I long ago chose to live in my corner of the world, the part of New York State in which a three-story building is a behemoth. I type this…essay? missive? journal entry?—as I wear a brown sweater in my high school classroom, a few hours before a handful of part-time thespians come to perform the comic one-act we’ve been rehearsing. Two different colleagues have stopped by to apologize for their non-attendance, but have thanked me for what I do for the kids.

I like my job, and I like doing what I do for the kids. I like that this odd little group that might never set foot on a stage otherwise is going to take on roles like Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty and delight in making fools of themselves. There is value in the life of a teacher.

But I also know what I gave up to be a teacher. I began college as a business major and an officer in the student-managed investment fund, pursuing a lucrative career in finance. I later declared my English major and received plaudits within that department, too. My decision to become a secondary educator split the faculty who knew me. Half praised me for my idealism. My supervisor at the university writing center, for one, told me she liked to “think of me out there in a school somewhere,” fighting the good fight. The other half told me to aim higher and urged me to pursue my doctorate and rise to the top of my field. I thanked them and ignored their urgings toward ambition. It was the simple life for me. Married with children in a country town, teaching high school English. That life was my greatest desire. I’ve lived that life for several years now, which means I am very fortunate. I still desire that life as much as I did at 22, which means I am very blessed.

A few minutes ago when that colleague thanked me for working with the kids, and I had wished him a happy birthday, I turned back to the football field and autumn leaves outside my window, snug in that sweater I received last Christmas. It’s one more warm little moment in a career that has stretched 15 years and will stretch 25 more. Sometimes, at these moments of satisfaction, I also feel a pang.

My smaller desire, the one I would confess to few outside of Prose, is for something I wrote to be selected for publication. That would take me beyond this little world. It would mean that I could have my provincial cake and eat it too. I could live a small life but know that my thoughts and passions had been shared, been communicated to people beyond the boundaries of my county. There is a sense in which I am a writer. I would like to feel like a real writer. I would like something I have written to be chosen.

And then, after some hugs from close friends and a celebratory bottle of local wine with my wife, I’d be back to my classroom again, a man wearing a sweater and doing what he can for the kids.

i am drowning

not the way youd expect

you think that i fall prey to peer pressure

well youre in for quite the shock

you say i follow the crowd

and that they are the bad influence on me

but youre neglecting to aknowledge

the lasting effect that

you

had on me.

dont think i blame you

i dont have it in me to blame

and to me even hate is overrated

or rather its quite overly exhausting

so fear not

i dont hate you for making me

so empty

infact

thank you

now i can live my life

without a hint of envy

as i simply couldnt care less

about anything

you broke me

down to the bone

and when i healed

myself

its like the old me

just disappeared

thank you

so very fucking much

“Are you having temperature fluctuations?” said a booming voice.

“Yes,” came a melodic, singsong reply.

“Do you see flashing lights? Hear a constant buzzing?”

“Yes. Yes, exactly! And I have trouble breathing.”

“You have humans.”

A short pause, like a quiet desert at sunrise. “I was afraid of that.”

“Why did you wait so long to come to me?”

“I thought I could deal with it on my own,” said the cosmic singsong voice. “I tried famine, flood, drought, plague….”

“That won’t work,” the booming voice said. “They’ve spread everywhere. Filled your lungs with toxins, contaminated your blood. Without drastic measures, you won’t last 24 hours.”

A racing beat that pounded like an earthquake. “What kind of measures?”

“… Apocalypse.”

A sharp intake of breath that roared like a hurricane. “Not again. It took me years to get over the last one.”

“I’m afraid so. But we’ve had advancements since eradicating dinosaurs. The procedure will only take seven minutes. Recovery time will be a few months.”

“Seven minutes?” said the melodic voice, with a tremble that echoed like thunder. “Will it be painful?

“Yes…very. But you will be rid of humans forever.”

Another pause, like the dead of night. “I’ll do it…”

There was a violent jerk in my stomach and I shot backward through space, past streaks of stars, galaxies and planets, zoomed for a crash-landing on earth and sat bolt upright in bed.

What the hell was that?

Outside my window, a black shadow eclipsed the rising sun, turning the world a cold grey.

And a booming voice echoed in my head.

“Seven...”

The countdown had begun.

Tame the thoughts of the beast that spent a childhood haunting your dreams, because you did nothing more then live alongside the demons that would smile at the sun waiting for it to fall, and as darkness beckons you prayed for the safety of you own creations, running from the shadows that hauntingly wear the face of the familiar,

Bare the branding in the shape of the hands that were invisible to the eyes of those you held dear, as the marks would only ever sink into your skin and cause you to escape further into the realms of imagination and fantasy, a ragdoll to a wall only a mothers silence to break a fall, but I’ll always be more then the broken parts of your victim, 

Create these worlds in which you play to find a way to get through each and everyday, building words upon words to create the gates to a place you knew you could force an escape, when the demons that infect your dreams wear the face of the man that raised you who do you turn to for your own protection?

So now I’ll build words upon words to create a bridge so that we all have a place we know is safe, my demons have never found this place and I’ll watchover all that seek refuge in a world away from the dreams and reality’s we need to escape, We are all more then just the role of victims.