Dead lovers at the carwash. Dead lovers directing traffic.
Dead lovers honking their horns. Dead lovers panhandling
outside the methadone clinic. Dead lovers on billboards.
Dead lover roadkill. Dead lover stick-figure families. Dead
lover construction workers. Dead lover sign-twirlers for
Burger King. Dead lover vandals — spray-painting
everything gray. Dead lover cops. Dead lovers behind me in
line at an ATM. Dead lovers haunting the aisles of the thrift
store. Dead lovers working the front desk at the post office.
Dead lovers cradling the stray cats on my street. Dead lovers
sleeping on the curb with my garbage. Dead lovers playing
Scrabble on my floor. Dead lovers making coffee. Dead
lovers in my Zoom meeting. Dead lovers in my YouTube
recommendations. Dead lovers spamming fire emojis in the
comments section of a video on survivor’s guilt. Dead lovers
delivering my DoorDash. Dead lovers singing to me and my
cat in bed. Dead lover Jehovah’s Witnesses ringing my
doorbell at 8:37 AM. Dead lover gangbangs on the front page
of PornHub. Dead lovers floating in my cereal bowl. Dead
lovers caught in mouse traps. Dead lovers stuck to my bar of
soap. Dead lovers smoking my cigarettes. Dead lovers
snorting my Ativan. Dead lovers doing pull-ups on my
ceiling fan. Dead lovers mowing my lawn, pulling weeds.
Dead lovers tightrope-walking a telephone wire.
Footsteps approach me. The oil stains on my sidewalk
remind me of inkblots from one of those
psychological assessments you see in movies. I see oil stains
in the oil stains. Footsteps approach me, and without
looking up, I say, “Please stop following me.” A man’s voice
says, “UPS, sir. I’m just delivering this. Can you sign?” I say,
“I didn’t order anything.” The UPS driver groans and hands
me the package. I open it. Oh, right. I did order this.
-- Brandon Diehl lives in New Jersey with his cat. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Maudlin House, Pool Party, Scaffold, Cottonmouth Journal, Blood+Honey, The Daily Drunk, Horror Sleaze Trash, The Literary Underground, and other places. You can find him at www.brandondiehl.net, which he never updates.