x Tx - Normally Special

Don’t worry. I will never find you. Do not worry. You are safe. Oh, lucky you. You should be glad I don’t have a knife collection. You should be glad I do not keep poisons in pretty jars saving the prettiest for you. You should be glad I cannot tie knots or have access to a gun safe. You should be thankful I am only half-obsessed, spread just thin enough to know which way is up, good from bad, wrong from right, only baby step fucked in the head. You should be glad there isn’t a part of my brain that clicks, breaks, and changes Wolfman-style into something that can break skin razor sharp into every piece of every part of you. Something that needs to feed on the fear screaming in your pupils of your green fucking eyes, bites your sweet throat warmest of veins screaming for my warmest of mouths, stubble a delicious obstacle to the smoothness of my tongue. You will never need a single silver bullet with me. You will not need a stake made of wood. You will not need holy water or a Jesus cross or torches or pitchforks or any other sort of protective weapon made for monsters such as me. I am the most timid of monsters. They have removed me from my position within their ranks citing words like fail, coward, reject, weakling, useless, stupid, worthless, dumbass. I tried to hang within their monster ranks, I did. I do. I try every day. It’s a reenlisting of a reenlisting of a reenlisting. Every day I think, I am almost there and every day they kick me out. They make me go back to my life. They know what I know and that is, I have too much to hold on to so I cannot truly be a monster.

This, I sometimes question. Especially on the days my walls get so thin.

But, just in case.

Be wary.

Still.

No.

Do not worry, I will never find you. You are safe. You should be glad all of my truck tires are balding, thin, and lacking responsibility. All of my trucks cannot bring me to you, and I have thousands. They thwart because they know. They have a handful of regular passengers and like a loyal soldier or loyal soldiers plural they stand, arms crossed, guns solid in their fists of stone and duty. None will look me in the eye, which is fine because I am too shamed I cannot look either. They know and they hold fast. I step forward, walk away, step forward, walk away. I know the trucks are filled with gas and I know their benches are worn with springs just beginning to poke through because each one of them holds the knowledge of the curve of my ass. I dream of breaking their ranks under the protection of night, rolling the bravest one back in silence. In the dream my heart beats with the force of a criminal with the crime being one against myself, and three more, but I push it down. Like how I always do. With you. In the dream I drive with my high beams on, the truck swerving unexpectedly. Its soldier’s heart full of its duty, but compassionate, it rights itself and keeps me straight. I picked the truest. The bravest. He tilts the rearview mirror when I am lost in the road. When I look into it, there is the car seat and my hand tilts the mirror back to the road that grows long behind me. The AM radio tells me the stories we like. Stories of spaceships, precognition, dark matter, tunnels of white light, shadow people, and Chupacabra. I memorize it all until dawn. I will be able to tell you how I believe in those things too. I see myself with you, nodding in enthusiastic conversation. I will not picture you naked even though I need to stay awake; there are so many hours left. My soldier truck companion will keep me safe despite his shaking head disappointment. The sun comes up and shines into my face, my head held high. I am driving straight into it because that is the direction where you are. I blind myself for you. My hands are frozen in a grip meant for better choices. I cannot feel my forearms but I keep driving.

Do not worry, I will never find you. You will be safe. You know I am a coward. You know about my anchors. I did not Google Earth you. I did not look at the front of your apartment building, and therefore do not know it has red brick stones and a blanket of ivy down the right hand side. I did not wonder if that was your car at the curb. I did not stare at the walkway that veers like a stretched comma through a lawn that is obviously meticulously cared for. I did not evaluate the income bracket that it might require in order to live there. I did not think about how you, with your legs strong with boots and its pants maybe jeans maybe shorts on a warm day, and a careless T-shirt so lucky against your torso, with your arms, all of your breathing and being and space you take up without me, walking down that comma, going places in you day to day that I don’t know about, that you never really tell me but that I think of. I did not become jealous of your neighbors, how they ask you how you are every day and how they can just ask you that using any number of words that they want and how they can just look into your eyes and how you can smile at them if you want and how they can just receive that smile and not think anything about that, how they would not lay awake at night replaying that smile in their heads while settling in for sleep, shitting in the face of such a wonderful gift. I do not want to bind and gag your neighbors for this insolence, this rudeness, this chutzpah, this disrespect impudence audacity all synonyms for not valuing that gift and stuffing them into a meat freezer in a basement like I’m a serial killer with a soldier truck and a drive dawn until dusk tunnel vision prizefighter tenacity. That is not me. I did not Google Earth you, so none of these thoughts took place and you can go on speaking to your neighbors who think you are only normally special. Fine. Give me their eyes. Their eyes should belong to me so I can shut them permanently. Undeserving of rods and cones. Complete bitches.

Do not worry, I will never find you. You will be safe. I did not Google Map you. I do not know that, by car, it would take one day and six hours to reach your house. I do not know that, if I take I-15N and I-70 East it will shorten that drive by one hour. I do not know that there are exactly 1,833 miles that I would have to drive in order to pull up in front of that brick building with the ivy. I would not sit in that car with sunglasses on waiting and watching with asphalt burned eyes feeling like an astronaut lady in a diaper. It would be much different. I do not know that, were I to forgo the soldier truck, if the soldier truck stood strong in refusal, that it would take 24 days and 17 hours to walk to where you are. I do not know that if I printed the directions out, I would need 14 sheets of 8.5 x 11 paper because there are 506 points of instruction. 506 pieces of directions that tell me how to get to you; all of them a caring grandfather type holding the sides of my head in his hands, compressing my hair, warm from the sun, kissing the crown of it, whispering, be safe. 506 steps I will cross off one by one, each one a victory. I will not need three pairs of shoes because of the wear and tear. I will not have a backpack filled with supplies and I won’t sleep in forests or dry riverbeds or under bridges and I will not get raped by a vagrant in my walk to where you are. I do not know that, if the vagrant, dry riverbeds, and forests, and shoe wearing are too difficult that I have the option to ride a bicycle. I do not know that if I rode a bike to you it would take seven days and five hours. I do not know what the average speed would be in order to maintain this schedule. I could guess that my intended speed would be the fastest pedaling I could maintain, but this would not be realistic, and perhaps this time frame would be based on an average speed, a manageable one. I do not know the uphills or the downhills or the times I might fall, or the cars that might hit me. Bike riding is a way I could get to you. I do not know the distance or time frame or method of public transportation it would take to get to you because Google Maps did not have options because my location is “outside of their current coverage area” so, this I truly do not know. A bus or a taxi seems too plain to make this quest. Too easy. Baby candy taking. If all of this was something I would do, I’d want my blood in it. I’d want my sweat to show you what it means. I would like the cramp of each of my muscles, and the withering of my fat, and the grind of my bones, and the blisters of sunburn to show you how I strived. Even a truck, even a soldier truck, brave and shaming, seems unworthy now. This I know now. I know this. I want to show you. You should understand. You should understand in your core. You should know what you are dealing with. If, of course, this is done by me.