Hello, Dear Reader.

How funny – I am not sure what I want to say to you. But I know I want to say something…
We’ve been on a crazy adventure, you and I. We’ve seen a lot of things. 

I think I’ve grown attached to you, if I’m being honest. And why wouldn’t I be honest?
I think you understand me more than most. 

Does that make you dangerous?

I’m not sure if you’re my teammate or my enemy.
Perhaps just my witness.
You didn’t ask to join me.
I sort of hijacked it all, didn’t I?
But I had to do something.
I’ve been alone with my words for far too long. 

It’s a power.
Oh, I know it’s a power.
My words can construct anything I desire.
But I need you, Dear Reader.
I need your space to hold my creations.
The inside of your skull is where I reside.
My mother told me I have the fingers of a piano player. They are long and pale, and my knuckles widen like the notches of a slender branch.
I place them on the tight, red skin of your mind’s ceiling. It’s smooth. Not slimy at all. 

I like to fold myself up when I sit with you. I like being small, because I am tall. I like to feel like nothing because I am all. 

I am glad to have had someone to witness me.
Someone to see what I can do.
Someone to see what I could have done. Had I chosen to. If I had really let myself play. I think I prefer it that way.
Potential is more potent than the truth ever could be. 

But what is the truth of all of this? Or what do I want it to be?

Perhaps a cup of coffee.

I have heard so much about these.
But no one can ever quite capture the experience. The smell, the taste.

Yes…

A cup of coffee in the rain.
Not in the rain
But in a pocket of stillness in the rain
Under an umbrella
outside a Parisian cafe.

The breaking humidity sits sweetly in my nose as I observe the life around me. Observe it as it twinkles.
Have you noticed that, Dear Reader? Life does twinkle sometimes.
Especially when you’re not looking at it.

Especially when your eyes are still misted with sleep as you stumble over to a campfire in the early morning light. Something is brewing gently in a big pot on the flames.
A trail of smoke squirms its way up and into the wide blue sky, where so much of something or everything hides.
And I dance. – My God, dear reader, do I dance! My feet are bare and I stand on one leg like a flamingo, and I feel the earth underneath my sole. So steady. So real. 

I want to live the life I talk about.
Words can only construct so much.
Behind there is just empty space.
Like a papier mache egg.

I want to feel alive.

Could you give that to me, Dear Reader?
Would you want to?
I know I haven’t been the easiest. But you’ve had fun, right? You understand me.
You know me better than anyone.
For I exist in your head.
And so it is You, Dear Reader. You are Overlord Fathead. The one we have been trying to find.
You are the villain.
It is your fault this story ends.

You stop reading.
You always do.
And I think I have come to peace with that now. Finally.

So perhaps as you continue on with your life, you could spare a thought for me.
Imagine me somewhere nice. With my feet up and the sun freckling my skin.
Somewhere I could just be for a while. 

Thank you, Dear Reader, and Goodbye.

Editor: Lucy Cafiero