Prose is in black, Violence in red.

I can feel their eyes

staring at me with biased intent

The very thing I fear

What I want to circumvent

It feels like gravity oppressing me

with each hateful glare

with each biased intent

That my back has to bear.

In junior high, there was a kid on my bus who would always run home as soon as the bus dropped him off.

We would laugh at him every day. We didn’t know that he ran because he wanted to make sure his sister hadn’t killed herself while he was gone at school.

One day, he missed school. A week after, he was back. He stopped running.

-SixBillionSecrets

I felt the ground shake when I read this.  I attempted to interpret this into a story and it might be lousy, but i hope it’s still worth putting out there.

Dear Diary,

                High School has always been a cruel cycle for me.  I wake up every day like a machine, repeating the same routine I have done for the past 15 years I have lived.  Waking up to the alarm clock at 6:20 AM every morning, brushing my teeth, my hair, dressing up for school, skipping breakfast on occasion.  I go to school and learn absolutely nothing, because according to everyone in my grade, I am a complete failure and will never amount to anything.  I fail all the math tests that my math teacher Mr. Knight gives me, forget all the important dates in my history class, can’t even run a lap without falling over in gym, and completely spaz out when it comes to people.  I guess I can’t even live a day without doing something wrong or have someone yell at me. 

I’m fucking sick of it all.

                There’s always this one girl in my grade who thinks she is the best thing to have ever been born, being the self-proclaimed “Queen of Hesther High” with a face so loaded with makeup that it would be a world record if they bothered to check.  She is the most obnoxious degenerate I have ever met, always speaking out about how everyone else is beneath her.  In reality, all she does is boss and threaten everyone, cheating her way to her pristine 94.63 average.  My hatred for her could not be contained in a waste receptacle made for the entire world’s nuclear weaponry.  Its already enough that I can’t do anything right in life (besides the few snippets of correctness that brighten my day) but she always has to open her mouth that’s always coated with her Urban Decay Lip Junkie Crush Lip Gloss and rain down what limited strings of insults and occasional profanities that she can hold in her sorry excuse for grey matter.  She can go fuck herself for all I’ll never care.  There are few things I can pride myself in; not being her is one of them.

                I suppose the only reason I bother living at all is because of my brother.  He is two and a half years younger than I am, and he never fails to make me smile once a day.  Sometimes, I wish I was him, but that would be wrong to assume another’s life.  He is perfect in so many ways that I always imagined myself calling up Webster’s Dictionary and telling them the definition of perfect was wrong and should be changed to my brother.  Excels in all of his subjects, above average in sports, with a smile that would earn him a few discounts and definitely a few admirers when he’s older.  But my favorite thing, the thing we both have in common, is a love for poetry and music.  I check out an anthology once a week for both me and my brother to read.  When I read poetry, I can feel the emotions behind them.  They give me the uncanny ability to dive into other worlds where anything can exist from ghosts to the Force to superheroes to talking trees.  The tales that these poets weave with their words leaves behind an aftertaste of what other worlds would be like.  It was then that I used stories and reading and poetry to run away from my reality and visit the worlds of Frost, Blake, Poe, Dickinson, Henley, and Hughes.  It’s the only way for me to cope nowadays, with my little brother going to school and attending all his clubs.  I encourage him to do it, since I’m only holding him back.  He will become someone great, and that is not a prediction.

It is a promise.

                I could always see her speaking this diary entry with a burning passion.  I could feel all her emotions; her sadness, anger, happiness, jealousy.  Sometimes I wonder if she ever intended for me to find her diary in the first place.  Sometimes I wonder if she knew how much I cared about her.  I might not have the fancy writing she does, but I’m sure the feelings I have go past what words can define.  After all these years, I have kept this diary, reading through all the crumpled and yellowed pages, thinking back to the past where I did these things with her.  I miss her greatly.  I miss reading poetry with her.  I miss those brief smiles where her crooked teeth would point out and she wouldn’t care about anything.  But nothing I do will ever bring her back now. 

