Why do people freak out so much about sex? As long as you use protection, it’s no big deal. I lost my virginity at 14. I lost the guy at 14 ½. Did this devastate me? No. Physically, I was slightly changed. Mentally? Barely a dent. Rinse and repeat getting guys, having sex, and then “losing” said guys several more times over the years. Having sex is something you do out of lust, or a feeling of obligation, or, honestly, sometimes pure boredom. It happens. It ends (sometimes more quickly than you hope) and you move on. It doesn’t really affect your day to day life.

That’s why I was so “heartlessly” annoyed when one of my college roommates made a huge deal about the first time she had sex. When I arrived back at our dorm after a late night study session, I was ready to crash right away. Unluckily for me, I found Kelsey sitting at the edge of her bed, looking distraught. Her eyes pleading for me to talk to her before her lips did.

“Jen, I need to talk to you, but please promise you won’t judge me.”

Suppressing my sigh, I agreed to talk and assured her I wasn’t the judging type. She then went on to describe how the night before she got really drunk at some party. Clearly exaggerating, she made it sound like she drank as much as six men. Afterwards, Kelsey let some guy she had a crush on for weeks take her to his apartment. They fucked. Or as she put it they “you know...did it.”

I think she wanted me to be sympathetic and tell her that this one decision didn’t define her. But I’m not good at that type of thing. Because, to me, I can’t even see why this would be a remotely interesting conversation to have. Of course it didn’t define her. Had she confessed instead that she had coffee for the first time last night, I would have felt the same. Bored. Rather than assure her things were fine, I asked a few questions to see if I were missing something important. Nope. When I asked her if there was anything else she wanted to talk about before I went to bed, and saw the look in her eyes, I realized we would never be friends.

To her, she had lost her innocence. She knew nothing about how that felt. But I did. I had lost my innocence just the summer before. His name was Jordan. We both had the same summer temp job working at a burger stand. It would have been the worst job ever, considering I’m a vegetarian and all, but since Jordan was there, it was the best job possible. At first, we just casually flirted. But then things became more serious.

You see, this burger stand was in a pretty bad neighborhood. One day as Jordan and I were flipping burgers as usual, this punk kid comes up to the stand and tries to rob it. Boy doesn’t look a day over 17 and he’s pretty scrawny, so I think he’s bluffing. I walk out of the stand, get right in his face, and tell him to get the hell away from us. That’s when he pulls out a knife and slashes me across the arm. I stand there dumbly. When Jordan rushes out, holding a knife himself, the kid scrams.

Jordan rushes me to a hospital and makes sure I get all cleaned up. He convinces me to go to his place so he can order us some pizza to unwind after the craziness. But first we have to go grab my stuff from the dumb burger stand. When we get there, our boss is standing around pissed. When somebody from the next shift arrived and nobody was there, he was called. Jordan calmly explains what happened. Our boss doesn’t care and says we aren’t getting paid for that day at all and maybe not the week. My hero, still calm, talks about lawsuits and poor training and I forget what else, but I remember the result. I got a raise. I was really starting to like this boy.

Back at his place, I expected some of the second kind of sex I mentioned to you before -the kind you have when you feel obligated. But Jordan didn’t try to have sex with me at all. We started going on dates and sex didn’t seem to be on his mind. When I finally seduced him one night, I expected it to all be over. It wasn’t. We kept dating, it just now included sex on some of those dates. I really really liked this guy.

Finally the day came when I lost my innocence. That day, I was scheduled to work, but Jordan wasn’t. We agreed that I would meet him at his place after I got off. When I showed up, his mouth dropped as I came in. He couldn’t understand why I had worn long sleeves, flipping burgers, on a day that I knew would be 90 something degrees out. I sat on his couch. Suddenly shy, I slowly pulled up one of my sleeves.

“When that kid cut my arm, it left a big scar. I don’t want people staring at it.”

Jordan came and sat next to me. Very gently, he traced my scar with his finger. He lightly kissed my arm and then my forehead. I remember exactly what he said.

“Our bodies are our life’s timelines. Freckles show time in the sun. Stretch marks show the birth of a child. Your scar shows a time when you were brave. You should be proud of it.”

