alone is magic, an anomaly among existence. Angus was one of them. Not an ounce of his being made sense. The gut that hung from his broad-shouldered bodice was its own entity and it swung with rhythms unknown to any man; it was known only to the laughter that shook it. Gently perched atop this, was his shaggy white head that flew backwards and into the clouds each time he laughed, which was often. Angus fathered and fed the folks who’d found their way to this wintery oasis, none of which were of the ordinary. There was a lady with snakes tattooed to her temples, parents who’d birthed their babies here beneath the full moon, couples who went bankrupt and eloped to Canada, men and women who felt the itch just as me and my mother had. The itch for something beyond the mundane that left us unsatisfied with life out in the real world. All of them came out of their lives’ hardships with hilarious belligerence and wit, each with their own story to tell. The common thread sewn between all these dangerous minds was an undeniable lust for life.
The man who represented this lust more than any other was Wiley and wily he was. He’d seen near-death countless times and every time he saw the light at the end of the tunnel, he would run like a fool in the other direction. He lived on borrowed time. You could see that restlessness driving him in each step he took. Each step was a leap from the edges of what you thought possible. Wiley was a man of serious grit, skill, and intelligence and never did he let his mortality shake him from living like the animal he was. He’d surely forgotten where and whence he came from and, until finding his way here, had made homes out of any place that offered him beer and some good eatin’. Within moments of shaking hands, he and I created instant brotherhood.
The next few days turned into months and I eventually lost track of time all together. I could have stayed there forever and no day would have been the same. I played with these people in the mountains and pretended it was childhood again. We lived with the wind and the wildness the way my mother had once shown me how to live. I had forgotten how to live this way without her and I was learning it all over again. We awoke when we pleased and trekked about when weather permitted, and sometimes when it didn’t. Each day the sun rose ripe with opportunities for new lines to ski and new peaks to explore. The backcountry was ours and only ours to explore. We were its residents just like the moose and the wolves. My body grew stinky and hairy with joy and pushed limits. Hair that stank of musk and days of labor was washed only with painful whitewashes courtesy of Wiley. Generally after a nice run, we’d exchange them, shoving each other’s faces deep into the icy layers of snow, which would be followed with some hardy wrestling. By the end of each day, if we didn’t have blood coming out of at least two holes in our faces then it wasn’t a good day.
I never could wait to get my life’s adventures in and here I was having them, recalling the unsatisfied ache I had before I left. Life was lost to me before. I had forgotten how to live it after she had died. Modern monotony had taken control until my life became starved of genuine purity and all that was left then was mimicry. But the hair grown long on these men and smiles grown large on these woman showed no remembrance of such an earth I had come from. They had long ago cast themselves away from such a society to relish in all they knew to be right, all their guts told them to pursue: the truth that nature supplies. Still I worried I would not remember these people and these moments, knowing how they would be ****** into the abyss of loss and time like all the others. But we lived too loud and the sounds of my worries were often drowned in fun.
     We spent the nights beside the fire and listened to Wiley softly plucking strings, that was when I always liked to look at Yona. Her curls endlessly waterfalled down her chest and the fire made her hair shimmer gold in its glow. She was the spark among us, and if we weren’t careful she could light up the whole forest.  She was a drum, beating fast and strong. Never did she lose track of herself in the clashing rhythms of the world. She had ripped herself from the hands of the education system at a young age and had learned from the ways of the changing seasons f

What did that look mean
when you glanced at me like that?

Yes, it was true,
another person's lips had grazed mine
when you left me the first time,
and now that you'd come back,
you seemed to know something I didn't.

I hadn't lied
when I told you that
your lips felt right against my own
and his smokey breath did not,
and then the secret you had held was revealed
only slightly, of course,
and I didn't even notice.

When I told you that
I had wished I was kissing you instead,
what I had first thought was a look of love
was actually your look of embarrassment and shame
and this was because, you too, were a man with a smokey breath,
leaving imprints of your lips on another's
long before we had parted ways.

So, it wasn't her who kissed you first;
you filthy little liar,
and you were starting to feel bad
about what you had done.

I was none the wiser,
and sympathized with you,
thinking you too had felt like me,
a big misunderstanding between two people
and that you'd come back to me
because you realized my lips were better than another's,
not that you liked the idea
of getting away with infidelity
and then rushing back into my arms.

I always missed these signs,
and it eats away at me now
when I think about how many
times I should have known.

I should have known when you sympathized with Daisy
What you were capable of.
You really do smash things up and retreat into your carelessness
Promises were made, that you couldn’t keep
Claiming to be strong, but gave up so easy
That’s not me
I love with every piece of my soul
I don’t give up when things seem to go astray
But I digress, because I did know something was wrong
When you sympathized with Daisy

A cuckoo melodiously sang
For many years long
In anticipation of her dear king
The most beautiful seasonal spring

The song was so sweet and great
That it was heard all over the world
The world sympathized with the cuckoo
To console her they stood in a queue

The bird waited for the king
She expected a wedding ring
But he went to another land
Which he thought more grand

The cuckoo was shocked
Her voice was choked
How long will she stop the song?
It was not at all her wrong

She sang a different song
The people would throng
They blessed she would live long!
Her divine song she would prolong

We live in a world
Where a size ten model
Is considered
“Plus Size”.

A world where women
Are prudes for wearing too much clothing
And ****** for not wearing
Enough.

A world where men
Are afraid to talk of their abusers
Because they’re afraid of being
Laughed at.

A world where the color
Of your skin makes you
A criminal, or a
Terrorist.

A world where your
Mental illness is only sympathized
If it’s a genetic
Disorder.

A world where women
Are criticized for wanting to
Be able to control their own
Bodies.

And a world where
Nobody cares about your suffering
Until you’re already
Dead.

