When I met you, you little son of a bitch, you knew what it was to be polite. You showered me with pretty compliments and you never missed a chance to remind me that I was beautiful. When I met you, you loved me.

Now, you asshole--you fuck--you idiot --you neanderthal--you coward--you error in judgment--you bastard--you freak, I hope you rot in hell. This isn't what good, honest humans do to each other. Good, honest human beings don't forget entire years. Good, honest humans don't forget who they are and how to love.

No one should have such power over things physical. It was dangerous, the control she had--her molten expression, her curving hair, the swaying silk that was the undulation of her muscles. Nothing was still and everything was purposeful. She bent the room to fit her purpose, she moved our eyes to see what she wanted shown, she controlled everything.

No one should ever have power like that.

If I had died I'd not have noticed. I never could have looked away and more importantly I had no urge to. She was perfect. She was beautiful. She was merely dancing.

Strange thing that you are, little mirror, that I may know what I look like and have another thing to hate. Strange that I can stare down my own eyes in your perfect reflections. Strange, is it not, that I can battle myself in you.

I would have been content to merely hate the outside world with all of its errors and its dirt but you have given me a new priority: this blemished skin, these crooked teeth, those too-small eyes. Now I must hate myself first because, standing close against you, I can see I am the ugly one.

You are my seven sins
deadly
seven deadly sins
you are mine

They said:
pride
envy
gluttony
lust
wrath
avarice
sloth
I only need your name

When I met you, you were nothing more than beautiful. Then you were elusive. Then you were silent. And God, I want you. I think I need you. So you are my sins, those seven deadly sins, the urges that I was supposed to keep under control. You are everything worth having and, remember? beauty
is the only thing worth living for.

You are my seven deadly
sins
urges and wantings
you are mine

This is for you. This is all for you.

You have given me more than I ever would have dared to ask for and you have given it without complaint, without question. Beyond that, nothing is important. It does not matter what you gave me. It does not matter how much. None of that matters. All that matters now is that I am thankful, that I will give you everything I can in return, that I swear my life unto you to have and to do with as you like.

I owe you that much. I owe you even more.

Hair never does grow so dark, and thus his is dyed, and then gelled, until it is black and shining in the sunlight. He wears an oversized black shirt over skinny pale limbs that may never have seen the sun except for on this day.

Now he stands before the ocean, almost artificial in its blueness, a glossy turquoise plastic landscape. His eyes are shadowed by the harsh sunlight, he is silent, and he is beautiful.

His name is Timothy. He is seventeen years old, climbing bayside rocks and searching for his father, lost at sea after a boat wreck.

Stabbed, burned, and then left for dead because she was most clearly dead. When her mother finally saw her, "the stench from her burns was still strong."

Her name was Jessica. She had fetal-alcohol syndrome. She was deformed. At age twenty-two, she still had the metal capabilities of a child. "She knew enough to understand how different she was." She worked through her disabilities. She tried hard to be independent. She was personable. She befriended who she could. She did what she could. She gave what she could.

The twelve of them tortured and murdered her--they killed her anyway.

This is me, writing thank you cards for the non-event of graduation. I have nothing to say and no need to say it yet here I am, writing empty thank yous for mass-produced cards and fifty dollar bills.

Love, Jessica.

I hate this.

I am not a valedictorian. I deserve no special recognition. Anyone and everyone can do what I've just done and so it is not worth thought or marking. Yet they are emptying their pocket-books and I am writing thank yous, simply because I graduated from high school (of all things). There is guilt, and anger, of course.

He swears a thousand times--he swears his life away to say that he has never touched anyone else but her. He has never felt anything like this.

They are holding hands across the table and she is laughing, smiling. He is wearing heavy black square glasses and a tired, distracted little grin. Perhaps she loves him and does not realize it. Perhaps he does not know what love is. Clearly he is the only one thinking as he nods without listening to her social patter. He laughs at her jokes.

He is realizing that, perhaps, none of this matters.

This café has grown empty. While I was lost in reading the rest of the world left without me and I do not mind. I prefer this new quiet and the absence of strangers' eyes, though I had not minded their looks anyway.

I will keep on reading, though I have been here for hours and no doubt those behind the counter have grown weary of looking at me. This uncomfortable chair is a pleasant change from the living room sofa, no matter how bad the music they play may be. I will say, and I will keep on reading.

