I heard them whispering your life from forgotten pages of dusty memories
That your mother started by splashing hot paint of curses into your naked feelings
And later plunged a knife of freezing ire into your petrified body
That your own father stared from afar as the madness borne inside her
Carved a sculpture out of your body

I heard you learned how to suffocate.

Your body is a gallery of skillfully crafted scars
While I can pinpoint  in ten...

    All is quiet for a brief moment. The heavy, dark clouds above unmoving as the world awaits the inevitable downpour. Suddenly, a quick flash illuminates the sky with a strong flash of bluish, silvery light that glides along the darkened clouds, casting a bluish glow along them for only a moment until the light fades away. The details of the storm clouds are outlined in the rapid shine of light; from below, the clouds seem smooth and the only rough shadows...

    I remember sandboxes and lightning bugs, scraped knees and bike races. I remember tiny faces, focused on building a boat or a truck or a spaceship out of recycled cardboard. "Lemonade!" I remember that too. Coming home for dinner tired and hungry, inhaling whatever had been prepared. Sleepy mornings and ringing doorbells. "Come out and play!" I remember when we stopped doing that- we were too busy or too old, it was immature or took too much time. The younger...

Blue.

Mommy screams I am the darkness, that my soul is a black hole greedily swallowing stardust, and if you look into my eyes, you see the ocean floor.

"But mommy, when I glimpse at the mirror, I see a sunken boy, his eyes are drained. Nothing, not even the emptiness lurks in there."

If I'm good, mommy tells me she is invincible, not even the black hole can hurt her so.

"But mommy, I saw you bleeding. It came...

I never thought of you as the type of girl that stole. But I guess I was wrong, for that winter night I was a victim of your theft. You showed no mercy as you stripped me from my happiness, taking from me my smile, my tranquility, and my love for life. That night, a part of you that I had never seen was revealed, as if someone or something had taken over and it wasn't really you. You had...

    I open the door to my parent's room, and find my mother splayed across their bed, a half empty bottle in her hand, a puddle of vomit on the floor.
    Slippping the bottle out from her grasp, I check her pulse, worry sliding off my shoulders as I realize she hasn't drunken herself to death. For now.
   The bottle in my grasp, I tiptoe out of the bedroom, wonder how long it'll be before she chokes...

In the corner of the field, there is one Rose left amongst the wasteland of debris and ruin.

Sharp gusts of wind and a torrents of rain sweep through the area. She grows colder, weaker as the days pass. 
The stunning whiteness will wane with every passing day. She will reach out to the sun but it is no longer there. Her thin petals are made dim by the suffocating plumes of smoke as she gasps for air.
 
And...

I'm choking
on a million words unsaid,
and I think I'm crying
​but I truly don't know
what I'm doing
anymore.

I'm looking
at the world through
​a different set of eyes,
​and my heart is always in
a different place,
​and I'm not sure of
what I'm doing
anymore.

I'm staring
off into space,
searching for the reasons
I am the way I am now,
but I can't tell
what I'm doing
anymore.

I'm hoping
that my reality is a...

The airport has a familiar smell, the kind of fragrance that can only come from stale soft-pretzels, new luggage and frustration. My bags, the two trailing each hand, sputter and spit on the half-cleaned tiles leading up to the gate. My heart pounds of the realization of being alone in such an open place, but the reminder that his plane is only twenty minutes away from landing keeps me sane. Twenty minutes away from seeing my best friend, the twenty-three-year-old...

        
Primitive, worn, burnished floor; prevalent, small dinner-table decorated with silver utensils, and cheap bread; beaming pictures of a young girl carelessly adhered into the refrigerator door; fresh aroma of coffee brewed; distinctive crickets of cicada insects echoing through the thin walls of homely buildings; pastel round clock ticking at five in the morning, everyone in the house is deep in slumber except one. My mother stands short beside the heater holding a wooden spoon, hastily yet not...

