One woman in twelve will be stalked in her lifetime.

- 2000 Department of Justice study

Making Sense

Instead of shelling out hard-earned money for a lawyer to deal with this mail-tampering, "Dime Store Talc" stalker, I could've paid my grandchild's future college tuition, or put a sizable down payment on a second condo. I could've purchased a new Saab, five "Evenings in Paris, " some shares of Exxon stock, or a motorboat which my children could have used to water ski on their favorite lake. I could've paid for a living room of "Woodhue" vintage antiques, or four years of heating bills. The scents she wore, "Poison, " "Scandal, " and "Shocking, " left me with a lifetime worth of payments toward unlocking the chains of emotional stress she caused. But I must remember, regret and anger can do you in, can make you dance to a "Blue Waltz."

Seeing Red

It's time to reapply strawberry lipstick, revamp wasted years, reclaim life's stairways. Resume repumping of life's ventricles. Re-release silenced lullabies of love, revive retired hugs of old. Recapture love that steered away, recapitulate it in your heart, revalidate its everlasting glory, regroup thought processes that strangled its existence. Rekindle goodness with loving behavior. Retrieve its buried essence, remove the tears, and reopen your arms to it. Let roses replenish in sparkling gardens. Reconstruct picket fences, fling wide white gates. Reopen closed hands. Replace angst by repeating heart rhythm strands of words and actions that resound with, "I love you.