When everything comes apart, sometimes that's when you finally see. Signs begins with a unisex narrator who has been cruelly dumped. Suddenly, everything has a sign. They direct, advise, harass, and amuse...but are they real? And should they be followed? Signs captures the emotion and confusion of a break-up without labels of gender, sexual preference or ethnicity. Readers will relate to this desperate quest for meaning and answers in a convoluted world. The series of signs may be acute delusions, perceptive insights, or magical phenomena. How will you interpret the Signs?
Excerpt
Something sticky is on your nose. This is no way to wake up. Open your eyes. You can still feel it on there, a dry rustling every time you breathe in and out. Cross your eyes inward. Ignore the nausea. There it is. It’s yellow, sticky, and square.
It’s a Post-it note.
Read it: I never loved you. I’m leaving.
Sit up, pluck it off. Don’t read it again, try not to vomit. You were just dreaming of this one working out, love never-ending, using the term “soul mate” for the first time. And then this. Blind-sided by a fuckin’ Post-it note. Worst…Break-up…Ever.
Roll out of bed. You still have to go to work you know, even in severe emotional distress. Even heartbroken. Even with that feeling. That sticky, not clean, annoying feeling still on your mind. Waking up to rejection. Rejection jotted down on a casual, convenient, marigold-yellow square perfect for short notes, reminders, and messages.
Trudge through your morning routine. Incessantly wipe your nose. Try to forget the gaping hole in your chest. Ignore the little vestiges of what is now gone. The shampoo you always loved the scent of in those gorgeous brown locks while making out. Pour it down the drain when you shower. Hold your nose. Do not smell it and cry. The little hard boiled egg holder that you so love…put it in the back of the cupboard, resist hurling it into the corner. Okay, couldn’t resist. Sweep it up, careful. Crapola, sliced heel. Get the Band-Aids.
There’s a scrap of paper in the Band-Aid box. Read it: It will get infected. Cruel sense of humor. After these notes, you are starting to think you never knew that little shit at all. Don’t worry about the bloody footprints on the bathmat, who knows, maybe it will make a difference during the inevitable return.
The inevitable return, when the ex comes back for their stuff, the gathering up of things, the memories collected and stacked in a nondescript box. Not as if they mean anything or have value outside of your home. But as if it would mean something if they were left. To remind you, to soothe your doubt about whether the whole “relationship” happened at all. Without the hot sauce from New Orleans on the window sill, did the road trip even happen? Once the houseplant is removed from the computer desk, was there ever any life in this place? Without the down comforter that always made you sneeze, what will you have to elicit sympathy sex? Without candles, romance is gone.
I met Jerome on a busy city street in Baltimore, Maryland, when he was forty-five years old. On that particular day, I was out and about, enjoying a much-needed day off from work.
I wanted to purchase a sukiyaki sub. I parked my car in an area of