I saw you last night
I tightened my jaw and averted my eyes
But not before I sympathized with the plaid shirt hanging from your hunched shoulders
Those buttons that have been replaced with my teeth, chipping away against your sternum
leaving me with a skyline smile
I saw you last night
I smiled
You acted like you had seen the sun set on this city a thousand times

They control our society, turned slavery from colored to a variety, told you that communism was the enemy while you steadily remained under the trance of the real enemy, your pitiful symphony won't work here cause I'm past where you'll be next year, **** your publicity I don't need it, like the real reason to go to war was to keep the enemy bleeding, you're desegregated but your mind is still oblivious to the segregation, like putting up walls to separate us, think about what your great granddaughter will think before you allow the world to sink by the cats that will make it illegal for you to blink, I'll cut their throat before isotope comes crashing in along with pigs sliding from a rope, you're a joke like thinking Obama wrote the speeches he addresses after smoking dope from a few pieces, no more *******, *******, or white trash nows for a time flash of our countries history, came along like we meant to be, killed some natives, hanged em from a tree, their land replaced with our nation ruled by some racists, lied about it and killed people who want a trial on it, now we are blinded but in an onyx and the 1% have the fattest wallets, they arrive in, we applaud them, they smile back like you're less than a diamond, man **** a rock, you'll be left in shock when I'm done with you, cause history is not the way it's been told to you, they place hurdles in front of you, while you place a red carpet in front of them, you praise them like Jesus, but they don't give a **** if you make it past a fetus cause you're just another number stuck in a slumber like Tylenol PM, trust me you'll see them nukin your new pin, now you're dead with blood drenched in like that's a fair win, I don't think so take their car rims and bend em around passed ten, then chuck em and just **** em cause they have that exact mental attitude, I've achieved the highest altitude no going further just staying immortal like telepathic portals created along with your morals to keep you in place instead of getting ahead of the race that is sympathized by enterprise, you'll be terrified at the finish cause it will diminish your dreams that you worked hard to cherish like being an arctic fish moving forward but then caught in a net to be gutted and cut up for sale, I don't believe a thing they say cause the truth will outshine a lie any day

I know you imagine me to be strong
Build me up in this image
Of a person with attitude, guts
Too much anger, too headstrong
Too much of a stereotype,
Too much of a misfit

But I don't ask that you think differently
You see I am sort of used to people walking away
And I had rather you see me as infallible
Than as something to be pitied, as someone vulnerable
To their cheap attacks, to your barbed remarks
I wish that you would- could - understand
That I am something terribly moody
But I can be good. Yes, I am good

I can be better if you'd listen to me
Let me in but don't demand too much from me
I will try to leave everything undisturbed
Heal a scar or two then walk out from your heart
Without having occupied any position of interest
Or importance

I wouldn't mind. I have been relegated to the background
once again
But I am infallible

My scars aren't meant to be pitied
Or sympathized with
I hate that you think you can understand
When you don't
I don't care about what you've been through
Until you've been with me for years
You've seen all that I have to offer
Because believe me
I'd never trust anyone with everything
If they haven't even been around that long

Some might think this is all there is to it
But I can tell you that there are a million things
Left to learn about me
So wait. Calm yourself. Let us be but don't just let me be
Don't rush for me, don't slow down for me
Just let me walk at my own pace but if you see me falter,
Then check if I'm fine. Make it known that you care
Believe me it helps when I'm with a blade.
You don't know how the simple gestures affect me

How they shake the ground beneath my feet
How they make me smile
How my world changes

So please. Just care for me. But don't ask- demand- too much of Me
Don't put me up on some pedestal, don't think of me as fragile
My scars, the ones I will slowly begin to show to you,
Aren't indicators of that.
I am proud of them- intensely proud
I've fought and I've died a million times on the inside
I've cried and I hated myself the most through these years

(I used to tell myself those barbed remarks
Every single criticism, I would sit up and repeat it to myself
So that I never got ahead of myself
Everything they said, how much they didn't like me,
Didn't care for me.
I sat up and repeated all of that to myself
Every. God. ****. Night.
Hoping someone would call just so I'd have an excuse to quit
But no one ever did -was ever up, ever available- at such times
So I'd just continue)

Despite everything, inspite of everything
I stopped. I had the strength- with or without
Anyone- anyone- being there
Respect- love- me a little bit for it
Hate that I do this to myself
Tearing into myself,
Tearing myself down into such tiny pieces
Making myself into this small entity
Hate it. Detest it. Loathe it.

Tell me that.

But never stop telling me
Don't do that blindly though
Please listen to me as well
Don't blind yourself to how
I am marginally better everyday
Even if there are so manymany setbacks
Be honest with me
I wouldn't care if you talked badly of me then
Because I'd know that you truly loved me then
(yes. yes, i would)

So please. Just give yourself
Just give me  
A chance to be who I am around you
Don't expect it to happen too fast
I swear I'll be there by your side
If you called for me
I'd always look out for you
I would stick up for you
When your lover wouldn't do that either
Don't be afraid of how different
And moody I am
I'll always be there for you
Just call me
And give us time-time-time

I grant thou wert not married to my Muse,
And therefore mayst without attaint o’erlook
The dedicated words which writers use
Of their fair subject, blessing every book.
Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,
Finding thy worth a limit past my praise,
And therefore art enforced to seek anew
Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days.
And do so, love, yet when they have devised
What strainèd touches rhetoric can lend,
Thou, truly fair, wert truly sympathized
In true plain words by thy true-telling friend;
    And their gross painting might be better used
    Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abused.

I have been aboard this vessel for
Fifty months
Nine days
Ten hours
And some value of minutes
Which is unknown to me.
I am
Lost
At
sea.
For a while it was bearable.
I have enough water,
Books,
And *** to sustain me.
But now all I wish is to see a pair of sails
On the horizon.

I have nothing left
But to wander the seas
And find whatever is there
For me.

Days pass.
I have sympathized with the stars;
For it seems to me that they are also
Sailors
Lost at sea;
Traveling towards their own fate
In directions
Unbeknownst to me.

At night I look up
When the sky is clear
And greet them,
I wish them strong winds.
I wonder if they have looked down on me.
I have confessed all my sins to them
For they are all I have.

The stars and I.

And we sail the same sea
But we will never meet
For we are infinitely far.
This is our curse.

At times I have fallen asleep on deck
Beneath them
In my hammock
As the sea
Rocks me
And sings songs,
Songs of ports and
Sails
On horizons.

It was on the morning following such a night
That I arose
And at long last
Saw
With my own eyes
A sail in the distance
And I maneuvered so fast as my small craft would allow
To be near to him
And as I came closer
I looked with my dusty spyglass
And my heart dropped from my chest
For he flew a black flag
Which bore upon it a skull.
I am writing this now as they approach
For I know I cannot evade them
Nor outgun them.
I am writing this because I now know my fate:
To die by their hands.

I am horrified,
But there is
One thing that will give me peace:
That I may
Finally
Sail
Among the stars.

Children,
all of me was all for you,
from towers I commended,
from basement I sympathized,
and god,
how I find all of me,
missing all your adoring stares.

I stood by,
I watched your birth in the garden
all those years ago,
and how your cries floated to heaven,
and how heaven answered with meadowlarks,
I handed you the apple,
I kissed your brow,
you would coo and grasp my coat,
I felt love, you felt vital.

I waged war,
with all the saints and arthouse critics.
We drank their blood by the moon
and our temperate speech
did flow from the fount,
under the table we were,
grew we did,
proper adolesence looking for
classical supremacy.