That was the moment I fell in love and lost my innocence. You see, when you fall in love, it changes how you see the entire world. You realize everything isn’t about you. It shows how amazing a person can be, and in contrast, how awful others have been. People are right when they say you can’t be truly happy without being sad. Love brings the greatest happiness, but it also exposes you to the greatest pain. So don’t worry about sex. You lose your innocence when you experience love in all its contrasts.

a white petal

feels a firm tug:

they love me.

eight-month-old smiles

have parted lips and a pink, lolling tongue

that taste the laughter as it rushes by

and the milky giggles as they bubble up

from the slightest tickle of

a rounded belly.

they love me not.

eighteen-year-old smiles

are a cool facade,

slicked in red lipstick

and held together by cheap superglue

that I keep in the back pocket

of my favorite ripped jeans.

they love me.

our rosy cheeks and breathless grins

are forever immortalized

in the palm-sized Polaroids

(the date penned seven months ago)

on my bedroom wall,

to remind me that good times

do exist.

they love me not.

the invitation never reached my hands,

but it’s okay,

I love spending time by myself

anyways

snuggled under a blanket

that protects me from

you and everyone else.

they love me.

happy birthday!

I feel special as I open another gift

and beam at the store-bought,

material item you knew I wanted

so very badly.

they love me not.

every now and then,

we have a verbal disagreement—

I was being too passive-aggressive,

you were tired after a hard shift—

but it’s resolved with

a long talk, a box of tissues,

and many hugs

because anger is transient

and family is for life.

they love me.

today is a good day,

it’s pouring rain outside

but we are going out to brunch

and I look forward to

nonsensical conversation,

a hot cup of spearmint tea,

and a delicious meal—

eggs sunny-side up, of course.

even though my stomach

can only tolerate baby-sized bites,

I’m really glad I’m

with you.

they love me not.

irritation is boiling

under my skin

and no, you did nothing wrong

you did nothing at all

and that’s why

I’m mad,

so please leave me alone to

scratch at my itches

(but please don’t leave me alone).

they love me not.

sometimes I feel like

I’m trapped behind

a glass wall,

screaming and bleeding

from my everyday battles,

only it’s a one-way mirror

that conceals the blood

and mutes the noise.

in actuality,

nothing is wrong

(physically)

but when my eyes open

after a long night of sleep

and sunlight squeezes through the blinds,

the nightmare begins.

they love me not.

yesterday I saw many things.

a young woman stepped out of her car

and offered to help an old man

carry home his groceries,

the news reported the fourth

homicide of the week,

and the tree outside my front window

lost its last golden leaf.

everything around me is cycling,

and yet my world remains

very still.

I think the last time it moved,

the genuine smile of an

innocent child

morphed into a forged signature

because her heart forgot how to breathe.

have you ever wondered,

if a mind shatters

in beautiful agony

and no one is around to hear it,

does it make a sound?

it’s actually quite loud

and I can tell you,

it sounds a lot like

they love me not.

It was the day after my birthday; you took me out for lunch. We talked under glowing little lights in a café. I ate my too-spicy sandwich and tried to act normal, looking you up and down, gaze snagging on your bottom lip. I had this tantalizing secret bubbling up inside of me, and you didn't even <em>know</em> yet. Later, later.

When I came back to your house, and we were sprawled on your bed talking, I paused. Said, slowly, "I need a shower."

You grabbed my hand, but it took you a minute, to figure out what I was getting at; I don't think you really understood until I was kissing you, pushing you back against the wall, not holding back in the slightest. And I was glad, in that moment, that the mirror was fogged up so I couldn't see myself, naked and kneeling, looking up at you with big blue eyes. I didn't want to see myself, only you. You, asking breathlessly, "Are you sure?" You, shaking in my arms, crying out and pulling me in closer. I smiled, steam swirling between my lips and around my teeth.

Afterward, you asked me if I felt dirty.

You said you had, after your first time.&nbsp;

I blinked and shook&nbsp;my head.

My friends wanted to know the details, or at least they thought they did. When I told them, they looked away, and then turned back shyly&nbsp;and asked the strangest questions.&nbsp;

(Are you two in love?