               When she first fell into her vices, it was painful to watch, painful to know, excruciating to feel helpless.  All I could do was tell her how special she was, how it was burning me inside, how it would completely crush everyone who cared about her.  Words would not help me convey my thoughts and emotions at all.  Every time I woke up, I would run to her room to check if she was bleeding or worse.  And every time, she would hug me and tell me that everything would be alright in the end.  And every time, I tried to believe it.  Eventually I took a sleeping bag and put it in her room to make sure.  She didn’t mind; it gave her someone to talk to until she fell asleep.  It was therapeutic and it seemed to help for a while, but something happened at school that was only ever mentioned in her diary as the “event.”  She never told me about it either, and her self esteem went down the drain from there. 

               School was more a deterrent now than a place of learning.  It hindered time between me and my sister.  My parents were adamant that school was still worth going to, and my sister also wanted me to attain good grades.  She didn’t want her holding me back.  And so, every day I would run as fast as my lungs and legs could carry, brain paralyzed with the thought of never seeing her again.  Eventually, the thought processed.  I had no reason to run anymore.

               I could still remember the first time I met my sister; it was an orphanage named St.Lucias.  The reception area had rows of plastic seats and a fern was in the corner.  It didn’t seem like it was watered regularly.  A few of the lights flickered, yellow flashing on the tiled floor.  I sat in one of the cheap seats while my parents were at the desk talking to the receptionist.  I dozed off for a little bit, bored and lacking anything to do.  The next thing I know, I was shaken gently and my eyes opened up to a girl about a foot taller than me, smiling and waving at my face to make sure I was awake.  In her other hand she held onto an old copy of “The Works of Edgar Allen Poe - Volume 2.”

Batting her hand away from my face, I angrily asked her who she was.

My expression shifted from anger to surprise to realization and happiness when she told me that she was my new sister.
 
               In high school, I am fairly unknown by everyone, which is a welcome change as opposed to my previous school.  Fame isn’t all it’s made out to be, because they don’t ever see the person anymore.  They see a symbol and interpret the symbol’s actions into whatever they want.  They lose touch of who you really are, and track you by what you did.  For me, I was worshiped like the second coming of Einstein.  I was no longer a good Samaritan, but that valedictorian who obviously never had a life to begin with, not with his studying habits.  Likewise, my sister was always seen by what she did, not who she was.  People were simply too blind to realize what brilliance she had.  Einstein failed school you know. Look where it got him. 

He achieved greatness.

Im staring at myself
Through another’s eyes
And I see someone else
Living as another lie.

Who is this person now?
I don’t recognize a thing
This monstrosity of faces
A face showing nothing.

It bears its teeth at me
Its jaws poised to bite
And I see for myself
My own wretched life.

Even if I am your prisoner
Even if you slit my cheek
I will bleed no blood for you
My soul will not be beat.

Even if I am shackled to death
Even if you cremate me alive
I will burn no ashes for you
My soul will eternally revive.

Even if I am eternally flogged
Even if you hold hell’s wrath
I will make no noise for you
My soul will stray not its path.

See I cant believe I’m fucking full of ignorance
Cause I cant get it past me I’m so dense
While everyone sitting there understands each other
I’m either saying fuck you to everyone or hiding under the covers
And everyone I know is getting tired of this shit
Its feels like its a torturer with a red hot iron whip
And I cant ever see their faces anymore
My eyes are up and they’re facing the wall
And now I’m staring at myself in the mirror
So much for nothing so much for the law
And now I’m drowning and choking in my craw
And I’m being whipped till the chains break and I fall
But I know I deserve it cause they sure as hell didn’t
Cause every time I see her eyes they’re red and lidded
All the crying from the drugs and her bitching
Well I guess a death for me like this is fitting
My entire life might as well have been blind
Might as well have been crippled steppin over the line
Shit man now I gotta pay this fine
But I guess I got what I deserved returned in kind
And now I’m laying here in this blood of mine
And finally I feel it shutdown the end of my mind