I'm trying to write something beautiful but I can't stop thinking about the way your eyes looked when you told me about your past and I can't stop biting my nails over you even though my family hates the habit. It's like the way your little brother corrects himself whenever he accidentally mentions your father's drinking because your mother told him before he could process it that what happens behind closed doors stays behind closed doors. It's how the thought that you can never be anything less than exceptional is woven into your bones because your parents love boasting about their college-bound son with the baseball talent but they always forget to mention the same green-eyed champion has tried to **** himself three times and hopes that every fire he fights voluntarily might **** him, because maybe then he would die with dignity. It's in these fires that you find yourself because the smoke in your lungs temporarily pushes out your demons just long enough for you to do some good and save someone's life. But it's through these flames that you consider inhaling too much or taking off your safety equipment just to die right there because it would be so easy to just go with the dignity of being a hero rather than to die on your second floor bathroom tile with a pistol in your right hand

One night when I was younger, before I was cracked and bleeding in every crevice of my soul, my father took my mother like she was a rag doll. They always fought, but this was different. They were arguing about infidelity and the price tag on the new stove, and then the volume was so loud my little ears could barely take it. My mother said go, and we were out the door. For a few seconds, minutes, maybe hours, he screamed at her to stay. And before I knew it, his hand was on her throat like he was trying to force the life out of her. It was his house and she was his too and all I could wonder is if this was what true love was; possession. My mother set of the car alarm and we drove down the streets, the music up and her tears flooding down. I tried to tell her that I forgot my bear and I couldn't sleep without him, but she told me to hush and try to stay peaceful. What was peaceful? Was it the way Dad yelled at Mom when she didn't do the laundry like she was supposed to do? Was it the way Mom liked to find happiness with boys that weren't Dad?
My mother and I fled that night, without my bear, and she told tearful stories about how we would never go back. But in a flash, we were home with Dad apologizing with tears and telling her that he only did it because she made him so mad. I didn't understand but whatever he said made Mom say she would stay. Dad took me into the bathroom with his hand on my shoulder and told me how sorry he was and how he would never do it again. I didn't want to forgive him if he hurt mommy, but he made it sound perfectly logical. And I remember, that I could taste his tears. But they weren't salty with sadness. They were artificial, bitter- forced. I looked into his eyes and I knew that those tears were not from his heart, they were from his mind. He smiled and laughed and said, "So do you forgive me, honey?" My throat burned with the truth only I could see, that Dad was an imposter and Mom was a fake trapped in a web of sadness and illogical thinking, but I said what I was supposed to say. "Yes, Dad" My lip trembled because the storm cloud in my mind was getting ready to leak its own tears,
"I know you love Mom. You hurt her because you love her."

people don't truly see a masterpiece until the artist is dead and maybe that's why no one could see her beauty until she was in a coffin
she cried and scratched at the edges of the wooden casing but they could never hear her screams even when she was alive
she was writhing in sadness and terror while he was trying to figure out which brand of gun was the most reliable to shoot and **** an animal, or maybe even a person
the funeral march played and the congregation sang prayers they had never blessed her with when she used to walk through their cemetery trying to find her soul
everyone teared up and were secretly happy because it was not them in the ground and the entire back row whispered about how she ruined herself
she wasted her pretty face and perfect cheekbones with vile injections of poisonous boys
death. it was the only thing she could control, and he knew that. he was inspired by her to end his own existence. it was the only constant.

there's his boy I once met at the corner bookstore across from the liquor store that all the kids bought beer behind
this bookstore had red shades on its door window
maybe to represent the blood of broken hearts that had found therapy inside of its walls
I found this boy writing poetry on a bar-like stool from a leaky black pen that looked like someone had used it and then left it to die
I didn't know what to say to him
hazel eyes that were a little too intense
so I reached into my purse, and I pulled out a pencil
"Here."
"Yours looks kind of broken."