And Children,
I know the darkness was always creeping,
crippling every satellite, every sandy shoreline,
withering us in mirror,
you asked if the tide could claim us,
I patted your shoulder,
kissed your hand,
there is no enemy capable of victory,
oh, how the prophets betrayed me.

When your compliance was absolute,
when our neighbors pledged allegiance,
when I crushed the throats of Solomon, Gilgamesh, and
the sons of Zeus,
leagues made banners,
few made poison.

I gave you slaves,
girls, and sport.

I gave you a voice,
blankets, and victims.

The crowd and chants,
my pride and concubines,
the grass never faded,
nor the flowers wilted.

Children,
why did the publications turn against me?
I erased the existence of all you wanted dead,
I gave you dreams,
I gave plenty to sup,
plenty to remain drunk,
Children,
why did the prophets lie to me?

The priests carried daggers,
preyed upon me,
prayed for my passing-by,
the stares were there,
empty of adoration,
only hungry for my sacred blood.

I watched seas of my own,
pull down every cast,
my form laid to waste
on the streets I built under your feet.

My royal guards
chained my hands,
I could only stare at my blue veins,
my royal guards,
dragged my feet,
and in the senate they made me watch,
as my record was blotted out.

As the sun set,
the streets were lit
by effigy.

As the sun set,
I found myself in
the garden.

I stood straight,
back to a stake,
all eyes on me,
all shouts for me,
all the rage,
effigy, effigy,
they poured pitch at my feet,
they said prayers and incantations,
the flowers were in full bloom,
and the sound of buzzing flies buried
the cries.

I tried to be a friend to everyone.
Now history's vapor,
I tried to be a friend to everyone.

You’ve read the words a million times
Seen it from novel to novel
You read about the daughters
And those they love
The ones who got sick
They hope
And hope and hope
then things go bad
And the only one who can still hope are the daughters
I’ve read their words from all across the decades
Sympathized with their pain
With their grief
With their internal struggles
But I never empathized with them
And in the past
I had this thought
In my head like a sticky note adhered to the fridge
Stuck there right next to the grocery list and the kindergarten artwork
It read
I would never be a daughter

Then the words leapt off the pages
Of the hundreds of novels
Inserted themselves into my narrative
Gluing themselves to my skin,
I tried to rip them off myself
But they peeled off my skin with their literary fingers
Taking some of my skin with them as they launched and
Ripped the sticky note off my cerebral refrigerator
I became a daughter

Sometimes I still can’t believe that word is a part of my life now
Cancer
And I understand what these daughters have felt
That it feels wrong that I should be the one feeling hurt
It is those I love that are sick and I am healthy with no physical ailment on me
No tumors or scars under my skin
But I feel as if they are in my heart
There is a tumor there and it won’t be removed
Because how could one ever remove a metaphorical tumor
Why does it hurt?
Is it because of the chemo
Cherishing the Hope that Everyone is Mostly Optimistic
Devoting myself to keeping everyone else in balance
Holding the weight of the world even though I could easily just let it go and crush
Every horrible thing in this life
But it became a part of me when that word entered my life
I can’t make it separate, make it leave, can’t stop being who I was born to be
Someone to hold the weight
Except one
One weight that ain’t no metaphorical tumor

The person I love is sick
The novels have inserted their words into my narrative
I just hope I can revise their endings
And move cancer into the index
The credits
anything
instead of having  the last page read
the end

But, then I see the one I love stand strong
As everyone says this is the end
She won’t pretend that this it
Because it isn’t
She takes the pen into her own hand and erased what the world had written
And writes the end of part one
The end to this chapter in a long happy saga called
life
And she writes to the daughter
I'll see again
when you finish part one
In your wonderful fairy tale book

Some weeping in the silt of river grass,
A speckled black amphibian intoned
And lured blueberry girl with yearning groan,
She understood the plea as clear as glass.

Beneath the living mud she scooped him out,
The burping toad was cradled in her palm
And sank within a meditative calm
As she observed him rapt as one devout.

He humbly sat with wide-eyed child in blues
Who held him close and thought she knew his core
Unfolding from the water to the shore
Enclosing all the world in murky hues.

Her mother called her name from hollow home
But still she peered beneath his witch's eyes
And, twinned, the souls did glimpse each others' guise.
She sympathized, so buried him in loam

And ran, a spot of blue on open heath
To where her parents cooked a windswept feast;
Though she might grow, she'd not forget the beast
Who lived above the water, and beneath.

my alternative inspiration
has long been deceased.
but the clarity of dreams so aspiring
arose from the grave
so succumbing to the doubts
formed by my misfortunate past.
there are letters written
to an empty room
where a callous man lay
in his unfurnished chair.
i breathed exhausted air
into his deserted lungs
and abided the escalation
of his deflated heart.
in time i reached a parallel conclusion
where these hollow endings between lust and love
had disconnected with hearts and heads.
i sympathized with his fevers
and disappointments in desires.
i have forgiven our distance
for solitude was only felt in our beds.
i have forgiven this silence
for it was a gift from my head.
i do not long for anyone that was-
just the feeling;
just because.
i see films of deceit
i hear time pounding through the window
and its consecutive ticking
reminds me these cursed scenes
can be repeated.
i rely on afflicted moments
as steps out the door.

.
       Taking one last drag off My cig I flick it to the ground and watche the little sparks of flames that shoot off it as it hits the ground. It is 11:00 on a wednesday night and I was parked in a bad part of town in a small conneticcit town. leaning against My beat up old 2003 black ford focus the window in the back seat rolls down.

     "Hawk how long are these guys going to take? Are you sure they're even coming?" Twittle says around a huge *** yawn. I pin him with one of my glares that said Shut the **** up. He pins me with one of his own glares I DARE you written all over it. My heart thuds just a little faster in my chest. All I wanted to do right now was take him home and accept that I dare you challenge. His cocky *** grin showed that he kenw what he was doing to me. I narrow my eyes at him.

      "Watch it boy" I growl and turn my attention back to the deserted parking lot, trying to calm my nerves. What was taking them so long? I figured for cociane addicts the thugs would have been here right on time to get their next fix. My nose burning at the memories of all the times I had felt the rush of a fix. Then up ahead in the glow of a random streetlamp I see three shadowy figures heading our way.

      "Twittle get out of the car they're here" I said and pushed off the car, not waiting for his response,I head in the guys direction. I hear the car door open and slam shut, and within seconds I feel twittles presence right behind me. The three junkies stop a few feet away from us.

       "You.. you got the stuff man?" The man who seemed like the leader said to me. His voice shook and was too high pitched. The guy was already high out of his skull. Just my luck, The high ones were always the worst to deal with, just about the deprived ones. At least that type was easier to manipulate. The ones that were high were too paranoid to pull a fast one over thier heads. I sighed, guess I wasnt going to be getting more then the coke was worth. ****, and I was hoping for a few extra hundreds so I could take twittle out for the night.