What noises do you make?

Surely it doesn't really count.

Do you have hickeys places we can't see?

I'm&nbsp;going to stay a virgin until I'm twenty-one.

But you're so youn-)

I walked home. It was cold and you hadn't given me your jacket like you did all those months ago. I frowned, hugging my arms around myself tighter. Once I had passed the dull cream carpets of the entry-hall, I let myself into my apartment and sat down on the floor. I picked up the jar that I kept under my bed and took out all the folded pieces of paper. 'Reasons I Love You,' they were labelled. I spread them all out on the floor and read them, one by one. It was strange, because none of them said what I expected them to say. I bit my lip. No matter.

"Are you okay?" A voice calls from the hallway.

"Yes."

"You're awful quiet in there." A pause, then footsteps shuffling away.

Enough, I wanted to say. Goddamnit, enough. Don't they understand that I might want to be quiet, sometimes? Might not want to answer their questions because to them, my answers are unsatisfactory? They don't understand. Hell, you don't understand! This morning, I frowned at you over the breakfast table because you were pulling a marionette man's legs up and whispering that that's how I looked last night. I'd been utterly lost as to what to say.

Everyone seems to think I should feel dirty.

Some things, some things make me feel dirty. Nervous sweat, or the word 'jailbait'.

But you, peppering kisses over my body, flipping my hand over so you could reach the inside of my wrist, holding a whole universe in your hazel eyes - that isn't one of them.

I don't feel dirty.

I feel free.

I was thirteen, he was seventeen. 

God, I wish I knew better than ride in a car, with a seventeen-year old boy whom I barely know. He was the one driving.

Mario. 

That's his name, as far as I can remember. He could've been older than 17, but since he drove a car and I assumed he had a license, he could've been 18 or 19. Something like that. 

I was introduced to Mario by my best friend, Regina. Regina and Mario met online, in a virtual game where you can meet other players. It was a portal for shy introverts to make friends, behind their computer screens.

That was thirteen years ago when I was thirteen. The memory, however, is still fresh in my mind. How, at 6 pm, Regina had said goodbye and wished me luck on my date (she set me up with Mario after all). How, after Mario bought me popcorn and iced tea at the movie theater, he basically bought my soul. No, delete that. Body and soul.

"You're such a nice boy," I told him, feeding myself popcorn. He was easy to love. So easy to love.

Erupted from him laughter, a sinister kind of laughter, which I didn't like but ignored anyway. "Me? Nice? Well, we'll see about that."

The movie we watched was The Core, the blockbuster movie everyone's been talking about. It was already dark inside the cinema, and the movie is about halfway. We were ushered into seats in the balcony.

I knew something was wrong when his hand unzipped my jeans and let it inside my panties to finger me. "There, is that okay?" he asked gently. For a moment, I was confused. This is what I wanted, right? To be loved, the love that was denied me all these years. The attention from an alpha male, to even look my way, a thing I was never afforded.

The following week, we met again. This time, Mario brought me to a motel, where he said he would "eat" me and "do things" to me. He ordered me to take off all my clothes - tee shirt, brassiere, panties. This was my first time to show myself naked in front of a male, the last time was when I was five years old when I ran around the house in my birthday suit.

He taught me "forbidden" things. Things I should've learned when I was older but will learn anyway. He made me watch him masturbate until he came, after going down on me. He made me give him a blowjob, asking me if I knew deep-throat when I had no idea what it was. His penis made me gag, I wanted to vomit.

Also, it was my first time to see a grown man's genitals. I felt stupid I did not know anything of this, or how to act in bed. I really just laid there, let him eat me, have his way with me. I did not know what I want. I was too young to have sexual fantasies neither did I indulge in them. The only fantasy I remember was being tied to a bed while somebody plunged deep inside of me. But I dared not tell him that.

Is this what two people who are in love do? Is this what people do? Look for a partner and decide it's 'the one they want to do this kind of thing with? It was dirty, it was nasty, it was a mess. Did I always have to sneak out to do this? 

When I came home, my mother crashed whatever breakable object she could find in my direction. 

I did not care, however. I had  more important things in mind.