I heard them whispering your life from forgotten pages of dusty memories
That your mother started by splashing hot paint of curses into your naked feelings
And later plunged a knife of freezing ire into your petrified body
That your own father stared from afar as the madness borne inside her
Carved a sculpture out of your body

I heard you learned how to suffocate.

Your body is a gallery of skillfully crafted scars
While I can pinpoint  in ten...

    All is quiet for a brief moment. The heavy, dark clouds above unmoving as the world awaits the inevitable downpour. Suddenly, a quick flash illuminates the sky with a strong flash of bluish, silvery light that glides along the darkened clouds, casting a bluish glow along them for only a moment until the light fades away. The details of the storm clouds are outlined in the rapid shine of light; from below, the clouds seem smooth and the only rough shadows...

    I remember sandboxes and lightning bugs, scraped knees and bike races. I remember tiny faces, focused on building a boat or a truck or a spaceship out of recycled cardboard. "Lemonade!" I remember that too. Coming home for dinner tired and hungry, inhaling whatever had been prepared. Sleepy mornings and ringing doorbells. "Come out and play!" I remember when we stopped doing that- we were too busy or too old, it was immature or took too much time. The younger...

Blue.

Mommy screams I am the darkness, that my soul is a black hole greedily swallowing stardust, and if you look into my eyes, you see the ocean floor.

"But mommy, when I glimpse at the mirror, I see a sunken boy, his eyes are drained. Nothing, not even the emptiness lurks in there."

If I'm good, mommy tells me she is invincible, not even the black hole can hurt her so.

"But mommy, I saw you bleeding. It came...

I never thought of you as the type of girl that stole. But I guess I was wrong, for that winter night I was a victim of your theft. You showed no mercy as you stripped me from my happiness, taking from me my smile, my tranquility, and my love for life. That night, a part of you that I had never seen was revealed, as if someone or something had taken over and it wasn't really you. You had...

    I open the door to my parent's room, and find my mother splayed across their bed, a half empty bottle in her hand, a puddle of vomit on the floor.
    Slippping the bottle out from her grasp, I check her pulse, worry sliding off my shoulders as I realize she hasn't drunken herself to death. For now.
   The bottle in my grasp, I tiptoe out of the bedroom, wonder how long it'll be before she chokes...

In the corner of the field, there is one Rose left amongst the wasteland of debris and ruin.

Sharp gusts of wind and a torrents of rain sweep through the area. She grows colder, weaker as the days pass. 
The stunning whiteness will wane with every passing day. She will reach out to the sun but it is no longer there. Her thin petals are made dim by the suffocating plumes of smoke as she gasps for air.
 
And...

I'm choking
on a million words unsaid,
and I think I'm crying
​but I truly don't know
what I'm doing
anymore.

I'm looking
at the world through
​a different set of eyes,
​and my heart is always in
a different place,
​and I'm not sure of
what I'm doing
anymore.

I'm staring
off into space,
searching for the reasons
I am the way I am now,
but I can't tell
what I'm doing
anymore.

I'm hoping
that my reality is a...

The airport has a familiar smell, the kind of fragrance that can only come from stale soft-pretzels, new luggage and frustration. My bags, the two trailing each hand, sputter and spit on the half-cleaned tiles leading up to the gate. My heart pounds of the realization of being alone in such an open place, but the reminder that his plane is only twenty minutes away from landing keeps me sane. Twenty minutes away from seeing my best friend, the twenty-three-year-old...

        
Primitive, worn, burnished floor; prevalent, small dinner-table decorated with silver utensils, and cheap bread; beaming pictures of a young girl carelessly adhered into the refrigerator door; fresh aroma of coffee brewed; distinctive crickets of cicada insects echoing through the thin walls of homely buildings; pastel round clock ticking at five in the morning, everyone in the house is deep in slumber except one. My mother stands short beside the heater holding a wooden spoon, hastily yet not...