Someday

As it turns out, a peanut butter sandwich cannot fix every problem. Then again, what can?

What do you want for your last meal, Mia, hmm?

Something great and giant and way more expensive than anything they want to give you because if you're going to die you might as well make it difficult.

Or.

A peanut butter sandwich.

Like auntie used to make you when you were little and tiny and quiet and alone. When you came home from school and rushed to the bathroom to clean off the mud they shoved you in. When you moved from house to house and hid from your sister's boyfriends and when you hated to go outside in case someone was waiting for you.

I chew the sandwich.

The guards wouldn't cut off the crusts like auntie did. Or, at least, I assume they won't because there is no way in heaven or hell I am asking them for something that will look so pathetic and prissy.

I'm eating my ruddy crusts.

As I swallow, I wonder if I'll ever actually digest this meal. Or will it sit there in my stomach forever. I wrinkle my nose, take another bite, and continue to stare daggers at the guard while wondering if something is wrong with me to be thinking thoughts like that.

I wish I could say that dying as an innocent is easier than dying guilty, but its not. Sure, it is strengthening to know that I do not deserve this, but in another way, it makes it worse. If I'd actually done something wrong, then perhaps I could accept this. Instead, its just unfair.

Who am I kidding? It is terrifying either way.

Terrifying in a hands numb, knees weak, I can't believe I haven't thrown up this sandwich sort of way.

I've known this was coming for a long time. It sits heavy in my gut like stones. Like fire. Like a wound.

In a few hours Mia will no longer exist.

I will no longer exist.

Or at least not like this.

Not on this world.

All I'm leaving behind is a few newspaper columns about a murder. That, and the crumbs on this plate. How is that natural? How is it possible to just... stop?

And everyone will go on without me. Forget about me.

One peanut butter sandwich and one skinny kid less is nothing.

I can't fix this.

"Time."

I take my last gulp, stand, and stare at him until the guard is forced to walk over to me and look me in the eye as he grabs my elbow. I am mixed. I want him to feel guilty. Breath-takingly, overwhelmingly guilty. And I don't.

Guilt is too heavy a weight to place on the innocent.

We walk down the hall, florescent lights guiding us in their flickering, stone-faced way. One step and another and another and the hall grows long and short and long again. No idea where the end is.

Until I'm on top of it.

I don't realize I'm crying until I catch my reflection in the glass door the swings open and shut. I stare at this mutilated, broken, skinny me and wonder how the heck I got into this mess.

I can't fix this.

Deeper into the room. It smells like sanitizer and bitter metal and the floor clicks beneath my feet. I sit. I wait.

Maybe someday.

Maybe someday this will be different. Someday this won't happen to anyone else. Someday.

They approach. I'm not ready but I say nothing.

I can't fix this. I run a nervous tongue over my chapped lips.

I can't fix this but maybe...

Maybe someone... someone elsewhere can. I latch onto the thought.

Someday someone will stop this. Where I'm going, elsewhere, it will not be like this. It will never be like this and soon it will end here too.

I shut my eyes.

Someday.