PICK ME

I know you.

My colleagues think I'm detached from human connections but I listen with extreme attention when they speak in the kitchenette or between desks.

Not engaging in conversations don't deprive me of my hearing sense.

And Martin talks, a lot, he's the talkative guy of the office, suave with women, garrulous with policemen.

He talks too much for his own sake, I see how many times his charme with ladies hit the right spot; I could copy him, find what I get from the club at work, but it will be too risky to expose myself to people who know my history. Or can find it in the police database.

I know you.

How good you are.

How damned good. Intelligent, determinate, ruthless.

The best, they say, one who hit the headlines.

Once I found a photo of you, I cut the newspaper and put the press cutting in my case file.

Years ago I glimpsed a blond woman entering the lift while I was leaving my office building and I get lost in her eyes, so sad, so beautiful at the same time; then outside I noticed your car and understood it was you.

I lied, telling you we were sleeping together and you were like a stranger for me. Not a stranger, more like a character we see in movies, the great cop, with strange attitude toward people and things, the lone rider in the powerful car.

I planned to ask Martin more details about you when suddenly all went wr ong. The massacre, Tommy, Lillian close to be fired, pulling me down with her.

I could not be throw out of police, I had a plan, I had to stay.

We were put on forced leave for a forthnight, and I got crazy at home. It felt like a prison.

It was a prison. They were with me all day, Alice was kind, the girls obedient and I nearly lost my mind with a pill after the other. I had no other places to go.

I was so numb I forgot a club meeting. No desire at all, only loneliness in the extreme.

Things had to cool down, but soon Martin was under arrest and you were back in Sweden.

My colleagues hated you for Martin, I couldn't try with Lillian. Nobody wanted you, me asking was too suspicious.

All cross borders case you migtht be involved into, I kept note with discretion; Barbara told me about a drug raid over the bridge so I approached Lillian, volounteering. She told me our names were still too hot to risk them with the press.

When I had a free day in front of me, I often took the car and went to a parking lot where i could see the oresund and spot the lights of Malmo, then I'd drove back home and get a double sleeping pill to give me darkness until late the following day. I had nothing but my work.

Lillian kept me waiting, I stayed in the shadow for the right time, the moment when I'd come to you and you'd pick me.

FIND ME

In the visiting room there's nothing to do, while the guard calls you inside the prison.

Calling my woman, my colleague, my lover.

I never imagined to be faithful again after years of abusing my body and my heart.

It was a routine, on those nights I was a machine programmed for sex.

Change the house, change the bed, change the body, after two hours I'd leave for ever.

I had my standard texts to end up the affair the morning after, to put the number in the unwanted list. .

Not every meeting I found a woman, difficult to get slim dark haired preys in Denmark and they had to be so. I could ask a professional to wear a wig, I know, it'd be too sordid, the idea to return home smelling of cheap sex. Like Alice could sense it on me.

Then you came and in a night turned me upside down.

It is so shallow here, the wooden table with inexpensive chairs, the lamp and the narrow bed, only a sheet covering the mattress. They change the sheet after every visit – I hope so - because the purpose of the bed is obvious and I see how we stain it. We grab the occasion, whatever time of the month for you. No time to cuddle under the absent cover and you have no desire at all to do so.

After, I just close my eyes for a short while, lying on my back, breathing hard, pretending we're somewhere away, on holiday in a beautiful place, until you dress up and I have to leave.

I stay silent, if I speak a word, if I express a desire, if I let myself go, protesting against this absurd forced separation we have to endure, you could refuse to see me again.

I pray to see you every time I come here.

When you don't appear on the door frame it's always like an arrow piercing my heart.

My need is so strong I can't describe it, the few charged moments on this bed are the only way i can touch you.

I've given up stimilants and pills, I cannot give up you.

If only I could take away sadness and pain from your eyes, to see you smile.

If they had to cut a finger from my hand the pain will be less than loose you're my only reason to stay off drugs.

When I asked Lillian to assign me to the Anker case and she looked at me for a few seconds, I had time to rewind all my life . I could not let her know my whole existence depended on her answer.

I let you believe the decision to find me was yours, that first time, our first night. Your intelligence is so sharp to understand I do want you, all of you, claiming you from the series of meaningless faces and bodies and minds I met during long years of loneliness.