"It's hard to hold broken things in your hands."
he just smiled and laughed
"I would know."
and that was the end of that.
but it wasn't
was it?
I went back to that bookstore later
on a cloudy Thursday afternoon
"Do you have any information on that boy who was here?"
"I was just wondering."
"Tell me if you can."
the clerk laughed
"he's banged every ******* this street."
"his father used to hit him."
"he leaves his poetry books here- in the back."
information upon information
I learned a lot from those books
so let me tell you about this boy
his eyes turned green in direct sunlight
he loved someone who didn't love him back
and his skin was stitched together by the words he wrote on paper
he had spent months under sheets that smelt of various perfumes
he had spent weeks inside of girls who's lipstick smudged on their too-long-nails
nails sharp enough to slit a throat
he spent years looking out windows,
while on his bed,
or maybe a girl who asked him home,
and wondering if the moon had broken the sun's heart when it turned to darkness
no one ever told this boy that you can't destroy love by faking it
the only thing he was really destroying was himself
but writing this is destroying me
and my pen is leaking all over the bookstore's new coffee tables
a church donated them
so I think I'm done

you were just a baseball player with green eyes who went to church on Sunday but the thing is that you don't know from the beginning who is important in your life and who will just be a background character. you stole my heart on a Friday and tore it to pieces on a Saturday only to arrive at church bright and early on Sunday morning with a new ******* your arm. you'd give her a silver cross necklace and a hand to hold and tell her that you had never taken anyone to church before even though my pink flower earring is still under the third pew. you would take her to the abandoned park across the street after the service and spill to her the sob story that is your childhood until you have her almost in tears for you. then after her pity for your sadness is planted in her mind like a poison, you'll tell her it's okay and you're fine and you'll lean in real close, so close that she can smell the cologne that you got for Christmas last year. you'll whisper in her vulnerable ears that there has never been anyone like her and that if she can just save her soul from the evil people of the world, society will be blessed with it one day. you will tell her tales of girls with fangs for teeth who tore out your heart valves and of parents with strong hands and angry words. her eyes will grow wide as you spin the paragraphs with memories of lonely and dark nights where you almost jumped off of that ledge your mind put you on. then you'll lean away from that young girl's ear and you'll look in her eyes and tell her that you didn't jump and you're okay and it's okay. but it's not, is it? that's what she thinks, and you know it. you seem vulnerable, but strong and brave to defend her from all of the toxic waste the world holds. but what this girl, with bright blue eyes and a soul with barely any scratches doesn't understand, is that you are the demons you talk about. maybe once upon a time, in another world, on another street, you were a normal little boy with big dreams and a lunchbox your mother left notes in. but somehow that little boy went away and was replaced by the shadows that lingered under his bed and in the corners of his room painted in blue. the boy with the hot wheels cars turned into a heartbreaker in a baseball cap that didn't care about anybody but the person he saw in the mirror. you'll tell her that her dress looks pretty and you'll go on and on about pointless little things that will make her fall for you. your tongue will wind around syllables that tell her about how you love kids and your favorite food is Oreos and you hit your first home run when you were five. her eyes will see hearts and her innocent little heart will break into pieces for the boy she thinks you are. her clean and new soul will now have cracks and bruises, but it's okay, because she thinks you'll actually stick around long enough to help her heal them. her mind will listen to your heartbreak stories as you sit in the sand of that old park, and she'll mess with that necklace because she realizes that all of these girls who tore you apart are prettier than she thinks she'll ever be. but you already know this. you planned on it. picking out the nicest and most self secure girl with big doe eyes and watching her break down piece by piece, as she continues to think you're a god. it's a game and you always win, no matter what the cards are. this girl will go home and wonder about you and stress herself inside out trying to think of how she can fix the boy with the hole in his heart as you load your gun to put bullets in hers. you'll talk to her all