Like brushing my teeth that night. Hard. Also my tongue. Hard. I still tasted his penis in my mouth.

I am 7 years old, over at my best friend’s house when she gets mad at me for telling someone else one of my own secrets before she knew. “That makes you a bad friend” she said. I don’t remember many of her words from those years I knew her, but I do remember those. I don’t know what it is that makes me a bad friend; I just know that I’m doing it wrong.

I am in 5th grade, already in a relationship with a boy that has lasted nine whole months. We talk on the phone every night, and eleven years later I still believe I loved him. “He’s cheating on you” someone said, “I think you should know he likes Kylie.” Kylie was prettier than me, and he was a fifth grade boy. I wasn’t prepared for that.

I am one of the few kids sectioned off into the ‘other’ middle school where everyone else knows each other. People are already starting to have sex and do drugs but I know maybe 7 cuss words. I am used to being friends with everyone, but I can’t relate to these people. The atmosphere is too different, and this change is much harder than I thought it would be.

I am in 8th grade, painfully listening to my best friend of the past 2 years talking about how she tried cutting herself one time with a steak knife while unloading the dishwasher. "God, I'm so emo," she said. I may not have been able to wear bathing suits to the pool the summer prior, but everyone knew that I was a poser who copied everything she did. They knew that phrase, straight from her. I’m not sure anyone ever told her she was wrong for that- not even me.

I begin counting on my hands the people I’m close with, the people who I know won’t go anywhere. I no longer go out of my way to find anyone new, because people can’t really be trusted. I think, “Six is a good number. When problems arise you find out who your true friends are. Six true is still good, I guess.” But I’m still afraid to reach out, even to them, for fear that I’m doing it all wrong. I have been doing it wrong my whole life, and people just scare me now. Everything I can say sounds wrong before it comes out.

I am in 9th grade, and I’ve been told that the boy I’m dating is a pathological liar. “I’ve changed” he said, and I believed him. When he told me he had breast cancer, I was afraid for his life. Fear ignited to anger as a pyrophoric substance in air.

I am leaving for college, and I think I have finally found the self I’m proud of. I believe I can put most of these instances behind me; it’s been a while since things were bad. I have a great relationship, a great group at home, and a great group at my new school. For a while, I am happy with the way things are. That seed of innocence is still alive, watered and sprouting.

It is the 2nd month of school, and my friend’s girlfriend’s friend is brought into the group. She doesn’t appreciate my friendship with the man that she likes, and so she and her friends start inviting everyone to do things without me. Everyone else says they have my back, but for some reason she’s always there. I know how that goes at this point. I am so uncomfortable that I immediately drop the group and only keep in contact with the ones I knew from the start. It doesn’t take long to fade out that way.

It is later in the year and my friends at home are mad at me because I’m bad at communication but my boyfriend’s not and he hangs out with them still and he tells them about all his problems including the ones to do with me. Suddenly I’m the outsider and the bad guy and that doesn’t surprise me; it never does anymore. It’s easier to take someone at face value when you’re face to face, than to give someone else the benefit of the doubt. I’ve never gotten it anyway.

I am in my second year and I broke up with my boyfriend and I’m in bed with my best friend and I’m asking a lot of questions because I guess now I need confirmation from everyone I care about, but the only answers I remember are “I think I’ve been using you” and then a month of silence.

I am home for Valentine’s day and excited to see my old friends- it’s been a long time, and things haven’t been great at school- but I ate something that was full of something that gave me a panic attack. I’m upstairs bawling my eyes out, and when my ex offers to take me home, everyone who I was excited to see gathers together to talk about how I’m immature and rude because I’m ignoring them to drag him off. Because all I care about is sex, even though in reality I just cried for a few hours and fell asleep. The person who started the conversation was one of my six, from 8th grade. You can know people for years and years, and you still won’t get the benefit of the doubt. I didn’t owe an explanation for that.

The seed of innocence is trust and belief, a seed that is planted in our hearts from birth but that requires care and affirmation in order to grow.  A plant that roots itself in childhood and is designed to grow back time and time again after being pulled.A seed that, unfortunately, adolescence is designed to starve and to bury so deep that it becomes almost impossible to nurse back to health- especially in later life, when we become so busy that we forget, or no longer have time to care for it. Yet in most cases, those roots remain. What matters is whether someone opens the blinds.

