She goes a tap dancing, and then I put her over my knee. I put her bottom through occasional wakes of the cane. And then she circles her legs around me, rolling her tongue all o’er my chest. She tap dances, like all the best. When she doesn’t like all o’er, all o’er my chest. It’s not international broad way, yet with Chelsea we enjoy the city lights. In our own personal broad way nights. Where the many rooms darkened from the blown out candle lights.

The breath creates merely smoke for miles, with the whole district covered in a thick layer of smoke. She tugs me by the hand, and we shall walk along the smoky layer. And then circle about like some ice skating couple, orating couplets for the dance. So when gave the sky the chance, and let us float with our love holding us aloft. And as we fall, we fall into bed to the texture of the pillow so soft.

We live in a tiny loft that one may call home, where are daughter whom we now call Chelsea the second, which seems to make her really happy with the old name reminded her of her old mother, is sleeping in the next bedroom over. She reads o’er the many middle grade novels she missed.

I got to the couch, because I cannot sleep. I write poems about the old women who weep due to the deaths of relatives do to the black plague. I am visited by my daughter Chelsea, that’s Chelsea B to you, and she is crying in my shoulder because she is unable to sleep.

“What’s wrong Chelsea? Did your mother say something?” I asked.

“No, I had another night terror.” she said.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

So we have a short conversation about night terrors, and I listened long enough that she asked me if I ever had night terrors. “Well every so often when I was younger, before I met your mother Chelsea, I would have dreams of things chasing me in the night. I would see indescribable things haunted petrified forests. And I would wake up with scratches on my chest.”

“I have dreams like that too. Here let me show you my scars.” my daughter Chelsea said, rolling up her nightgown sleeve. And there I saw gashes. I began to wonder if she experienced things similar to me.

“Who do you think did it Chelsea, that’s not normal.”

“The black shadow boogie man did Pappa.”

I knew there was something she was not speaking about. I had tried finding a psychiatrist for her when I withdrew her away from the previous home. She would comment how she would here crying animal noises at night. And how she missed her baby lamb peaches every night. She leans into my shoulder and cries.

“It’s OK Chelsy, there is no boogie man hurting peaches.” I didn’t want to say that peaches was in Heaven, because I knew this wasn’t true. But I had to comfort my new daughter somehow. “I can read you a bed time story.” So I picked the least depressing story I ever wrote, and sing it to lullaby note.

And so she had a pleasant sleeping night.

I feel somewhat happier now that the two Chelsy women had found some solace in each before they died. My first Chelsy died in a car crash, and the other threw herself out of the building from losing her new mother.

I grabbed whatever stuff I could, and took a bus over a thousand miles away from home. I didn’t want to be with anybody, I considered offing myself. Because without them I have failed them as an investigator. I no longer felt like anybody. I was lost in my own scattered memories. And then in the darkness, came a room mate. Her name was Lilia Beth. She held out a hand to me, despite being aromatic. She was able to sort of personal problems that I had. And so that was how I came to live in this motel, of which causes me misery of a different isolated sort.

And that’s how I came to imagine Lenora, who in the darkness of my mind, I found someone who could accept me for who I am.

I find the seeker in the light.

I had dated once previously before meeting the girls I had rescued from different sorts of cult like groups. I came from a motel, she came from afar. And yet she left my life ajar. She left my love and memories in scattered pieces, she went to college to write her thesis on human affairs. And our relationship ended just like that, like an unwritten thesis among nerds of the nerdiest kind. Like some flare that would soon burn out, she put it out early to end its misery. She was gone from my life, there she went. Like a butterfly moving on and getting a better tree. The flowers in that secret garden rotted and withered away. And now the tree is all along in the world.

She had been the first girlfriend I had met, and for a while we thought it would last forever. And yet in conversations on the phone, she found she could not accept someone who had issues such as what I had. I can’t help it, most of the time these days I must ask for people to restate what they want to say. We had departed on the month of May, during my previous birthday. And then she left along her merry way. She gave me a ring, the one we shared together splitting funds to share as one. “Here take this, sell it and take the money yourself. I don’t need the money where I’m going.”

And then she was gone.

It hit me all of a sudden, her racing toward the finish line toward the end of life. I had heard that she was hit in a head on collision, throwing herself in front of a car. And she promised that we will meet again in the world beyond. And yet now I was unsure of whether to feel whether or not it was an abscond. For I am an atheist, I do not believe in the worlds beyond.

And yet there was some vague hopeless, something difficult to define, beyond the mere sadness of having her gone.

She had become my life.

We were the only one that could share dreams together, as we walked along the coast. We would glide along the inverted rainbows of crimson skies. And we would take strolls to search for source material for the latest stories about the worlds beyond.

Whenever I would have a night terror, she would be there to comfort me. And shush me to help me go back to sleep. I was there for her when she wept, and sung to her softly as she slept. And now the love of life was in the crypt.

I tried some way to rationalize my own guilt.

I remembered once when she told me, how she would not be around for much longer, and yet I was an idiot and ignored her sorrow. For there is the grim fact of becoming a perfect romance partner of the dead. For if she is dead then I may truly appreciate her when she is gone.

And yet I always appreciated her, I appreciated everything about her. Her existence consumed my very soul.

Yet here I am at the ledge of humanity.

Don’t cry for me as I fall. And yet I was poor, and she was rich. And our promise to be together shall not be kept ever again.

And yet, I’m very afraid of heights.

I wait to be with her again, and yet I am unsure what to do with Chelsy. I love her but not like my first girlfriend. And yet I don’t want to see her cry.

Because I don’t want to cry.

Earlier in the day, the assistant manager seemed in a hurry. She quickly merely gave us our sheets, and went on with the rest of her day. So we slept for a bit longer, our schedule continuing to get further out of whack.

Then dinner came around.

“I think it’s about time we had soup again.” my room mate said. We’ve been having soup for about five months now, and yet for the last few weeks we’ve mainly been eating canned beans and rice. “I’m getting tired of beans and rice, how about you?”

I wasn’t sure what to say to this question, I’ve never been broached about how I thought about her cooking since I lived with mom. “Oh it’s excellent though.” I said. Although I always said it was excellent and really meant it, I had grown to suspect she was getting tired of me saying anything at all. But I had grown up with a mom that required constant praise, so it always put me on edge. I felt at times like I was being pushed off a very high ledge.

“I’m ready for something different myself.”

“But I said I liked it Lilia Beth.”

“I do too, but I’m know you’re getting tired of it. Or at least I am.”

And that was that, from then on we had nothing but soup again. Part of me had mixed feelings, and wanted her to try refining her craft with beans and rice. After all, one gets better over time. Just like writing. But I never express, as someone who tends to ride along with the crowd.

My parents had called me yesterday to help me get on disability, but I’m still uncertain how long this will take. I feel someone’s head is going to roll if I’m unable to get it by November. There is simply no reasons for someone like be with PTSD to be denied by the social security office, if I have a good lawyer for it. And yet according to a friend, most people who try to get on with PTSD get denied at first. There are many reasons why I have it, far to extensive to go into here.

But my life was going nowhere fast.

I wanted my life to start for real. You might find me boring for not wanting to pursue anything, but keep in mind when you have a parent that insisted on doing everything for you for the last twenty six years of your life, you get used to certain kinds of habits. Therefore it’s impossible for life to really start.

That person should be in jail.

I remembered the lovely lamb peaches, the crying face of my daughter Chelsy. I could not never make eat meat again. From then on I could eat nothing but soup, beans, and rice.