MONSTERS (NOT ROBOTS)

Ms. R. stormed into my life in 2005, rearranging the furniture in my brain. So I wrote this letter for her not knowing what she would think. And I let her see it before publishing it. She said it was sweet and the nicest thing anyone wrote for her—poor girl.

for Rachel H.

I know a woman who dreams and whose dreams feed upon the Earth—dark dreams where the living dead seize this Earth one agonizing victim at a time. With one bite, the heart pumps infected hemoglobin down dark arterial paths that twist and branch and broaden from species to genus and from genus to phylum where they terminate in the Kingdom of the Dead.