13 Reasons Why
One special night, we sat together
At the roof top, alone, with no other
Gazed at the moon
like we were in love's weather
I thought of so many things
Not one was like the latter
Why did you end my world
That was not over?
Why didn't I let her understand
Forever, I thought, we still had
A sharp razor blade stopped that time
I kissed the sun goodnight
When she walked pass me
Her eyes, smile made darkness sprint
I fist the earth outermost shell
When she spake gently
Her words, lips made oxygen rich
I thought I over reached
When I became your friend
Stories of your relationships
Made me pissed
My heart was pieces
Yours in particle physics
Why didn't I see the danger signs?
So blind I fell, you took your life
How dare you take what's not yours?
My love for you terrified the gods
Why did I panic and walk away?
The chain reaction was built with clay
My actions solidified your cruel mistake
As I gently listen to these tapes
Reliving the moments
Of the thirteen excuses you gave
I sought justice for your name
Life is hurt, life is vain
I'm sober, yet tipsy I feel
I can't get over you
Not now that I bleed
I'm puking all over
College dreams and SAT's
Can barely feel my feet
You're still here
Like a cancer in my body tissues
How can I test negative
To a broken heart analysis?
You can't love someone back to life
No buckets of tears will bring them back
It's a mystery that science can't reply
I can't truly explain how I feel
Just knowing I will never see her again
Makes me confused
Like I used.
Life’s Promises
Looking Back
life pounded in sharp needle spikes
mistakes I’ve made colored my soul
wrong choices tarnished who I was
wrong influences dug trenches into my psyche
crooked paths veered off course
married too young before I knew who I could be
misguided career choices without a compass
advice I didn’t follow, heading wrong way
Moving Forward
pulled up my socks and started fresh
faced the truth and reversed footprints
released creativity and blended tints
kindness to all – sweet words rebounded
erased prejudice – we’re all the same
took a chance – threw dart into wind
wrote that book before I knew how
painted that canvas with story of my life
tried new things and honed my path
opened soul allowing new joy inside
new beginnings and new pleasures
let worry fly into the breezes of change
opened up to life and tested the future
embraced journeys exploring new trails
expanded my knowledge, explored my world
painted in new light with dawning colors
swelled with love and burst with understanding
Who I now am
soft but strong enough to face challenges
open mind and heart overflowing
creative but willing to learn and expand
giving and nurturing to those that I love
inclusive in my feeling for people of this world
grateful to Prose Community for opening up
life to possibilities and hearts to understanding.
I need you.
I told you that for the last time today.
I love you.
I whispered to you for the last time today.
Please don't do it.
I cried in agony as I tried to get to you faster.
But as I heard the break in your voice
I knew nothing I would say would help.
You don't need me, you have everyone else
One slice.
You don't love me, it's all in your head
Two slices.
I'm sorry that you think I shouldn't do it
Three slices.
Goodbye
A bottle of pills.
Home.
New. No rips. No tears. No dog-eared pages.
Top shelf. I longed to be the first one, the book in front of the others of my kind, but I had been placed near the back. It seemed I wasn’t destined to leave the store. I would be stuck on this shelf forever. Waiting, longing to be brought home, to have my pages turned.
And then Christmastime rolled around. 1998. Decorations had been set up throughout the store. The books in front of me had been chosen and I, along with the others of my kind that remained, had been moved to a discount section. It was near the front of the store. There was hope.
Everyone glanced at me as they walked by, but not a single person ever picked me up. No one was curious enough about my contents, perhaps I wasn’t interesting enough for them. The hope was lost rather quickly.
Then she came along.
She was young-looking with long, black hair and kind, brown eyes. She was the first person, aside from the workers, who paid me any mind. For a while she scanned through my pages and before I knew it, she was carrying me out of the store in a plastic bag. I was going home. Someone would finally read all the content that filled my pages. I would finally belong to someone.
As it turned out, I was to be a gift for someone she loved. Wayne; that was the name of the man I would be given to and the name of my raven-haired savior was Claire. I figured it out by the inscription she scribbled on my inside cover:
Wayne, Dec. 1998
Merry X-Mas Darling!
I love you so much. I’m so
happy we are together and
nothing’s going to change that.
Love,
Claire
What I had hoped would be a long, happy life with them turned out to be no more than a short, heartbreaking one. Their love was so true and I’ve no doubt that nothing would have ever changed how much they cared for one another, but they didn’t pull through the accident like I had hoped they would.
The day it happened, we had been moving to a new house across town. It was to be a fresh start to their flourishing love story. And then everything changed when the other car slammed into us. Everyone had hopes they would pull through and they didn’t. It wasn’t long after that I was packed into another box with the other books they had owned. We were taped shut and lugged away. I didn’t know where we going. I just knew that nothing would be the same.
When the box was opened, we were greeted by an unfamiliar face. A little man pulled us out one-by-one. This wasn’t like the other store I had been in. The books around me were in a similar condition as me.
We weren’t pristine. We had dog-eared pages. We had worn covers, some more so than others. Some of our pages were slightly torn, but we were still readable and we still clung to the hope that one day we’d find a new home.
It was years later that my savior finally came and this time it was in the form of a man.
Dear Dead Dahlia
Dear Dahlia,
I don't know you. I'd never even heard your name until policemen broke into my house in the night, grabbed me by the throat and told me I'd taken your life.
I've never seen your face without the big red slashes they say I've made or heard your voice say anything other than the words you screamed; recorded on close- circuit television and played over and over again until my mind replays them all on its own.
Yet you and I seem to have the most intimate connection of anyone in the world. Only we know I didn't do it. We know that the man in the black tracksuit wasn't me. We know it wasn't my hands on your shoulders, forcing you on the ground, taking your life. Your blood is on someone else's hands, not mine. And yet, to them, standing in the courtroom throwing stones, I am drenched in it, with the murder weapon clenched firmly in the palm of my blood- stained hand.
I've come to accept it though, I await my last day in place of a murderer and I almost wear the title, the label, as if it was mine. I take the place of the man who killed you. I wish you could speak from wherever you are now, send a multitude of letters swirling into the courtroom, on each page emblazoned the words, 'he didn't do it' and there, on the flip side, the face of the man who did. But you seem to want to remain speechless and so I await death, as you'd awaited yours.
Systematic, quick, humane. They tell me it will be over as quick as I came into the world, unlike how you went; slowly at the hands of a lunatic. The words are spoken with contempt, meant to remind me of how I took a life but I can only laugh at how little they know, of whose life they're about to take.
So, dear Dahlia, I spend my last night writing a letter to you, my newfound friend. What awaits me after the first bullet leaves its barrel, I don't know. I spend my last day wondering how things could've been different, if they could've even been different.
I hope to meet you, after it happens in a few hours. We are the same, after all; innocents whose lives were wrongly taken. I hope to sit with you in some utopia in the sky and smile perfect smiles at the day they realize what they've done and catch the man who killed us both. It will be a victory for us, I think; Having our dignities restored and relishing in an unlikely friendship between two strangers who have one too many murderers in common.
Love,
Not - your- killer, A friend
A Mad Man’s Plea
How now can I be of such unsound mind
when no true acts of turpitude befall
any abhorrent dalcop who dare chide
my superb genius with arrogant gall?
Wherefore art thou all not treated as hounds?
Madness lies within ignorant vessels.
Hearken, sanity rings with charming sounds
While hark thou to the murmurs of devils.
Unbind me now from my infernal chain.
Each link I bear, deceit, for I am sane.