He’s always watching me
I can feel his steady eyes like cigarette
burns on the back of my neck
My stomach twists into knots at his mere
presence
The hair on my skin grows erect with
sweat as I hear his footsteps quickly
approaching
I’m not his first victim
And if one day I were to lose my sight and
footing and somehow end up wrapped
around his tendrils
I certainly won’t be his last
Out of my peripheral I can just barely see
half of his face peeking out from the
corner of the alley I walk through on my
way home
I don’t run or quicken my pace
Because I know if he wanted me today
He would have me today
But instead, the few times when he is not
mimicking my shadow on cracked
pavements
He leaves me little love notes on the
television set sitting on the shaky stand in
my living room
Channel 12 seems to be his favorite
And he always leaves these notes no later
than 6pm when the whole house is awake
And my mother has decided it is time to
bake
I should probably confess that his notes
don’t surprise me anymore
In fact he has become a bit of a cliché at
times
He reuses the same phrase one too many
times
He repeats himself as if writing the same
ten words in a different color ink would
make it all seem new to me
Eventually I got bored and I don’t watch
Channel 12 anymore
His love notes were no longer notes but
essays
Whole novels even but not the pretty kind
with the handsome man in a suit or a pair
of red lips twisted in a seductive, inviting
smirk
And it wasn’t the mystery kind with the
dark cover and blurred image to pique
interest
It was the thick ones with yellow pages
and brown covers with a single word
stickered in silver at the very top
The ones you pass in libraries taking up
dust and feeding oblivious worms
And just when I figure he had finally
decided to give up,
Foolishly hoping he had accepted my
unspoken rejection and moved on to the
next
He then decides to send me presents
So I stare at the small box wrapped in an
alarmingly bright colored gift paper on my doorstep
And I kick it
Is it a bomb? A severed finger? More love
notes?
That night as I sit in front of the television
with my unopened present
In my father strides with the heavy remote
and turns on Channel 12
5:58 pm and my heart is pounding
Do I open it? Do I dare risk my newfound
peace to accept another note describing
all the possible ways he could come for
me?
5:59 pm now and the television screen
glitches into static
Any minute now and the trumpets will
sound
I begin to undo the wrapping paper
But I do it in such a haste that I gave
myself a paper cut
The stinging sensation brings my attention
back to the clock
6:00 pm
The trumpets go off like alarms and the
television screen glitches into focus
There, sitting behind a curved desk with a
stack of unread love notes from Death in
her hand
The woman sits with a tight forced smile
She is about to deliver my first note in two
weeks
I open the box before she can speak and
and I gasp
At the very bottom, placed at an
intentionally awkward angle upon a pile of
old newspapers
I recognize a pair of eyes I said goodbye to
a few nights ago
Somewhere around a buzzing crowd of
music and laughter
The television screen flashes for my
attention again
And this time, there’s no evidence of a
cliché or plagiarism
This time, the note is no more than a
sentence
And it includes the only things that
actually matter
My name, my age, the day I was born, and
the date of my last day on this earth