         "Yeah yeah I got it right here" I said in my casual, I'm chill there is nothing wrong here voice, a voice one must perfect if they are going to do the type of buisness I do. I pull out the baggie filled with the white powder that they were craving. In the dim lighting I could just make out the wide eyed staring of the guys, the look of raw need and lust. I sympathized with them, I knew that feeling all to well. "Now give me the money and you will get what you came here for" I said still casual, but an underlying threat present. The leader takes a step forward and eyes the drug suspisiciouly.

        "Is it all there? You aint trying to trick us or anything right?" He says paranoia seeping into his words as the drugs already in his system take control of his brain. A sharp anger flares up in me, How Dare he accuse me of cutting corners! I may try to swindle a few extra dollars out of people but I never give them less then what they asked! I quickly squash down the anger, it would do nothing but start a fight.

       "Yes its all here all (wont put real amount) of it. now give me the money" I says trying to surpress my annoyance. I feel Twittle step closer to me and feel his hand on my lower back. showing his silent support. **** these junkies, they needed to give me my ******* money now Before Twittle made me lose my mind. I held out my hand showing the leader I meant buisness and held the drugs out of his reach.  Money then drugs

         "Norm use to give us the goods Then let us give him the money, How about we do it that way." One of the other guys says, the other lackey snickering. I turn my glare to them and they quickly shut up.

         "Well I'm not Norm, I'm better." I say flashing them a deadly grin. The one who made the comment strides up and looks at the goods from a safe distance. Suddenly he whips around to the leader.

        "Man the ******* is trying to play us! Thats not Coke thats ******* FLour!" He screams in a full blown drug fit. My anger flares up again. I may be a crook and a drug dealer but I NEVER Played my customers that way. I always gave them what they wanted, Nothing less nothing more. The leader swore and reaching behind him he draws a gun out. Pointing it straight at me. Outwards I show that this was nothing new to me that it didnt affect me, which was true, I've had guns pulled on me more times then I would like to remember. I felt Twittle tense up behind me and with my free hand I reach around and grabs his, squeezing it to show him everything will be ok.

       "Look guys this is the real ****, Now you can either take it and give me the money or you can just walk away and find a new dealer." I said straining to keep the situation calm. I knew how to disarm the guy if I needed to but with Twittle there I really didnt want to. The leader hesitates for a few seconds but then points the guns at me again.

         "How about you give me the drugs and forget you ever met me." He says his voice laced with drug hysteria. I sigh and shake my head.

       " I would love to boys. But not without my money. Listen this is how its going to happen You're going to pu-" A loud ring fills the air cutting me off mid sentence. A few seconds later a White hot fire burns through my shoulder as the bullet slices through me making me stagger back from the impact. The ******* ****** Shot Me! I've been shot at numerous times, and stabed more times then I could remember, Hell I've walked around for a full day with a small blade stuck in my fourarm and didnt even notice until the pain finally got to me. But never Once had I been actually SHOT!. The pain was blinding and I could feel hot liquid ooze down my arm and knew my shoulder was losing blood.

       "You ******* ******* come here!" I hear Twittle yell and I lift my head just high enough to see him tear after the trio.

       "Twittle... No" I managed to say through the pain, but he didnt hear me. I turned toward the car, I had a gun my self in the glove box If I could get to it and get to the junkies in time maybe I could protect Twittle. I took a few steps and staggered, almost falling forward. My vision was clouding around the edges. Oh for **** sakes Was I really going to pass out? really? I thought angery with my body for being such a whimp. I couldnt pass out now! I had to help Twittle, He could get in serious trouble. I reached the car and fumbled with the car door trying to open it. I lost my balance slightly and slammed my bad shoulder into the window. The white pain intenifying. Biting back a moan I slid down the cars length landing on the ground. I looked at my shoulder and in the dark I could just barely see the dark liquid that covered my entire arm. I looked at my hand and saw the sticky red blood dripping off of it and pooling on the asphalt next to me. I was loosing way to much blood. I tried to stand up but my strength decided just then to desert me. My hearing was going screwy and the black cloud at the edges of my vision was creeping in faster.

   Was I dying? I knew I was. I gave a bitter laugh. Out of all the ways I could die I was going to die at the hands of a coke Addict. Heh I knew coke would somehow be the death of me. NIcole and Kaitlyn were right. To bad I wouldnt be around to tell them. And Twittle, I failed him, I couldnt protect him, If he died tonight with me it was all my fault. He wouldnt know How much I truely loved him. I'm sorry Twittle I think as I wait the agonizing minutes before unconsiousness takes me. Right before I slid under I hear what sounds like someone screaming my name. I struggle to open my eyes, but they are so heavy. WHy are they so ******* heavy? why cant they just open up so I can see who is calling to me! I feel someone grab my face and move it so they can see it.

       "Hawk open your eyes, please baby open them." I hear twittle say, only he sounds like he is miles away from me. I pick up the fear and desperation in his voice. EYES OPEN! SAY SOMETHING! DO ANYTHING! I scream at myself, trying to get my body to move, But the pain takes hold of everything and my body rebels against me and wont do what I want it to do. All I can manage is a small moan of Pain.

         "I'm going to call 911 now ok? Please hang in there Hawk PLease for me" I hear him say. I try to tel him yes I try to reach out to him to hold his hand, but the pain is to much, instead I slip away. unable to hold back the unconsiousness any longer.

i remember looking at the clouds
thinking how alone they looked
Appearing to share each others company
but at the same time looking so distant
Ive always sympathized with them
i would lay and watch them pass over me for hours
wondering how they knew where to go even when the path became dark
The stars don’t shine like they used to
they’ve dimmed to a slight glow
the light doesn’t seem to be in my reach anymore
I’ve stopped wishing on shooting stars whats the point of believing when you know what your believing in is a lie
only kept alive with counterfeit faith
only there to deceive yourself rather than everyone around you
Freckles dust your shoulders and cheeks
i cant help but imagine each one being a lie I’ve kept alive for your sake
There were millions
the thing i love about you most can somehow represent what i hate about you just as much
You’ve never held me the way you did today
i should be happy
instead i feel the exact opposite
Numbness and detachment blur my vision and block my thoughts
I’m left staring out the window while you gently kiss my neck
I’ve become the clouds
alone amongst the masses
You make me call the shots
thats not what i want
i need someone to tell me
what to do
where to go
how to speak
lately Ive been tired of holding so much responsibility on my shoulders
you nuzzle your nose with my own and gaze into my eyes
i really don’t want to let you go
You ask whats wrong
i answer with my new catch phrase
I’m tired
if only you could see that i mean Im tired of this routine

Somehow I’m able to feel so profoundly but at the same time feel nothing at all

i blame it on my ****** up character

lack of trust
fearfulness of intimacy
drifting apart
getting hurt
losing them
being alone
The loneliness clutches my wrists, breathily whispering
“you’ve driven everyone away, the ones you love so dearly are either dead, dying, or gone because you made them leave.”