When a sun melted my hands and my brain got shaved and sharpened by a razor. I see it all too clearly now. 

When I stopped digging to China in my sandbox,

I had outgrown figuring out the shapes in the clouds.

Or wondering if I ate a fluffy cloud, would they taste just like cotton candies.

I grew bored of monsters, those that once struck fear into my heart-seeking out things even more terrible.

I used my bike not as transportation, the funnest way to seek out adventures, but as a tool for exercise.

It was no longer easy making fast friends. We had rigorous criteria.

No one wanted to play pretend. What did one get out of it? It was too hard to envision a something from a nothing, and make sense of it all.

We really wanted to stroke each other's egos.

They judged me by what I wore and how I spoke.

Did I make the right noise, the right inflections? It was a contest. Who could sound more grown-up.

I took extra care after that, building a shell all around myself, transforming into a puppet, a parrot that echoed back my group's sentiments. I became a glob, a mold to them, to survive.

I no longer had that curiosity to see what glue tasted like.

I no longer marveled at the sight of rainbows, seeing it as a sign for a cosmic good or waiting for a princess to walk down one and give me an important mission to save her kingdom.

Outside became a filthy place with too many bugs.

The clean, sopisticated, cold places on TV became my new obsession.

No one seemed to really live in them because, how else could they be so immaculate?

They were showrooms for show dummies.

So cool!

I ignorantly shouted.

I couldn't make up games from scratch anymore. 

I needed clear instructions to have fun, and a physical place to endure it.

I didn't want to be seen by mom and dad.

The mall became my playground.

I didn't run just to run, just to test my strength, to see how fast my surroundings changed with the movement of my feet.

And the exhilaration that came from the Breeze, from becoming an element in nature. And a feeling I belonged in that place in time, doing something beautiful yet simple. No rhyme or reason to it but a good emotion.

There was no such thing as fatigue, but now,

My energy has died, and I am always dog tired.

Not able to appreciate the simple beauties; we destroy them since they've gotten harder to enjoy, they've gone obsolete for beauties more burdensome, ridiculously complex, abstract. These beauties flirt and tease and never give you the real thing. I was made to think of serious things, like the true test of success or poverty. I was forced to learn instead of the interest of it being sparked by a do-gooder teacher. I just wanted to stay in my own little world, self absorbed, with my own little toys. I didn't want to share.

No one else wanted to share either.

The second act had come around, the third act distant, but making me ponder it aloud. What is this death? Do I care to be remembered? No, but...

Why couldn't I be a lost boy? Or lost somewhere in the universe?

But I was lost by name.

Why were people calling me by my grandmother's name?

Did they forget the nickname I had grown up to and had known?

I am different somehow, though, I guess. My face has changed a bit.

I feel it but then I don't because there is no sure marker.

I've come to the realization that the world gives you more character building stunts to undergo and your opinions of everything around you changes and you change as you go.

Growing pains were a mental and physical agony.

I soon stretched, and my mind expanded to a breaking point.

My father's mistakes became apparent.

My parents weren't the Gods I thought they were. The moral compass. The highest standard.

They both made pretty terrible mistakes.

Someone crushed my rose-tinted glasses. And told me they looked stupid.

Someone turned the picture black and white.

I have no more role models.

The great men and women are dead. I have to find my own path.

Be my own person.

But what, pray tell, is that when I've gotten all that I am from other beings?

Is it how I treat people or how I treat myself?

Or how I want to be perceived, do I fail at that?

There are too many memories to keep count of.

I wish I could remember them all, to have a better enjoyment of life.

To pin-point the small little changes that turned into big ones.

What has life turned me into?

How many people dropped into my life and colored my views. I'm this world, pressed upon by impressions.

I called it the ‘lighthouse.’ Down the years he had held my hand, ‘handled me with care’ and helped me inside the loft of his mansion with sloping red tin roofs. I had never hesitated in my step for he was known to be the big neighbourly brother, my safety mantle ever since I was six and he twenty. Anyone would think it was threaded in consanguinity but our association was not lineal.