You're different, you're strong and weak at the same time.

And you're mine, God I need you in such a desperate way. I need our visiting hours to live, to feel, to wake up in the morning and go to bed every evening and work between because I got you.

I read into you, I don't want to hurt you when you let me see glimpses of memories kept carefully locked.

Deep down I know you don't belong to me, the irony and tragedy of my life, living again in an illusion of love. Maybe if I reflected better this thing – fear to call it relationship, hope to define it love story - would never begin, or would be sex only and not this all consuming need that burns into me.

I breath two times a month, with you, I can't help myself.

Staying still, controlling my words, not to scare you, to make you trust me. My promise is to find a way to set you free, my selfishness in wanting you is my shame and my joy.

TAKE ME

My heart stops when I see what he has done to her. The white sock now red, drops of blood falling on the floor. The stain getting bigger every passing second, forming a pool perfectly round.

There is another red stain in my visual field, into my eyes, seeping from my own painless wound.

Blood spilled for our sins, the sins of the fathers fallling over the children. Echoes of words from a church, mirroring the eucharistic sacrifice.

God, remove this cup from me, listen to me from the cross of adhesive tape I'm pinned at.

My own sins make my child suffer.

The blood that is leaving her is my own, I was there when Astrid came to the world, I'll witness her deaprture.

The pain in my head matches the desperation that fills my heart.

I thought I knew what suffering was, but nothing compared to the living nightmare I am experimenting.

Astrid stares at me and I'm bound and rooted on the floor and I can't go to her, touch her, hold her, dry her tears, fix her wound, close her eyes for the last inevitable shoot that will kill her and myself at the same time.

I'm lost, cruel illusion, for the third time in just a week; destiny is playing hard on me.

To have and loose three offspring - unborn or alive it doesn't matter - because it is exactly what is happening to me.

If he destroys her I'll destroy myself, I'll order my heart stop beating, my lungs stop breathing, my blood stop running. You'll find us both dead, her body close to mine, to have her with me in my last moment alive.

How can I negotiate with this merciless killer? I'm good at it, so good, I was trained for this purpose, but you're not with me. We're a team, I do the talking and I hear your brain evaluating ideas and solutions.

We're good, but together.

What would you do in a situation like this, not to get mad?

Use logic. Distract him. Use words.

I try, I present me as the sacrifice, I gave her life, I offer mine for hers. My sweet baby, don't cry, dad will protect you, dad will never leave you.

Take me, demon from the deepest hell, maim me, shoot me, kill me, but don't touch my daughter, my only flower, my lamb, innocent and pure.

And you come, you save me, my daughter, me and you. We are three, alive in the same room. The others were lost, your sister, Martin's son, Hans, Anna. We are alive.

Cutting the tape around my ankles so I can rant on my knees to her, while you follow with a scissor to free my wrists and order me to stay still.

Our tears are joy now, I grab your hand to keep you close. Astrid looks around, questions in her eyes while you get my old scarf from under the coats and make a knot over the wound. Efficient, rational, logical, always.

But your eyes betray tears ready to be shed, there's a light of hope in them I never saw before.

Barely the time to tell Astrid who you are and ambulance and police arrive and all get confused but Astrid is in safe arms. her bleeding has stopped and I collapse on the floor crying without shame.

You kneel near me and take me, all of me, every single part of me, in your arms and this time the sobs are mine and you murmur the spell is broken.

It 's your hand running in my hair, it's your voice promising whatever happens we'll be ok, it's your arm supporting me while we walk to the ambulance where Astrid is already into, a doctor tending to her.

You scan around, see Lillian and the colleagues, torn between them and us.

There's the report and your gun fired and forensic and all the procedures to follow.

I need to go with Astrid, my own head hurting and bleeding. I'm torn, too, I feel what you feel.

You turn to Lillian, walk a step away from me, it's already a loss, air is missing.

The sound of a car door opening and closing, the car keys in your hand and you are outside the ambulance, show your id, put a hand on the back door to climb up and sit close to me in the narrow space, not caring the rules of how many people can sit there..

My heart is full of a new hope while the ambulance moves, because we're on it, together.

One hand caressing my baby's face, one hand hold by yours.