night with sugar on your lips about your favorite constellations and you'll slip in that you ran away once, mentioning it for long enough that she feels your pain, but for such a short second, that she feels shut out. you'll shriek into the receiver in the middle of the night telling her that someone broke into your house to crush your essence but you'll lock all of the doors and windows before she even gets to your gravel road. go ahead and repeat your patterns so that I can sit from the sidelines as it passes by like clouds on a stormy day. show her that you're bleeding inside and your lungs have been punctured and bandage them the next day as if it never happened at all just so she feels the right amount of hopeless. give her the key to everything you've ever been and will be but change the locks the day after. whisper names of loved ones you've lost and tell her of your past as her lips brush yours and make her feel everything you hold like an anchor dragging her down. show her the trees you climbed as a child only to finish by mentioning that you broke your leg in the fall from it's branches. kiss her in September and drop her October because things like that are easy. she'll sit in her room at night six months later wondering why she never passed the test and why someone so sweet would throw her away like that. she'll spin your phrases and quotes in her mind instead of sleeping until she's utterly convinced that it was entirely her fault. she'll write in her notebooks about the perfection that is you and the disaster of her that ruined any chances she had. every time you pass by she will be absolutely tortured with the want to run up to you and scream until all of her organs fail. maybe after a year, she'll finally get you sat in front of her again on a cafeteria stage and you'll spit up every blood soaked lie you can manage. apologies and random nothings will climb up your throat like parasites, leaking into her and latching onto her bone marrow until they drain her dry. she'll laugh with you once again and it'll feel like heaven to her when it's really all a dysfunctional daydream, and as soon as you leave, so will the color from her cheeks. maybe eight months after that she'll start to forget that you ever existed, and she'll finally be able to see dugouts the same way again. but you can sense it. like an animal that can smell fear miles away, you'll come right back and only stay long enough for her to question everything she knows again, then you'll vanish. you can't handle not being in someone's nightmares and dreams, it feeds the fire where your heart was supposed to be. from now on, she always fixes her makeup to try to look like those girls you used to talk about. she always tapes her eyelids shut at night so that maybe she won't see your face. no one with green eyes will look exactly the same, and she hasn't attended a baseball game without thinking of you. her hair will always be brushed, covering her ears so that no one can whisper any lies into her thoughts. but it's all her fault, because after all, you were just a baseball player with green eyes who went to church on Sunday.

the day after his cousin died, he stuck his hand onto the hot frying pan when his mother wasn’t looking. she cried rivers all the way to the emergency room and the only thing he could say when she asked why he did it is “I touched her last. I touched her last”
the doctor came into the sterile room and said he lost three out of five fingerprints on his right hand, but he would be okay and so would his shaking mother. the boy had hugged his bright-eyed cousin before she shot herself and I think the bullet hit him too
let’s not tiptoe around coffee-stained details, that boy didn’t grow up to be an inspirational anti-suicide activist. he put up defense mechanisms and lined his entire body with barbed wire, and he’s been piercing people with his touch ever since
truth be told, I loved that burn marked boy, I did
but he threw me to the wolves when I got too close and maybe he felt guilty about sending me to the bottomless darkness he lived in or maybe he still can’t forget the way his cousin kissed him on the cheek before she put ammunition to her head, but I saw him at the gun store on the corner two weeks ago
it still hasn’t sunk in that he followed the exact path his cousin did that destroyed him when she was seventeen and he was only ten. he walked in her blood-traced footsteps all the way to the end of his existence, didn’t he?
he bought the gun, he loaded it
he probably started a note
do you think he started a note?
how many times do you think he’s tried to write it in the past seven years, broken pencil ends and the smell of tired lead
how many times do you think he tried to write it on Sunday? Sunday is God’s day, right? that’s what he always says to me
said
it’s a past tense
that’s what he always said.