Today he was supporting me from the hindquarters, pushing me up the spiral stairway like a racquet serving a tennis ball. He was leaving that night for his duty station, but before that he had to give me the Shrewsbury biscuit tin he had saved in that dramatic sensual free space he called his studio. Turruttttt!!! The wooden stool slipped as he lunged to fetch the biscuit tin from the veneer bamboo cabinet. He fell in a heap, his outstretched arms around me and his head a pendant to my bosom. I was crushed under the weight of this Atlantic bear and as we rolled on the floor, I felt frissons. Crushed in body and heart, the warrior in me fought with reason in the battlefield of passion. No! No! No! This is out of plan! He buys me Barbies and candies! I can’t be his belle! Meanwhile he engaged his fingers in a circular band around my silken strands and released them in sweeps of tenderness. His fingers now lay caved over my heart and slid deeper, wiping away all boundaries in seconds. That was the loss of my innocence, my emotions in floss. His olive green uniform’s reflection was a luminous filigree on the oriel window glass. “You are in uniform!” I managed in racing urgency. “Holy Cow!” I heard him mumble, “Yes! Respect for the uniform!” The steam dampened and the vapours cooled off. He got up sobered in his sopping uniform, extending a hand, grafting his lover presence forever in my heart. We were Minivets, leaders of a bird wave flying liberally across the blue tent, him in red and me sunshine yellow. Love doesn’t follow convention and is a therapy all by itself, even if the price is losing innocence. Skewed relationships carrying new meanings, who’s to comment acceptable or not!? I know somewhere in his wallet, in the plastic separators, I stayed as a frayed out photograph for a long time and who knows maybe even today!? I just know that the hands that lovingly pulled a moppet’s ribbon braids, held the strings to her heart; as it flew out of the loft window that night to rise like a light balloon higher and higher.

Did it matter that later down the years a male ‘boner’ in an arrow piercing thrust, entered to explore eve’s garden of fertility!? The sensation was not original if not stale. I did get filled up as a woman. Yet, the loss of innocence on my page was a vulnerable drop in the vast expanse of the ocean, where one leaps and loses to the unknown.

I was 8 years old when I saw violence in live-action for the first time.

There was a black out in my neighborhood and 6 year old me thought it would be a fantastic idea to go out and do some good ol' fashion treasure hunting. It was about 8 in the evening, I remember because I had on my brand new Hello Kitty wristwatch with the tiny flashlight. My sister bought for me on my birthday with the little money she had left. I thought it was the coolest shit ever.

I was out with my friend, and let me tell you, he was the best treasure hunter ever. See, in my neighborhood, black outs were so frequent that we'd be surprised if the power was stable for a full 48 hours. My parents absolutely hated it, but me, I thought it was the best thing about the town. 

You see, at nights like this, my friend and I would always go "treasure hunting." When I asked him why we had to do it at night, he said that it was more "challenging" and "exciting" when the lights were off. We entered vacant lots, abandoned houses, and random dark places in search of anything that would be worth a story. I remember our first hunt where we found underwear, soaked in blood, stuff into a toilet inside the unkempt bathroom of the clubhouse in our neighborhood. The bathroom itself was decorated with dozens of foul drawings of women being sodomized and and beaten. Back then, we thought it was the funniest thing ever. It even featured a schoolmate of ours who got raped by a staff member. We used to laugh about it all the time.

That particular night, we found something more interesting. After a futile search of the local abandoned house, we decided to check back in the clubhouse in search of mysteries worth solving, and stories worth sharing. We took the usual steps. First, we tell our parents that we'd be in each other's house for a bit, Second, we would meet up at the end of the street where they won't see us, and third, we'd sneak off to the clubhouse. 

The clubhouse itself was old, dirty, and abandoned, which was typical for a subdivision that had terrible amenities. I whipped out my fancy Hello Kitty wristwatch flashlight and we began searching.

"Let's look at the bathroom again." He said while we were scouting the murky pool.

"I don't know...it smells in there." I whined.

"Come on, don't be such a girl."

Mind you, I am a girl.

As an attempt to impress my treasure-hunting buddy, I decided to give it a go. As we neared the bathroom, I heard someone softly crying. 

