Arsenic, otherwise known as "the King of poisons" turned my father into a completely different man. His hair thinned, eventually disappearing altogether, and it looked as though he might do the same at any moment. His eyes drooped, making him look as exhausted as he always was. His head hung low, too heavy for his weak body to hold up for long periods of time. We knew it was a good day when he tried to tell one of his legendary jokes, always the funny man, he refused to let the disease take his humor. Half way through his joke he would get too tired to finish. Watching him fight this made me sick, there was nothing I wanted more in the world than to be able to take some of his pain away. This man wasn't my father, he was not the same man I had spent my entire life worshiping and trying to impress. 

Eight years after his leukemia diagnosis, I sit in my college apartment, writing this story. At home, in D.C. Dad is fighting his third cancer fight, this time head and neck cancer with radiation as the treatment. Every once in a while I get a glimpse of the man my father once was, but it's always fleeting and for eight years I haven't been able to completely recognize him. I've done everything in my power to concentrate on allowing these battles to bring me strength and optimism over the years, but most days that feels hopeless. What I have learned, the one thing I now know for sure, is that we all bleed the same, until we don't. 

A little bird told me that you have been feeling quite distraught as of late and

are contemplating avoiding heartbreak at all costs for the remainder of your days.

When your hope begins vanishing into the purple horizon again, I want you to remember how the moment you are ready to quit is usually the moment right before a miracle happens. Perhaps, just perhaps, the reason those vigilant stars outside keep begging you to kiss them enthusiastically every night is because the next romantic partner heaven sends into your life will be the one it doesn't also take away.

Sometimes for weeks she doesn't sleep, doesn't eat. I don't wonder what she is on, I know.

I come home, and she's alone, puking, sweating, swearing, and pissing the bed. I don't wonder who to call, I know. 

When I wake up and she's gone, I don't wonder whether she left a note, I know. 

The nights she lays in bed and prays, I don't wonder if she is dying, I know.

The marks on her upper arm, I don't wonder what they are from, I know.

I know what she's doing and it's just what she's always done. I know what I thought, I thought she would be done going down this road. Now, I was wrong, I know.

The deepest secret

that I never told

was that I killed a child

when I was thirteen.

She was bright

and dreamed

of space travel

and of inventing fantastic machines.

I yanked her from

her fluffy bed,

dragged her to the living room,

turned on the TV.

I stabbed her eyes

with a steely knife

formed of 

pictures

of sand dunes and 

of tanks exploding.

And I whimpered to her

as darkness

replaced the life that bled from her:

"That is where your daddy is"

I took a gun

and shot her ears

with the cries

of starved children

and the shrieks of vultures

ready to devour.

And I screamed at her

through salty tears:

"It's too late for you to save them!"

Her knees wobbled

somehow still alive

on life support

from the small light of hope

that drove her youthful soul.

And so I mustered

the shred of strength -or fear- left of me,

to explain

in a soft whisper

that some people

lose all hope

that they extinguish their light

entirely.

And at this, her color drained

from red

to white

to blue,

the same colors

as it happens

that her father

could be wrapped in.

I killed a child

when I was thirteen.

I killed a child

and that child was me.

#ProseChallenge #DeepestSecrets

"You are an ocean," she whispered, 

"Fathomless and deep."

Keep your secrets to yourself.

Churning and violent.

She could change

The face of the world with a glance.

Doors upon doors. 

Windows with no frames. 

She was a dungeon of quiet epiphanies. 

Full of secret places.

Little rooms, 

And stairways into nowhere.

A world unto herself. 

Layers of oblivion. 

No one.