I, too, am a murderer. And not by violence or bloody means did I kill, but as most murders are committed where the corpse will never betray me. My daughter, Beth, was twenty. Yes, it was true, that no one saw me cry, not even at the funeral, but why would tears travel in public streams when what we are given to see of the world’s bodies of water are nothing more than flat blue blots on paper or shorelines that whisper a mere spittle spray of the vast rivers, lakes, oceans and seas? The doctors found malignant tumors under Beth’s right arm that they cut out and viciously attacked with radiation and chemotherapy over and over again, but I knew those lumps would never disappear, taking up residence in other parts of her body instead, until they destroyed, because they were lumps in my throat that I’d swallowed and kept down my entire life, contracted from my mother who’d carried them like a totem pole in her spine, until one day she’d sat down in a chair, never to rise again. One long continuous wailing NO that unleashed its deadly poison from out of me into the silent chambers of my daughter’s blood.

This story has not been published yet. Just a sampling of the story….