So pick me, choose me, love me.

I’ll tell you a story of a girl who steals words like jewels. She steals them for a fist-fighter with feathers for hair; for a charcoal-faced boy who sprints for a kiss; for a silver-eyed accordion player who rolls cigarettes like prayers. She keeps them in the library of her memory, with her brother’s cough and her mother’s hair; with tall silhouettes of standover men; with the Fuhrer. This is The Gravedigger’s Handbook, The Shoulder Shrug, chalked words on a basement wall. This is a song in the dark.

The Standover Man by Max Vandenburg

All my life, I’ve been scared of men standing over me. I suppose my first standover man was my father, but he vanished before I could remember him. For some reason when I was a boy, I liked to fight a lot. A lot of the time I lost. Another boy, sometimes with blood falling from his nose, would be standing over me.

Many years later, I needed to hide. I tried not to sleep because I was afraid of who might be there when I woke up. But I was lucky. It was always my friend.

When I was hiding, I dreamed of a certain man. The hardest was when I traveled to find him. Out of sheer luck and many footsteps, I made it. I slept there for a long time. Three days, they told me… and what did I find when I woke up? Not a man, but someone else, standing over me.

As time passed by, the girl and I realized we had things in common. But there is one strange thing. The girl says I look like something else.

Now I live in a basement. Bad dreams still live in my sleep. One night, after my usual nightmare, a shadow stood above me. She said, “Tell me what you dream of.” So I did. In return, she explained what her own dreams were made of. Now I think we are friends, this girl and me. On her birthday, it was she who gave a gift - to me.