The word goodbye slams around in my head
thrashing around and whacking the walls
this must be what my headaches originate from
I can’t just keep you around for my sake
my fear of being alone
I have this need to be with someone
but when i am
I’m not there at all
When you held me i felt nothing at all
only the warmth of your body and the scruff on your chin
My kisses were too hard
my touch too callous
all my motions seem to be rehearsed
Im beginning to think that we’ve lost our touch
I’m not sure if it was ever even there to begin with.

I've never understood girls who obsessed about their weight
until i developed bulimia
this isn't poetry
I never sympathized with drug addicts, because my father wasn't around
now im waiting on a new hit of Adderall
this isn't poetry
I used to fall in love with everything I saw and I gave meaning to things without it
I told you I love you knowing that the way i feel now is the closest i can feel to love.
I read somewhere that a poet can make anything beautiful
but you aren't a poet
you can't make me beautiful.

I have always sympathized with the wrong people,
feeling worse for a killer than I do his victims.
It explains why I’m still able to love you and not myself.

Zebras and old western movies and segregation and newspaper...
You'd like to think that I'd like to think that they are real,
But nothing is that simple.
Nothing is so fuzzy and dated and clarified.
Because he smiled as he smacked and she cried tears when she sympathized.
The world is not this or that and emotions are not happy or sad and people are not him or her.
It is not black and white or even the greyest gray.
Its saturated with colors that make me oh so dizzy and lost.
And I begged him for the answers he did not have,
And I flooded her with questions, never thinking of the consequences that came with partial responses.
I called out for peace, though the war is inside me.
Constant debates on what is wrong and what is right, but nothing
Nothing is black and white.
Times New Roman stares at me, glimmering brilliantly.
I am not two halves and they are not monsters and you are not angels.
The voices in my head are not so generous.
They would speak into crackling microphones
and tell me how unspoken language works.
They are with the times and so am I, but I am universal where nothing else is.
There are no opposites.
Nothing can help me but my refusal to accept everything as anything other than a spectrum of somethings.

My wishes are dreary and cold
Time, in rush, under the sun is sweating,
And summer sears stories can’t be told,
The heart by itself is obliged to live beating,
In cadence with love words of a song,
Which a pretty girl sang so long, so long.
I sighed, then, and sympathized with her pain,
Later, to recollect those words, I tried in vain.
Her eyes were intense black, sad and wet.
Where starless winter night wove his web,
A desire rose , then in my solitude, I wept.
At that moment I loved, yet couldn’t speak;
Now she is a misty shade at its lowest ebb,
My fondness remains, upon my chest creeps.
Salty rain drops, in the eye, trickle down the cheek.
   While the heart, with nettling remorse, weeps.

The laughs piercing through like jagged knives
Scraping though the ears, throat, heart…
They claw their way in-I cannot shut it out
A casual moment to the world no doubt
Shut up
Is this being done on purpose?
I know feeling this ****** isn’t worth it
Why do I care so much?
Are people just that interchangeable?
You avoid my eyes I avoid your company
Do you notice these things?
Do you edit your acts too?
I know I shouldn’t care what you do

You understood me
Eyes revealed secret confessions
Only you knew
And now our eyes shall never meet
Our bodies never touch
In fear it would be too much
We’ve replaced the roles
But not the insight
You saw my best
Sympathized about the rest
And noted everything else
Fluid and in sync
But now that has changed

You've left me in a mental mess
and I’ve tried to clean mine up
Allowing honesty to seep through
Now the spotlight shines on you
You’re next move?
Not what I expect
You should feel no regret
For me, it’s impossible to forget
You wear it daily on your face
It comes out in our shared space
Your name for me has changed
Mirroring a greater change
Will we ever mimic normalcy
What goes on in that head?
Silent to no end
Maybe this time apart
Can give you semi fresh start
That’s not what I want
But what I want is never an option
I don’t want to forget how it was
I don’t regret how it was
I’ll miss that more than I’ll admit
I like the match and how we fit
But you’ve outgrown me
No efforts to reconnect
Don’t know if it’s possible
I just hope you remember when it was good
So someone can smile at the past

Our fluid conversations are dead
Stupid issues many in your head
I’ve never done this before
No thanks, I’m done
Broken and sore
Recovery is my new chore

It was 3:00 a.m. in Bowie Maryland in the year of our Lord, 1861.

A drum roll passed by in the night not more than a mile away, and Billy couldn’t tell whether it was coming from the Yanks or the Rebs. Both of Billy’s brothers had left home in the past two months.  His oldest brother Jeb having joined the Army of Northern Virginia, while his next oldest brother Seth was now fighting for the Union with Major General George G. Meade in the Army of the Potomac. Billy’s family was like a lot of other families in Maryland, and the Western Shore of Virginia, with some men choosing to fight for the North while many chose the South.

Billy was just about to turn sixteen and still had not chosen his side.  He had friends and family fighting for both and knew that the time was getting short for him to choose.  He couldn’t imagine fighting against either of his older brothers, but once he decided the possibility would definitely be there.  Billy pulled the bed covers over his head and thought back to a more pleasant time — a day when his two older brothers had taken him fishing in Mayo along the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay.

His brothers couldn’t have been more different.  Jeb was large and domineering with a personality that fit the profile of the typical soldier or warrior.  Seth was more studious and would rather have his nose stuck in a book than behind the sights of a Springfield Rifle Model 1861.  The 1861 was the most widely used rifle on both sides. The south called their version the Fayetteville Rifle, and Billy’s Dad had given his to Jeb just before he died last year.  Billy had never fired the big gun and had only carried it for his father and brother when they went on their weekly hunts for deer and small game.

Billy Finally Drifted Off To Sleep …

The next morning, his mother told him that Union soldiers had passed by in the night under the command of Colonel Elmer E. Ellsworth.  They were on their way to Alexandria Virginia to join with Colonel Orlando B. Wilcox in an attempt to retake Alexandria and drive the confederates out.  It was just too close to Washington D.C. and had to be secured. For several months confederate troops had been infiltrating Maryland and sightings had been reported from Hagerstown to Anne Arundel County. Billy wondered about the fighting that would take place later that week and hoped that wherever his brothers were engaged they were safe and out of harms way.