Today I saw a dead snake on the sidewalk, head torn off by the bike that killed it, body flattened to a swollen ribbon by foot traffic. It was as if this snake, so beheaded, smiled at my little jump in terror upon the realization of what he was.

Silly to be so scared of something dead.

I paused to watch him, to take him in. He was gruesome, coated in fine dust, scales curled in their drying, body rotting away; yet I soon grew used to him. Maybe he was a metaphor. Maybe he was only a dead snake.

While walking home:

Wear a white dress shirt to the supermarket and be somehow perfect. Wear heavy eye shadow and look like a whore. There are a thousand types of beauty and the word itself is indefinable and all of these things are gorgeous.

She is smoking a cigarette to poison me; I can feel it in my lungs. He is speeding down Walnut Boulevard in a black car.

How loosely do you use the word love? You see, I think I love all of these things, but I cannot yet be sure, and today I am smiling at strangers.

I will think about cutting all evening. I wish that mine were deeper. I fucking hate this, ok? I fucking hate that I'm not better. I fucking hate that everyone's gonna fucking read this and be so fucking concerned about just-another-teenage-cutter. Just another. Just one more. I'm not fucking unique in all of this. None of us are, no matter how brave, how cowardly we may be. Maybe I should be braver ... maybe I should just stop thinking.

I fucking hate this.

And I apologize to the rest of you. Devon. My sister. My mother. Those that understand. Those that don't.

She said, "I know." I know, and that was all, no other words.

That was one of my deepest secret. That was one of the most important things to me. But she knew, as if she had known from the beginning, as if I never had any secrets at all. She knew.

So why tell secrets? So why have secrets? Nothing is precious any more. Nothing is worthy of concern. I'm sorry I pretended that this was so important and so deep. I'm sorry I led you on.

It was merely who I am; yes, and I am empty now.

Beyond the shades of gray, within the tonal ranges, the options are endless. I still believe that beauty is indefinable.

I have seen the rainbows. I have heard your multicolor opinion before. I have seen many prism facets.

After all of that, I have chosen this small array of color. It pleases me. I will watch it, and admire it, and discover what it is. So find your own prime tonal range and leave me to these shades of being. Preach your sermons to some other choir--I have heard it all before.

Yet there is still much to see.

I can't help but feel that they want rid of me; because I know they do, even if they don't realize it. Part of it is blossoming. Part of it is growing up. Part of it is that they have grown weary of me.

I will never have children because I know that I will hate them. No matter how much biology and human miracles dictate that I would love those little creatures of my own flesh, I know that I would resent them. Somehow, I would hate them. I would want them gone.

I understand--but it still hurts.

I know. I get it. I'm being rude and I'm sorry--I'm just not doing very well night now.

I know parts of the problem. I know pieces, but that's all. It can't be fixed. There's nothing that anyone can say to make it any better, no matter how much I wish that were the case. I just can't be helped right now.

I'm sorry to put people through this.

I know that this is just how life goes. I'll get used to it. Life will turn out fine, I don't doubt it.

It just isn't right now, that's all.

How do you die? Can something like that be learned? How much pride will you find within yourself, how strong will you be, and will you ever smile again?

Time is counting down as you sit there and feel sorry for yourself, and can you bear the thought of looking back to see nothing more than the minutes wasting away? None of us know how to die. None of us can imagine what you are going through. Yet die we must, and live life too; and while dying is an art that cannot be mastered, living is still fair game.

Maybe it has to get worse before it gets better.

White lines become broken skin. Red lines become beads of blood. Iron stains dot pants legs and bra straps.

But, remember? Things were already getting better before they got worse. The urges were waning. The nerves were calming. Before it got worse it was getting better and for a while, things were fine.

"I slipped."

These were the two little words beside three heavy ones and a thousand stupid ones that lead to maybe-scars and the gentle corkscrew of the downward spiral. Maybe it just has to get worse first.

Half the time these hundred worse are not nearly enough, and I must rearrange the meanings and the sentences until I can scrape away every extra word and finally bring the count down to an even one zero zero.

Half the time I must elaborate, must create, must wander about in my words and trains of thought until I can somehow find the word count amidst a desert of ideas.

And then just once there is a single message, just one thought, set among literary padding like this.

I have only four words and they are:

I still have secrets.

I broke my promise. I'm beginning to run away.

