Hard To Read #fiction #poetry

Pain – these words

each one excising flesh

severing my nerves

taking my breath

*

fictitious you may be

I hear the victim’s cry

willing you to flee

wrings me dry

*

your type never benign

you stalk the pages

your sinister breathed lines

predator of the world’s  stage

***

I am presently editing a crime fiction. The story line is excellent, compelling and you can’t put the novel (“The Man Who Tattooed Women” by Newt Livesay) down. However, an editor like a surgeon has to look at everything. With my knife (pen), I have to examine each word for clarity and placement. I must stare the perpetrator in the face and hear the victim scream in slow motion. I realized that  I subconsciously refused to edit several chapters because the graphic content is so arresting. So here I am (past my deadline) looking in the heinous face of a serial killer, feeling the blood drip down the victim’s leg, trying to cover my eyes but I can’t.

I had to take a poetry break to wash the blood from my hands.