After breakfast, Billy decided to spend the day fishing along the Patuxent River just southeast of his home.  He rode their old Tennessee Walker George as his blue tick hound Alfie ran along side. It took Billy an hour to get to the river and he used the time to once again try and decide what the right thing was for him to do.  He had sympathies for both sides, and the decision in his mind was neither black nor white.  He wished that it was because then he could get this all over with and leave today. Billy was famous in his area for being able to get across the water. Whether it was a makeshift raft, dugout canoe, or just some drift lumber available, Billy had made it across long open stretches of the Chesapeake Bay — never once having been deterred.

He Was An Early Day Chesapeake Waterman

Billy returned home from fishing that day and found his house burned to the ground.  His mother was standing out front still in tears with her arms wrapped around Billy’s little sister Meg.  A rear-guard unit from Ellsworth’s column had gotten word that Billy’s brother Jeb was fighting for the South and just assumed that the entire family were southern sympathizers. Billy’s mother tried to tell the soldiers that her middle son was fighting with the Army of The Potomac.  No matter how hard she pleaded with the sergeant in charge, he evacuated all in the house (Billy’s Mother, Sister and Aunt Bess) and then covered the front porch in coal oil, lit it with a torch, and then just rode away. He never even turned around to watch it burn.

That Union Sergeant had now made Billy’s decision crystal clear, at least for the moment.  Once he got his mother, sister, and aunt resettled, he would make his way to Virginia and join with his older brother in the confederate cause. He remembered his brother Jeb telling him that the Confederate Soldiers had more respect, and he couldn’t imagine them doing to his family what the Union Army had just done.

It took Billy two weeks to get his Mother resettled with family up in Annapolis.  He then packed the little that remained of his belongings, loaded up old George, and said goodbye to the life he knew.  It would be a week’s ride to get past the Union Camps in Southern Maryland and Northern Virginia, and he knew he would have to stay in the tree line and travel at night.  If caught by the Yanks, his only chance of survival would be to join up with them, and he couldn’t imagine fighting for those who had just destroyed his home. His conviction to get past Fredericksburg was now determined and strong.

All Billy had to arm himself with was an 1860 percussion squirrel rifle that his brothers had bought him before going off to war.  It was only.36 caliber, but still gave Billy some feeling of security as he slowly passed through the trees in the dark. His plan was to hug the western shore of the bay, as far as Charlotte Hall, and then take two short ferry rides. His first would be across the Patuxent River and then one across the Potomac on his way to Fredericksburg.  He prayed and he hoped that the ferry’s he found were not under Union control.

Billy spent his first night in Churchton along the western shore. It was quiet and uneventful, and he was actually able to get a good night’s sleep.  He had run out of oats for George though, and in the morning needed to find an understanding farmer to help fortify his mount.  As he approached the town of Sunderland, he saw a farmer off to his right (West) tending to his fields.  Billy approached the farmer cautiously making sure he rode around in front of the farmer and not approaching from the rear.

The farmer said his name was Hawkins, and he told Billy there were oats over in the barn and two water troughs in front of the house.  He also said that if he was hungry there was a woman inside who would fix him something to eat.  He then told him that he could spend the night in his barn but since it was still early in the day, he said he was sure that Billy wanted to move on.

Billy thought it was strange that the man asked no other questions of him.  He seemed to accept Billy for all that he was at the moment — a young man riddled with uncertainty and doubt and on his way to a place he still wasn’t sure was right for him.  The look in the man’s eyes pointed Billy in the direction he now needed to go, and as he turned to thank him for his hospitality the man had already turned back to his plow.

In the barn were three large barrels of oats and five empty stalls. Two of the stalls looked like they had recently been slept in because there were two empty plates and one pair of socks still lying in the stall furthest to the left.  Billy fed George the oats and then walked outside.  Everything looked quiet in the house as he approached the front door.  He knocked twice, and a handsome looking woman about his mother’s age answered before he could knock a third time.  The woman’s name was Martha and as she invited Billy inside, she asked him when was the last time he had eaten?
Yesterday morning Ma’m, Billy said, as Martha prepared him some cold pork and cooked beans.  Billy was so hungry that he thought it was the best thing that he had ever tasted. Martha then told Billy to be careful in the woods because both union and rebel forces had been seen recently and there were stories of atrocities from both sides as they passed on their way.  Martha also said she had heard that Union forces had burned a farm up in Bowie a few weeks ago.  Billy stayed quiet and didn’t utter a word.

Billy Remained Quiet

After he finished his meal, Billy thanked Martha who had packed salt pork for him to take on his way.  Billy walked George to the water trough and waited as George drank.  He looked across the fields and he could sense what was coming.  This tranquil and pastoral scene was soon to be transformed into blood and gore as the epic struggle between North and South finished its first year. It was late fall in 1861 and Billy’s birthday was in two more weeks.  This was never the way he envisioned turning sixteen to be.

Billy thanked Martha, put the salted pork in his pouch, and remounted George. Martha said:  Whichever side you are riding to, may God be with you, young man.  Billy thought it was strange that she knew where he was heading without him telling.  He then also thought that he was probably not the first young traveler to stop at this farm for some kind words and sustenance. He rode back out in the field to thank the farmer, but when he got to the spot where he had met him before, the farmer was not there.  Billy wondered where he could have gone.  As he rode back down the cobbled dirt road, he noticed a sign at the end where it reconnected with the main road — Billett’s Farm. That wasn’t the name the farmer had told him when they were first introduced before.

Hawkins He Had Said

Billy worked his way towards Charlotte Hall.  From there he would head East to Pope’s Creek and try to get on the short ferry that would take him across the Potomac River and over to Virginia. Then Billy was sure he would finally be safe.  Tonight though, he only made it as far as Benedict Maryland, and he again needed to find secluded shelter for the night. Benedict was right along the banks of the Patuxent River where the farming was good, and the fishing was even better.

It was getting dark when Billy spotted what he was looking for.  There was a large farm up ahead with two large barns and three out buildings.  Billy sat inside the trees and waited for dark.  It was inside the outbuilding furthest to the east that he intended to stay the night.  As darkness covered the fields, Billy walked slowly towards the large shack.  He led George behind him by his lead and hoped that he would remain quiet.  George was an older horse, now fifteen, and seemed to always know what was required of him without asking.  Not that you can really ask a horse to do anything, but George did just seem to know.

Billy got to the outbuilding and put his ear to the back wall to see if he could hear anything from inside.  When he was sure it was safe, he walked around front to the door, opened it, and he and George quickly walked inside.  In the very dim moonlight, Billy could see that it was about 20’ X 20’ and had chopped wood stored against the back wall.  There were also two empty stalls and a loft up above about 10’ X 20.’  Billy decided to sleep downstairs in case he had to get away fast, and after tying George to the furthest back stall, he laid down in the stall to its right and fell fast asleep.
Billy doesn’t know how long he had been asleep, but all at once he heard the sound of clicking and could feel the cold hard press of steel against his left temple.  He woke up in a start and could see five men with lanterns standing over him in the stall.  As his eyes started to adjust, he noticed something strange.  Three of these five men were black.

