May I have your attention?

Could all the innocent please leave?

I’m serious.

These words you’re about to hear will change you.

Change how you look at life.

I know we’re already in middle school,

but that doesn’t mean you’re spoiled yet.

I can’t rob you of your innocence.

I can’t have that on my conscious.

I can’t do that.

Walk away.

Leave.

Don’t read this.

Run away.

Run away from these bad things.

Run away from this bad world.

Create an island,

made out of hopes, dreams, happiness..

Go now.

LEAVE!

Go build that island.

Live on it.

Live in that state of mind.

Be at peace.

Don’t let anyone bad in.

You poor things..

Don’t let her in..

Oh for your own sake don’t let her near you.

She will destroy everything you’ve ever loved,

everything you want to become.

She will make sure that none

of those things will happen.



Depressed.

Gross.

Ugly.

Fat.

Harm.

To this, to that.

Never good enough.

Don’t give me those words.

Don’t tell me to write about those words.

I don’t want to.

It’s an addiction really.

It’s so easy to write these words.

no.

Don’t remind me.

Don’t remind me that society sucks.

Don’t remind me of the people who I stay up late at night worrying over.

Why do I feel like they’re my responsibility?

Don’t remind me of all the things that are wrong in the world.

There’s too many..

They crush me.

A steamroller of ideas and thoughts and faces full of pain

smashing me down until I can’t breathe.

Don’t do that to me..

Because now i’m choking,

I’m slowly choking.

I tried to help them,

but that just unleashed their wrath.

I thought it was just at night the demons come to play.

No, not with her.

It was day after wretched day.

She pounces on me.

Thousands of tiny needle teeth biting into me,

not trying to consume me, no.

Her words bite me,

they cut deep and it stings.

No she didn’t pity me enough to swallow me whole.

Not her.



She bites and tears out little pieces of ME.

She sucks everything out.

Leaving me hollow.

How cruel.

But still, she continues to tear at me with her jackal teeth.

I try to help her out of isolation,

she takes my arm,

crawls on top of me and jumps out of this pit of despair.

I call for her,

tell her to tie the rope to something strong,

But she’s tied me up now.

How could I not notice these ropes?

Tells me I’m strong enough to get out by myself.

My friends, they throw me a rope.

She brings the razor up from her wrist,

cuts my rope.

That isn’t all she cuts though.

It hurts and guilt eats away at me.

I’m stuck in the hole she made.

She made it out of a torrent of words.

Words that hurt, that hurt you inside.

She sits up on top.

Her legs dangling into my cage.

I call to her.

She laughs,

raises her wrists..

Shows me the scars,

laughing hysterically.

“Look! Look at her face! It’s softened by pity

and consumed by guilt! Look how i’ve hurt her!”

She screams.

Falls over.

Blood streams into my cage.

Now I can’t eat.

No.. not after what I’ve just seen.

I have to make myself thin..

I need to slip through the bars of this cage.

I need to be accepted.

I need them to want to help me out of this cage.

No mustn’t be ugly.

I feel like a living picture of Dorian Gray

They don’t help at all.

Their pity fuels my misery.

Wait, I see something.

Has the sun come out?

Is that it’s light trying to worm it’s way

through this murk and darkness?

Freedom?

Maybe?

Am I allowed to get my hopes up?

NO.

You pathetic girl.

Never assume that it will be okay.

That’s the light from heaven..

She’s gone now.

She wanted to show you how happy she is.

She’s flying away.

“Oh she was such an angel,”

they say.

“It was murder!

It wasn’t her fault!

It was her friends.

They should have seen.

They murdered her with their words.

The poor thing.

Driven to death.”

She flys away.

Drops a thousand pound weight back to Earth.

It lands on our delicate shoulders.

lands on her family,

lands on her boyfriend,

lands on our whole school,

lands on her friends.

It lands on me.

“Hey! No! I tried to help you don’t leave this on me!”

She looks back,

points and laughs.

She left me to rot.

While she escaped.



Maybe people should realize

that I am NOT immune.

No.

Not at all.

Word hurt me just the same.

How could you not know that...

Do you just choose not to see?



I slip through the cracks.

Someone sees me, the real me.

He’s trying to salvage what’s left of my soul.

We were stuck in the same prison.

She was our jailer.

I don’t know how we didn’t notice each other.

Maybe we were too busy hiding from her.

But the day he found me..

We stepped into the daylight.

I falter.

I was so isolated.

I don’t know what’s going on.

Am I allowed to be happy?

Is that okay?

Yes?

Maybe.

Maybe I can start over.

Life after death,

Yes.

It’s okay now.

I lean in for a hug.

Everything’s okay.

Oh no..

There’s something in his eyes..

It’s her.

She’s back.

no.

No.

NO.

NO!

He looks back at me..



She’s in my eyes to.

The very back of my brain.

Ya she’s still there.

She’s still affecting my life.

She’s laughing at me again.

“No sweetheart.

Didn’t you know?

He’s mine.”

She turns, faces the public and crys.

Ya oh so sad.

But then she turns her other face back to me.

“ No you can’t be happy.

No matter how hard you try.

I won’t let you.”

Her words smash me,

dropping on me

a staggering amount of words

so heavy they turn into bricks.

Everyone ties a rope to me.

They hold their rope

and go live and adventure.

Not me.

No I’m standing here,

being pulled this way and that.
Being towed along by everyone else..

Because APPARENTLY

I’M STRONG??

NO.

I’M NOT, OKAY?

I DON’T WANT TO HAVE TO TRY TO BE EVERYONE’S ANCHOR ANYMORE.

NO.

no..



A girl was pushed off of a wall.

She tried to stay up but had a great fall.

And all the best friends,

and all the kind words,

couldn’t put her back together again.



No i’m sick of this pompous parade.

Tired of them whispering behind my back,

“ Look at her.

She’s so perfect it’s gross.

Academy classes.

She’s so beautiful, ugh.

She’s so athletic.

Lacrosse, track.

She plays four instruments to.

All the boys love her it’s so annoying!”



No honey.

I’m far from perfect.



“ And her eyes are so pretty, it’s unfair!”



Ya okay SURE.

Look into my eyes.

Let me show you what they’ve seen.

So much grief.

So much pain.

Ya you wonder WHY I’ve seen that?

It’s because I care too much.

I’m smart okay?

I don’t ignore the bad things.

No I don’t ignore problems,

I fix them.

I pick up broken people

and make them into something beautiful.



But when they’re tall buildings,

standing so high and looking so pretty,

they seem to forget.

They forget why they are okay..

and not a pile of rubble.

They forget about the ugly worker,

who slaved over them,

helping them grow,

building them up.

Maybe it’s the altitude sickness

from being up so high

when they were so low

that makes them forget.



See?

Now look what you did.

You made me write these words.

These metaphors and similes..

That lump in your throat?

That’s your own fault.

I’m okay really.
Don’t worry about me.



I’m still here.