Two hundred-plus pages of spare poetic words, straight from between the couch cushions - because, sometimes, you just have to dig for words. Words I chew on curling my tongue around them. Tart and sweet at once as I search for the perfect dash - smelling of Spring and the potential in manure. They dance in my nose, causing me to ask myself: What is it that you're craving? (A fried bologna sandwich). I am transfixed by the twists in their form. Some long and awkward, others short and to the point. A drop out poet might call them "right on." Ink stains the page in familiar patterns and I remember back to the time before I could read them. Where they were like great mysteries. Finding joy in encoding them like crosswords I play with now on Sundays with green tea, blueberries, and Life cereal. (We serve pulpy citrus juice and kisses at exactly 11 a.m.) It's then that I wonder, how did I ever live without them? They wake me in the heart of night, begging as I reach for my glasses and purple pen. Rain checking them into the page. "I can hear you. Yes, I will look you up. Yes. I will call back Monday" when the kids are off to school and the house is still. To do. To do. I finger them, chasing their strong lines and whimsy, blissful. (Never one afraid to stare out a window daydreaming). They are fuzzy and warm. They understand, agree, like childhood friends living parallel lives and hopelessly waiting for Mondays where they'll play with words... ***ALL PROCEEDS FROM THIS BOOK GO TO BENEFIT MENTAL WELLNESS AND THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE FOR MENTAL ILLNESS***
About the Author: Erin Lee is a dark fiction author and therapist chasing a crazy dream one crazy reality at a time. She is the author of Crazy Like Me, a novel published in 2015 by Savant Books and Publications, Wave to Papa, 2015, by Limitless Publishing, LLC and Nine Lives (2016). She's also the author of Alters, Host, and Merge of the "Lola, Party of Eight Series," When I'm Dead, Take Me As I Am, Losing Faith and 99 Bottles. She also penned Her Name Was Sam, an LGBTQ awareness novella. Other titles include her Diary of a Serial Killer Series with Zombie Cupcake Press, From Russia With Love with Bella Tulip Publishing and Greener, Book Three of the Escape From Reality Series. Lee holds a master's degree in psychology and works with at-risk families and as a court-appointed special advocate for children. Lee writes the wrongs of a flawed system to provide awareness and, hopefully, someday, create change. While working as an unpaid intern during her training to become a therapist, she often found money between the couch cushions for parking. That extra change got her through graduate school, just as spare words get her through the often-challenging works she does.