Whatcha doin here boy, and where you headed, the biggest of the three black men asked him?  Billy knew that how he was to answer that question would probably determine whether he lived through the night. I’m headed to Virginia to try and find my older brother. Our farm was burned a few weeks ago and my mother and baby sister are now living with relatives.  I need to let my brother know, so he will know where to find us when the war is over.
I think this here boy’s fixin to join up with the Rebs, another of the black men shouted out.  Tell the truth boy, you’re headed to Richmond to sign up with old Jeff Davis ain’t you?  Billy lied and said he wasn’t sure of which side to fight for and that he had a brother fighting for each.  With that, the biggest of the three sat him on a barrel in the corner and began to talk again …
What you done tonight boy is decide to camp in a rural spot of the Underground Railroad.  You know what that is boy?  We have a real problem now because you knows where it’s at.  We can’t trust that you won’t tell nobody else and ruin other’s chances to get North and be free.  Billy just stared into the man’s face.  He had a strength mixed with kindness behind his eyes and for a reason Billy couldn’t understand, he felt safe in this man’s presence.

Son, we is makin our way over to Preston on the western shore where we catches a train to the North.  We have one more stop before there and that’s at the Hawkins place just thirty miles up the road.  Billy then knew why the stalls back at Martha’s barn had looked slept in.  He still wondered why the sign at the farm entrance had said Billett instead of Hawkins.  The black man then said: My names Lester, and those two men over there are brothers named Rayford and Link.  By now, the two white men were gone and only the four of them were left in the stall.

Since you say you haven’t made your mind up yet about which side to join, let me help you a little with your choosin.  Lester then went on to tell Billy that Rayford and Link had five other brothers and two sisters that were all killed while trying to escape to the North.  Not only were they killed, but they were tortured before being hanged just outside of Columbia South Carolina.  Lester then asked Rayford and Link to remove their shirts.  As they did, Lester took his lantern and shined it over both of their backs.  Both were totally covered with scars from the several lashings they had received on the plantation where they had worked back in South Carolina.  Lester said this was not unusual, and no man should be treated that way.  This was worse treatment than the slave owner would ever do to any of his animals.

Lester then said again: It’ll be a shame to have to **** you boy, but for the better good of all involved, I’ll do what I gots to do. With that, the three men walked outside, and Billy could hear them talking in hushed tones for what seemed like an hour.  Lester walked back inside alone and said: What’s your name son?  We’ve decided we're taking you with us up the road a piece.  You might come in handy if we need a hostage or someone with local knowledge of the area as we make our way t’wards Preston. Go back to sleep and we’ll wake you in an hour when it’s time to go.

Billy couldn’t sleep. It had been a long day of interrogation and darkness was again approaching.  He heard the men talking outside and from what they were saying, he realized they did all of their traveling at night hiding out in small barns and shacks like this during the light of day. He wondered now if he’d ever see home again.  He wondered even more about his previous decision to fight for the South.

In an hour, Lester came in and asked Billy if that was his horse in the stall next to him.  Billy said it was and Lester said: Get him outside, we’re going to load him with the chillens and then be on our way.  When Billy walked outside he saw eight other black people in addition to the three he had previously met.  It was a mother and father and five children all aged between three and eleven.  Lester hoisted the three smallest children up on George’s back, as the other two lined up to walk alongside.  They would make sure that none of the younger ones fell off as they maneuvered their way North through the trees at night.  The mother and father walked quietly behind, as the three large black men led the way with Link scouting up ahead for anything unforeseen.

Just before dawn, Billy recognized where they were.  They were at the end of that farm road he had just come down the day before, but the sign now read in faded letters Hawkins.  Billy looked back at the sign and he could see something written on the back.  As he squinted into the approaching sun, he could see the letters B-I-L-L-E-T-T written of the back of the board.  Billy was now more confused than ever.  Lester told them all to wait in the trees to the left of the farm road, as he took out three small rocks from his pants pocket. The sun was almost up and this was the most dangerous part of their day.

He approached the house slowly and threw the first stone onto the front porch roof — then followed by the second and then the third.  Without any lights being lit, the front door opened and Lester walked inside.  In less than a minute, he was back in the trees and said:  It now OK fo us to makes our way to the barn, where we’s gonna hide for the day.

After they were settled in the five empty stalls, Lester decided who would then take the first watch.  He needed to have two people on watch, one looking outside for approaching strangers and one watching Billy so he wouldn’t try to escape.  What Lester didn’t know was that Billy wasn’t sure he wanted to go anywhere right now and was starting to feel like he was more part of what was going on than any hostage or prisoner.

In another hour, Martha came in with two big baskets of food: Oh I see you have found my young friend Billy, I didn’t know that he worked for the road.  Lester told Martha that he didn’t, and he was still not sure of what to do with him.  Martha just looked down at Billy and smiled. I’m sure you’ll know the right thing to do Lester, and then she walked back outside toward the house. Lester told Billy that Martha was a staple on the Road to Preston and that without her, hundreds, maybe thousands of black slaves would now be dead between Virginia and Delaware.  He then told Billy that Martha was a widow, and both her husband and two sons had been killed recently at the Battle of Bull Run.  They had fought on the Confederate side, but Martha still had never agreed with slavery.  Her husband and sons hadn’t either, but they sympathized with everything else that the South was trying to do.

Billy’s head felt like it wanted to explode.  Here was a woman who had lost everything at the hands of Yankee soldiers and yet was still trying to help runaway slaves achieve freedom as they worked their way through Maryland.  Billy wanted to talk to Martha.  He also wondered who that man was in the field the previous morning when he had stopped to introduce himself.  He was sure at the time it had been Martha’s husband, but now Lester had just said that she was a widow. More than anything though, Billy wanted to talk to Martha!

Billy asked Lester when he returned from his watch if he could go see Martha inside the house.  Lester said: What fer boy, you’s be better off jus sittin quietly in this here barn. Billy told Lester that if he mentioned to Martha that he wanted to see her, he was sure she would know why and then agree to talk with him.  Lester said: I’ll think on it boy, now go get ya some sleep.  Oh by the way, did you get somethin to eat?  Matha’s biscuits are the best you’ll ever taste.  Billy said, Yes, and then tried to lie down and go to sleep.  His mind stayed restless though and he knew deep in his heart, and in a way he couldn’t explain, that Martha held the answer he was desperately in need of.