God, I love him--whatever hell that means and even if I'm not supposed to say it. I miss him. He makes me into something beautiful. Hours in his company are as small as falling grains of sand in our hourglass--

And they are.

I'm running away. I see him less. There are a thousand reasons for it but none good enough to explain weeks apart and my fear of confrontation. Our time is running out like so many grains of sand and I'm running because I'm terrified.

And I'm sorry.

I am Miss Self Destruct, trying to prove that nothing in the world can hurt me as bad as I can hurt myself. I am my own reasons to be miserable so that the real world can't bring me down. I don't need your suffering, I have my own.

(but thanks for offering)

These are my defense mechanisms. I need them: my denial, my rage, my tears, my music, my skin and blood, mine, my soul. Take them away and I will collapse--and I am broken in half already and can't take much more.

(we are fixing each other)

I am not feeling pretty enough for him right now, and he's not even here to see however beautiful I may or may not be. Funny, and sad, that I think about him so often. Pathetic really, and I don't care.

He deserves more than anyone knows. He deserves more than what I am. I obsess. I worry, and I cling. I need far too much. Part of me feels sorry for him. Part of me is afraid to ever let him go.

I am not enough for him, and I find it hard give that thought the proper weight.

Sometimes it's impossible. Sometimes even stupid routine everyday things are impossible. Sometimes the mind just won't function and it refuses to work.

Really fucking annoying. Fucking just doesn't stop.

So what do you do then? You can't turn to some mindless distraction because you don't have time for that. You can't turn to some other project because the mind refuses to focus on that. So you rant. You rave a little. You try and get the frustration out somehow, you're not allowed to cut and nothing else seems to work. You get angry over it all.

And then you write.

The world is becoming an increasing inhuman place even as we humans infest and overtake it. Families break apart and homes are divided. Technology, in the attempt to connect us, drives us apart by phone lines and fiber wires. Anonymity grows and Big Brother peers in our bedroom windows, and then we forget what hypocrisy is.

These are changing times.

The question is: will we ever change it? Will we ever realize just how far it has gone? Will we find the courage to begin again? Does anyone really mind? I am beginning to think that I, for one, don't.

Another
Another
Wrapped in little rhymes

Another
Another
Snapshot of these times

She's a cutter
A slicer
A self-mutilator

She's a hurter
A hater
An ivory skin raper

These wounds are not
For people like you,
She's a number, a statistic,
A report on the news.
'Cause everyone's doing it
And no one knows why,
The little girls like her
No longer cry.

Now its razors
And scissors
To trace out red lines

Fingernails
And pencils
To spell out the signs

Hidden by shirtsleeves
And pant legs
Because it's just for them

These statistics
These children
With their little sin

She cuts because nothing else works,
And words aren't enough.
It's weak to get help
And she needs to be tough.
And the pain snaps her back,
Brings bended knee to the ground,
And she's better, for a while,
Without making a sound.

So she can't stop
She won't stop
And none of them will

While pain
And the bleeding
Are the only things real

Another
Another
One of those kids

So scared and
So frightened
Of what she is

(Yes, I'm a self-mutilator. No, I'm not that bad. Yes, I'm getting better. No, you can't help me. I'm sorry.)

Attempting abstract art in one hundred words. Less symbolism--greater sounds and feels, a general movement, an undercurrent emotion.

I want you to bend this way. I want you to think these things. I want you to remember these moments.

Abstract art in alliteration, in repetition, in simile:

Words like your heart breaking into quarters.

Words like fingernails on a chalkboard (cacophony).

Words like a memory of what love was like.

One day I will be a writer and I will command the alphabet into something (anything) spectacular. Today I write about writing and wish for just a little more.

Sometimes there is beauty, and it scares me. Sometimes, I am not ashamed.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror, and what I saw surprised me. I saw a girl--a woman, almost--with a half smile and disobedient red hair that framed a clear face and clearer eyes. What I saw was me, but it was me as I would want to be and thus not me at all.

For once, I did not feel the urge to turn from the reflection. That girl, she was simply beautiful, and I hope I may someday be her.

So you've got to ask yourself: how much is real? how much is drama? just how sick am I really, and how much am I just like you?

Is it all just a game?

I hate honesty. I hate being so weak as to have secrets and I hate needing to tell them. But there is a rush, isn't there? There's a rush in the shock of it almost as much as the feeling of opening myself makes me ill inside. So take it with a grain of salt but remember: it's still me and the little I have left.