The Poet

32

Gladden looked at the words on the screen. They were beautiful, as if written by the unseen hand of God. So right. So knowledgeable. He read them again.

____________________

They know about me now and I am ready. I await them. I am prepared to take my place in the pantheon of faces. I feel as I did as a child when I waited for the closet door to be opened so that I could receive him. The line of light at the bottom. My beacon. I watched the light and the shadows each of his footfalls made. Then I knew he was there and that I would have his love. The apple of his eye.

We are what they make us and yet they turn from us. We are cast off. We become nomads in the world of the moan. My rejection is my pain and motivation. I carry with me the vengeance of all the children. I am the Eidolon. I am called the predator, the one to watch for in your midst. I am the cucoloris, the blur of light and dark. My story is not one of deprivation and abuse. I welcomed the touch. I can admit it. Can you? I wanted, craved, welcomed the touch. It was only the rejection-when my bones grew too large-that cut me so deeply and forced on me the life of a wanderer. I am the cast off. And the children must stay forever young.

____________________

He looked up when the phone rang. It was on the counter in the kitchen and he stared at it as it rang. It was the first call she had gotten. The machine picked up after three rings and her taped message played. Gladden had written it out on a piece of paper and made her read it three times before it was recorded on the fourth. Stupid woman, he thought as he listened now. She wasn't much of an actress-at least with her clothes on.

"Hello this is Darlene, I… I can't take your call right now. I've had to go out of town because of an emergency. I will be checking messages-uh, messages and will call you as soon as I can."

She sounded nervous and Gladden worried that because of the repeat of the one word that a caller would know she was reading. He listened as a male voice left an angry message after the beep.

"Darlene, goddamnit! You better call me as soon as you get this. You left me in a big lurch over here. You shoulda called and just might not have a job to come back to, girl, goddamnit!"

Gladden thought it had worked. He got up and erased the message. Her boss, he assumed. But he wouldn't be getting a callback from Darlene.

He noticed the smell as he stood in the kitchen doorway. He grabbed his matches off his cigarettes on the living room coffee table and went into the bedroom. He studied the body for a few moments. The face was a pale green but darker since the last time he had checked. Bloody fluid was draining from the mouth and nose, as the body purged itself of decomposition fluids. He had read about these purges in one of the books he had successfully petitioned to receive before the warden at Raiford. Forensic Pathology. Gladden wished he had the camera so he could document the changes in Darlene.

He lit four more sticks of jasmine incense, placing them in ashtrays at the four corners of the bed.

This time, after he had left and closed the bedroom door, he laid a wet towel along the threshold, hoping it would prevent the odor from spreading into the area of the apartment where he was living. He still had two days to go.