Alexis Rhone Fancher: Watch your back my dead mother warns

I picture him, sitting in the almost-dark jacking off to podcast interviews of me. “Let’s go together to the reunion,” he says…

He’s never left me, really. It may be decades since I left him, but the fear remains. I sense his physical presence, the panic, the dread. Watch your back! My dead mother warns when she senses I’m wavering. There is no benefit of the doubt. Bad is bad, she says. 

M was my first everything. Boyfriend. Lover. Disappointment. Back when I was fifteen and in love with love, his moody intensity, coupled with those James Dean good looks, captured my  heart. Look, I grew up on the movies, a sucker for bad boys, convoluted plot lines, and the obligatory happy ending, convinced myself that love conquers all. Until it doesn’t. 

Last week that feeling of being followed intensified. Scary, and strangely comforting, having someone desire me, even from afar, even if his intentions are murky. I mean why now? After all this time? To hear him tell it, his life has been a waiting game, as in waiting for me to come around to his way of thinking about us.  

Today a postcard arrived, a hand painted watercolor, addressed to me from an unknown admirer. Was it from him? The message? Scrawled in red ink, these 3 words: Missing you, baby. Creepy as fuck. Makes me wonder if he’s been watching me my whole life, waiting for the right moment to reenter the scene, snatch me up. Why now? What’s changed? Have I missed something? I think back to when he first reappeared. I was in my late teens, off to college up north. I’m hoping you’re rid of M for good, my mother said. But he wanted to move north with me, and begged me to move in with him, that we would go to school together. Me, desperate to be a solo act. The look on his face when I turned him down, unforgettable. I felt guilty, but there was no way I was going to hook up with him again. He was ready to marry me, settle down. But my life was just beginning. It was clear; he wanted to own me. Get me alone and defenseless. But I knew he’d never change. Call it: Toxic Love. Tough Love. Love on the Run. Yesterday on Instagram he confessed he was following me online, under an assumed name. He inserted himself into my high school class reunion – like he was a part of my graduating class, not a dropout, clawing the air, waiting for the moment where “we” start up again. I think I ruined his life

Poet/photographer Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, The American Journal of Poetry, Spillway, Plume, Diode,The Pedestal Magazine, Duende, Vox Populi, Gargoyle, Elysium Review, and elsewhere. Her photos are published worldwide. She’s authored ten poetry collections, most recently, TRIGGERED, (MacQueens) and BRAZEN. (NYQ). A coffee table book of over 100 of Alexis’ photographs of Southern California poets will be published by Moon Tide Press in early 2025. She calls the Mojave Desert home. 

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Poem and image copyright 2025 Alexis Rhone Fancher