Remembering

 Do you remember twins falling into the ruble one at a time?

I was only three.

Do you remember when four teenagers made a pact to commit suicide during Christmas break?

I remember praying for their families that night.

Do you remember when backyards were the safest place on Earth?
I've been to China, Egypt, Madagascar, Narnia, all before supper time.
Do you remember hiding behind your covers thinking they would protect you?
I had hippo eyes while holding my breath.
Do you remember the letters they make teachers read?
I remember my French teacher crying through the suicide notice my sophomore year.
Do you remember when I came home crying because Maddie made me eat a potato bug?
I felt sorry for the poor bug that died between my teeth.
Do you remember when the world was ending in 2012?
I had my first sleepover then.
Do you remember when bitter frosting and loose teeth were the only problems as a child?
I never knew those would be a lesson to me as a teenager.
Do you remember when Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy became parents with an emptied out wallet and regretful chewing on the cookies they wished you didn't make so many?
I hid in a bin in the back of my closet; crying.
Isn't it funny what we remember and what we forget?
We remember what we wish to forget and we forget what we wish to remember.
Do you remember the terrified teenagers at the Columbine shooting of 1999?
Or the girl known as 'the girl who said 'yes'?'
I remember my biology teacher yell at our class for being too noisy through a lock down drill who referenced to this shooting.
Do you remember when Chapstick was invented?
Yeah, me neither.
Do you remember when the grumpy, wrinkled teacher yelled at me in front of the classroom for being late by three minutes?
I ended up crying in front of the class. I stopped wanting to talk to teachers. I secretly feel they despise me.
Do you remember when police K-9's searched the school for drugs and found some?
Police dogs give me anxiety attacks.
Do you remember when all of your hard work went to nothing when no one gave feed back, so you didn't want to do it anymore?
Yeah, that happens to me often. Even on the blogs.
Do you remember when 'Stupid', 'Fat', 'Jerk, and 'Sex' were the worst words out there?
Now there are over forty.
Do you remember when Syria's government poured mustard gas on their own people?
Google images are terrifyingly disturbing.
Do you remember the lost things you forgot all about?
Do you remember what you wish to forget?
So do I. But that's okay.
I remember, but do you?

You kill me inside

You kill me inside.

Words that stagger into my mind at four in the morning.

You make me feel like the pink bubble gum on the bottom of your shoe.

You kill me inside.

I carved your name into my heart hoping you would stay.

I carved your name into my heart knowing mine would be nowhere near yours.

You kill me inside.

Those endless nights tossing and turning and the coldness of the blanket wrapped around my thigh.

You burn me alive.

I feel as if I am drowning in quicksand. Slowly.

You make me feel as if my body crawls up in flames with one blank stare.

You carved your name into my skull with a broken number two pencil.

I carved a four letter word on a desk in fourth period. 

I watched the words slowly become dull and meaningless.

I watched you carve another's name into your heart where mine should be.

You kill me inside.

Alive

Maybe it's unstoppable. 

Maybe it's inevitable. 

Growing old and dying youthful.

Changing the colors in our eyes to fit the shade of grey.

What is being alive?

Is it the constant inhaling and exhaling of rhythmic breaths?

Is it the crippling bars of a keyboard?

Is it the mountains we climb to get to the greener grass?
As we grow older we slowly fade away into the monotonous shades of grey of the society we helped build.
The different formats of love and hate become the air we breathe.
I do not want to live in vain.
I want to chase my dreams that try to float away on a string.
Am I alive?
I have feelings I do not fully understand.
I have hormones and chromosomes.
I have a beating heart and a throbbing pulse.
Thick blood bubbles to the surface when my skin parts ways.
Am I alive?
My mind collects words and phrases like a spider's web.
I can feel sand between my toes.
I can taste the rustic blood on my tongue.
I can smile and laugh freely.
Is that being alive?
I want to grow old. I want to see the world through wrinkled eyes.
I want to feel alive.

A silent moment for pardoned roses

So many people become lyrics of songs and lines of poetry, but will never know; our world is full of the ghosts of unspoken words and memories.

So many things become objects of the past that sit on a dusty shelf in the corner of a room which gets little light. Things that we forgot we ever had.

Memories we forgot we ever possessed. 

Lyrics that embrace our soul with every filling letter that once was their firm grip.

Sentences and quotes from unknown passages align with our emotions to create a figment of their body through our imagination. 

The soft clicking of the keyboard echos throughout the room igniting the flames of fusion and ingenious flames balling into a symphony.

A description defining the crease just above your brow.

The piercing eyes that caused my symphony of words to go higher than a C.

No electric device could recreate the eternal shock your touch planted throughout my body.  

So many crucifixes streamed with roses and carnations with broken seashells trying to spell out a lost name that will be scorched away by the basking sun and an empty road. 

Another brick in the wall

I was just a brick. Nothing but a mixture of molecules and particles with a dash of atoms.

Nothing more than a brick with stilts. 

The world was painted ashen grey. 

