"Are you the one who attached poems to pictures that people sent you of Facebook?" The person in the message asked.
"Yes," I replied, "that was me."
"Why did you decide to do that?" There were no red flags at this point, at least I didn't feel any. None of my usual warning signals went off.
" I was stewing over a parking lot incident, so I decided to ask everyone to send me nice nature pictures where I would compose a poem about them and tag the senders in it," I think that was a pretty simple explanation, not complicated at all.
"If I send you a picture here in the message window could you compose something and send it back to me?" Sounded simple enough, nothing stalkerish really. In the next second, there was a ping on my chat window and a picture popped up. I'd glanced at it for a second and began composing a poem right off.
............
Oh, how I must have seen you as a son who has only known life in the green grass and the tall trees of your arms. The wind ever so soothing move the fronds along like fingers tapping time on an aged armchair made of Koa. The nights were like a blanket across the sky with stars sewn into its fabric; I last saw you from the back seat of an old station wagon which spirited me away into a world where I would live only because I had to. Now I am no longer the son, but an aged man past his dotage brought back in a van where I will look upon you once more before I am gone.
I hit the send button and there is no reply for a full minute so I decide to message first.
"I'm not sure if you know this, but the house in this picture you sent, I grew up in it." There was a smile on my face as I received flashbacks of myself running around the yard and venturing off to places where I would play with my Action Jackson doll. Many holidays and birthdays were spent here as were funerals and divorces where my brothers and sisters would move back home until they could get back on their feet. The ping from the return message was unusually loud and it made me jump. When I looked at the reply I unplugged my laptop and turned my phone off. Maybe it was time to take a long walk, maybe I'd take a permanent walk and never come back.
" I died in that house,"
Chicken skin......
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