In about two more hours Martha returned with more food.  She wanted to dispense it among the children first, but three were still sleeping so she wrapped theirs and put it beside them where they lay.  After feeding the adults, she walked over to Billy and said: Would you help me carry the baskets back up to the house? Billy looked at Lester and he just nodded his head.  On the way back to the house Martha said: I understand you want to talk to me. I knew I should have talked with you before, but you were in such a hurry we never got the chance.  Let’s go inside and sit down while I prepare the final meal.

Martha then explained to Billy that she had been raised in Philadelphia.  She had met her husband while on a trip to Baltimore one summer to visit relatives.  Her husband had been working on a fishing boat docked in Londontown just south of Baltimore.  It was love at first sight, and they were married within three weeks.  Martha had only been back to Philadelphia twice since then to attend the funerals of both of her parents.  She then told Billy what a tragedy this new war was on the face of America … with brother fighting brother, and in some cases, fathers fighting their own sons. It not only divides us as a nation, but divides thousands of families, especially those along the Mason-Dixon line where our farm is located now.

She also told Billy her name was Billett, but they used Hawkins at night as the name of her Railway Stop along the Road. Hawkins was Martha’s maiden name and to her knowledge was not well known in these parts. Hawkins was also the name distributed throughout the South to runaway slaves who were trying to make their way North. Martha felt that if they were looking for someone in her area named Hawkins, they would have a hard time tracing it back to her.  The Courthouse that she and her husband had been married in burned down over fifteen years ago and all records of births, deaths, and marriages, had been consumed by that fire.

By reversing the sign at night to Hawkins, it allowed the runaway slaves to find her in the darkness while protecting her identity in the event that they were caught.  Under questioning, they might give up the name Hawkins while having no knowledge of the name Billett which in these parts was well known. Martha also told Billy that she had nothing left to lose now except her dignity and pride.  Her two sons and husband had been taken at Bull Run and now all she wanted was for the war to end and for those living imprisoned in slavery to be set free and released. Her dignity and pride forced her to try and do everything she could to help.

When Billy asked Martha … How did you know the right thing to do? she said: The right thing is already planted there deep inside you.  All that’s required is for you to be totally honest with yourself to know the answer.  Martha then turned back to her cooking.

Lester then walked into the kitchen and said: Martha Ma’m, what’s we gonna do wit dis boy?  Martha only looked at Billy and smiled as she said, Lester, this boy’s gonna do just fine.  Lester then looked at Billy and said: Somethin you wanta say to me son? Billy asked if he could go feed his horse and then come back in a few minutes.  Lester said that he could but not to take too long.

When Billy walked back into the barn, George was tied to a wall cleat in the far left corner.  He walked him out to the water trough in the dark and then back inside where he gave him another half- bucket of oats.  He looked in George’s eyes for that surety that George always had about him.  Just as he started to look away, George ****** up his head and looked to his left.  The youngest of the black children was walking toward George with something in her hand.  She was with her older sister, and she was carrying an apple — an apple for George. George took the apple from her hand as he nudged the side of her face with his nose.  Billy looked at the scene, and, in the moment’s revelation, knew instantly the right thing for him to do.

Billy went back inside where Lester and Martha were drinking coffee by the fire.  Billy told Lester that NOBODY knew these backwaters like he and his brothers. He also told Lester that by joining his cause he would never be faced with the possibility of meeting either of his brothers on the field of battle.  This seemed to strike a nerve with Lester who had a brother of his own fighting for the south somewhere in Louisiana.  In Louisiana, many of the black’s were free men and fought under General Nathan Bedford Forrest where they would comport themselves with honor and bravery throughout the entire war.

Billy then told Lester he had never agreed with slavery, and his father had always refused to own them.  This made the work harder on he and his brothers, and some of their neighbors ostracized them for their choice.  Billy said his father didn’t care and told him many times that … No man should ever own another or Lord over him and be able to tell him what he can or cannot do.

Lester then asked Billy what he knew about these backwaters.  Billy said he knew every creek and tributary along the Patuxent River and all the easiest places to get across and get across safely where no one could see.  Lester said they had a friendly ferry across the bay to Taylors Island, but many times the hardest part was getting across the Patuxent to where they were now.  From here, they would then decide whether to go across the bay to Preston or head further North to other friendly stops along the Road to Delaware. Billy said he would be most helpful along those stops further North and on this Western side of the bay as he knew the terrain so well.

For four more years Billy worked out of Martha’s farm hiding and transporting runaway slaves on their way North.  He would make occasional trips back to Bowie to fortify the barn that the Union soldiers had not burned when they torched his house that day.  His family’s barn would become the main Railroad Stop before taking those last steps to freedom that lay just 100 miles beyond in the free state of Delaware.

After reconstruction, Billy went on to become a lawyer and then a judge in Calvert County Maryland.  Martha had left Billy the farm in her will, and he now used it as a haven for black people who were freely emigrating from the south and needed a place to stay and rest before continuing on to the Industrial cities of the northeast.

When Martha was dying, Billy asked her who that mysterious farmer was that was out tending her field that morning when he first stopped by so many years ago? Martha said:Why don’t you know; that was my father, Ethan Hawkins. He worked that field every day since my husband and two boys were killed.  I’m surprised he let you see him.  I thought I was the only one who ever knew he was there.  But, but, but, your father died many years ago I thought.  Martha looked at Billy with those beautiful and gentle eyes and just smiled …

Seeing him that day had changed Billy and the direction
of his life forever, making what seemed like King
Solomon’s choice — the right and only one for him.


Kurt Philip Behm

She looked at the ultrasound image,
scared and speechless.
Her pessimistic husband inculcated her with words,
useless words.
Her ideas of the family she envisioned cracked like glass.
While internal tears drowned her, she began reminiscing the past.
As the doctor spoke, she heard nothing but
the hopes and dreams she created in her head.
Unsure and filled with anxiety,
she was filled with dread.
The one moment she always awaited,
left her feeling very deflated.

"W- what is that ?" She stuttered, pointing at the image.

The doctor cleared his throat.

"What is that ?!" She screamed, becoming agitated.

"Not even science can explain that." he said.

The being  inside her was far from human,
with its two heads and black eyes
peering at her through the image.

"It's not human and I am so sorry." the doctor sympathized.

Her husband, enraged at the whole situation marched out of the room

and slammed the door.

All hell broke loose after she cut her stomach open
and released the creature into town.
Paranoia and pain tormented the town
for months till the creature was captured
by a once nameless entity.

This is the entity parents warned their children against
but this entity became an angel and a saviour.
Over time, this nameless entity was named fear
and sometimes, fear helps us overcome our
greatest nightmares.