Dull and frightening. 

I was a brick that wore thick coats of the color chosen by someone else controlling my life.

I was a brick; just like you.

On the top five list of what we fall through is; letting others define our humanity.

I'm not talking about society. I'm talking about pressure points, swollen tonsils, downing blue and pink pills. I'm talking about the man upstairs and the little goblin hiding beneath the boundaries of Hell and Hollywood. 

I'm talking about the girl next door who only dates guys with piercings and skull tattoos.

I'm talking of sin and anarchy. The model posing half nude on page sixty-one.

I'm talking of different shades of magenta and violet. 

Teachers paint layer after layer of math equations, grammar corrections, notebook inspections. 

Parents stain us with drawing curtains, gifted notions, Colosseum battles, and fixated punishments.

We let peers and strangers take control of what we wish to be. 

I am another brick creating this boarder between humanity and destruction.

I am another brick aligning with the stars that mock my indifference.

This wall separates us from walking down State Street with pigtails and a bowling pin in the grip of our hands.

This wall keeps tearing us down.

Day by day suppressed symbols and colors drained from a spray can cover me.

"All in all you're just another brick in the wall."

Simple, yet powerful statement. 

I never truly understood it until I grew older. I got a slap in the face as I knew what and how it felt.

I kept saying to myself;  all in all I'm yet another brick in the wall.

16 Reasons why I hate teenage years

1. Adults expect you to act like an adult but treat you as a child.

2. Other teenagers can be cruel. 

3. You forget what it's like to be a child and to be carefree.

4. There are countless nights of silent crying into your soaked pillowcase and open eyelids as your mind races like a speeding train.

5. You wish you could Photoshop your body the way you see in magazines and billboards.

6. Speaking your mind is a death penalty.

7. Friends can be fake, relationships may be a ticket in the bedroom.

8. Pressures to get into Harvard, BYU, Yale, and Oxford. Instead of beauty school, community college, or no school at all.

9. These are the years you will remember the most.

10. Deciding which to cut out; social life or passing grades.

11. Everyone is connected but unconnected from the world.

12. It's hard to find REAL friends and REAL people.

13. Every parent and adult says "back in my day we didn't have the internet or cell phones."

14. Trying to find yourself while becoming lost along the way.

15. Trying to live up to the expectations of your parents, grandparents, teachers, and everyone around you.

And 16. Finding the courage in every nook and cranny of your heart and mind to be yourself and be proud. 

A Nightmare

The air was tainted with ashes and black smoke.

The stench was foul, making your stomach flip.

Hills of rotting corpses in every direction.

Flames of orange, red, and yellow raid the horizon.

A fence dividing sickly walking skeletons from the living.

White and black striped jumpsuits with a figurine across their shoulder blade separated them from the rest. 

Posters line the streets with images of rats and the figurine.

Poisoning the minds of their once neighbors.

A place for Jews, blacks, colored skins, gypsies, homosexuals.

Their rightful place. 

Or so they were told.

A nightmare you could not awake from. A nightmare that you live day and night.

Watching your family and friends and the man across the street who would wave to you good morning with a loaf of bread in the nap of his elbow, slowly becoming extinct with a single breath of smoke in their lungs.
Children forgetting once happy times with mornings filled with laughter and play pretend.
Families being separated, killed and stripped of their humanity.
A girl known as Anne,
hidden behind a bookcase with barely any room to stand, filled with terror listening to bombs going off and destroying houses and local bistros.
Thousands and thousands of innocent people being starved and punished for no reason that comes to mind. Being robbed and beaten.
Men being forced into guards or death would become of their families.
This is a time none shall never forget. The faces of children and newborns being ripped from tearful mothers. Faces of the elderly and the ill. Images of families holding hands as firearms trigger with a loud noise that echoes off the gas chambers.
Never will we forget the man that brought many to excruciating pain and abrupt destruction.
Never will we forget how he glowered in fear and cowardliness as he tested a pill on his trusted advisers.
Being tortured for years on end. Sunken bodies on the riverbed tied with a brick around their neck.
Their lungs drowning in toxic clouds.
Bodies and minds being ripped apart with every cruel smile tingling from his lips.
Many asking why? Why us?
We ask the same.


The oxygen tasting of ashes and deceit.
Smoke rising from firearms which went off in the night, clouding your vision.
Blood and bodies covering the cement floors.
Mountains of shoes and ripped clothing rose lower than corpses.
Smiles of relief and sorrow painting on the faces of the undead.
Prayers being answered once more.


A father of a family that perished greatly.
A room that once held hushed whispers and scared whimpers.
But beating hearts of his beloved friends, his wife, and children. His precious daughter who wanted nothing but to make a difference in the world and publish her work.
Torn pages out of books scattered the attic floor.
A diary being recovered out of the dust.


Pictures of unforgotten persons.
Stories of horror being told each year.
The air no longer smudged with intoxicating sadness and burning smells that stick to the fibers of your nose.
No longer do they suffer in pain.
No longer.