Now, as a die-hard Left 4 Dead fan as a kid, I knew exactly how to assess the situation. Is the room dark? Yes. Is the crying random? Yes. Are you in the middle of a zombie apocalypse? No. But give me a break, I was 8 and that was the perfect opportunity to showcase my zombie-fighting skills.

So we approached the door carefully. As we got closer and closer to the door, the crying became louder and sounded more strained. My companion slowly nudged the door open and there we saw the biggest mystery we never got the chance to solve. A story that should have been told to the right ears.

We saw our schoolmate. Her hands were chained to a urinal and her mouth was covered in something that looked like duct tape. Her top was ripped open and her bottoms were no where to be found, her legs were spread open, and a bald man that looked like he could be her father was viciously thrusting his hips to her.

I didn't know how to react then. I stared at the scene with my eyes wide and mouth open. I remember my friend dragging me back to our street. I remember him talking to me about something but I couldn't remember what. Then we went home and swore never to speak of it to anyone, ever.

That was the last treasure hunt we ever did.

Dying Innocence

I'm frantically looking

    but can't seem to find

That child within me,

    she just wants to hide

Horrors and fears and

    monsters and tears

It's really no wonder

    she rarely appears

It's a not - so - fun game

    of sick hide - n - seek

When I do find her

    she seems more and more weak

I know she is dying,

    I feel it at core

I've tried so many cures,

    even tried the sea shore

I miss her laughter,

    her fresh look at life

I miss her sparkle

    before the cruel knife

She is my favorite

    version of me

The one that is dying

    every day endlessly

I do all that I can

    to stave off her death

After all, she is a child

    so precious her breath

It started so early,

    doomed right from birth

When cancerous voices told

    how little her worth

She has lived through the pain

    of an abusive mom

She has fought through depression

    that lasts all year long

Her hopeful eyes have

    stayed open wide

When men who have claimed love

    have shown their dark side

Rejection and failure,

    she's familiar with that

The other day in her arms

    lay her dying cat

I try every day to see

    life through her eyes

That those eyes are closing

    is not a surprise

She has fought hard,

    valiant, and strong

She shouldn't have to die,

    it just feels so wrong

But that is the nature

    of her precious breed

Innocence dies no matter

    how strong the seed.

.....

This second poem was posted here not long ago...

.....

Innocent

I am innocent

    I'm only two

        I can't even tie my shoe

I've been beaten black and blue

But I am innocent at only two

I am innocent

    I just turned five

        I'm really lucky to be alive

Very familiar with the knives

But I am innocent at barely five

I am innocent

    I am eight

        I learned how to masturbate

The boy next door

So he'd open the door

I am innocent at only eight

I am innocent

    I'm just eleven

         I can take my uncle to heaven

He's been teaching me since I was seven

I am innocent at just eleven

I am innocent

    I am sixteen

         I want to be a beauty queen

I always vomit my meals in between

I am innocent at sixteen

I am innocent

    I'm twenty three

        Hooked on meth and can't break free

Into the future I no longer see

I am innocent at twenty three

I am not innocent

    Not anymore

         I've never felt any love before

Everyone opens then slams the door

I am not innocent anymore

(The second poem, Innocent, is one I have previously posted, so I hope it's okay that I used it for this challenge. It fit so well. It was a bit hard to reach the 500 word minimum, I must admit, which was making me crazy because I had just written that poem not long ago! So, hoping it doesn't disqualify me..)

Dirty fingers flip my worn pages,

I tell a story.

My leather cover has weathered the ages,

while women, children and men,

have battered it.

They placed me in bags, my trusty cloak,

protecting me.

I live in my world, my mother but a mystery.

Thoughts made flesh,

It  doesn't really bother me.

All that I wish is to leave this dusty old shelf,

Before my letters fade,

and pages stick together with moldering age,

I want to truly live one more time,

I want to feel the adventure and thrill that is only mine.

I wish you would pick me, hold me in loving hands, and,

As I stretch my wings for one last time,

Cracking my back to ward off that endless sleep,

Carry you away to a realm of my own, where,

I can finally slip down into the deep.