I wonder how many pieces of notebook paper he crumbled up before he decided that his final words weren’t good enough to be seen by the people he was leaving alone on Earth
he always said he wanted to fly and I wonder if they can fly up there like all of the stories say when they talk about angels and I wonder if he can actually fly now
I wish that I could see those scribbled lines on discarded pieces of paper just so I could know why he did it
but maybe I’m lying to myself
maybe I already know why he did it
I knew it the day he said he couldn’t take it
the day everyone told him to stop being so overdramatic and grow up and be a man
I remember the exclamation points at the ends of his sentences like lines and flashing lights that screamed “help me”
the days his smile would say everything’s okay but his eyes looked like he was already dead
I wonder what his eyes will look like now
I wonder if he’ll still be the simple kind of beautiful when he’s in a coffin
what do you think his mother will pick out?
she always loved that red shirt
but he hates it
he likes blue
he liked blue
he liked a lot of things
he liked running and baseball and 3am movies and math and sometimes English and never science and most of all, he liked self destruction
I wonder if he gets to see her, if there is an afterlife like all of the Christian books he studied tell of
I wonder if she would tell him that there was never anything he could have done to save her back then
I wonder if he would regret letting himself float away that night
I wonder,
was there anything I could have done to save him?
why didn’t I?
I saw it
I saw the scars that were a little newer than the ones I had memorized before
I saw the sadness in his eyes on Friday
why didn’t I do anything?
but…I did
I asked
I asked him if he was okay
“I’m fine”
“I’m great”
“I’m happier than i’ve ever been. It’s okay. I promise. I’ll never go back to that bad place. I just have to keep my head up and keep going, I’m amazing lately”
exaggerations
false truths
lying through his teeth
I always know when he lies because his smile gets a little too wide, too artificial, and he can’t look me in the eyes unless he’s telling the truth
but he’s never going to look me in the eyes again
do you think it hurt?
do you think it was instant?
I wonder if the hurt made him happy like it used to when he scratched lines into his skin and ran until he collapsed
I don’t know if it actually made him happy
he thinks he deserves the pain he inflicts on himself
a sadistic self destruction is what he thinks he deserves
thinks?
is it thought?
this hurts
turning every present tense into a past tense feels like someone stabbed me in the chest
or maybe even shot me
how funny is that?
not at all
maybe a little ironic
the police will investigate the blood stains on the hardwood floor his father installed back when he was half sober and they’ll write down every scuff they see and they’ll have a sketch artist draw the green eyed boy who offed himself
he’s just a statistic to them
just another case
just another rotting body that they get paid to sign a death certificate for
they don’t know him
they don’t know where his scars came from
they don’t know that his dad gets angry when he drinks, and he drinks a lot
they don’t know his little brother
they don’t know what style he writes his paragraphs in
they don’t know him at all
he’s so much more than just a casualty
a casualty to suicide
another number that the hotlines can use to try to get money to save teens with razor blades and sad thoughts
another percentage
BUT HE’S NOT A PERCENTAGE
HE NEVER WAS
how would he feel about this?
he loved math
he was good at it
how would he feel about being another tick mark on some scientific research paper about the risks of drugs and alcohol and falling in love and teenage suicide deaths
falling in love
did I fall in love?
can you be in love with someone who is dead?
someone whose heart has stopped beating
maybe his heart stopped beating a long time ago
right with his cousin’s
did I mention that I saw him Saturday?
he was in the batting cage when I took my sister to the park right beside it
we talked and he said he was great
but I watched the news today
the news, can you believe that?
I only watched it because I had a terrible feeling in my stomach as soon as I woke up early Sunday morning
it’s Tuesday now and the police issued a report and my mother brought your mother a casserole and a bottle of wine
the police told us what happened with blank stares into the TV cameras
you died early Sunday morning
in the middle of the night
you always loved 3AM things
I saw you at 7 that night at those batting cages
I asked you what was wrong
you said you were okay
I knew you were lying and you were bleeding internally and I was scared you would fall into pieces of skin and broken boy right before my eyes
I put my hand on your shoulder and asked again
you didn’t look me in the eyes
you never did
you never will now
never again
you said you were so happy
your eyes pleaded for help, didn’t they?
I hugged you
it seems like a dream now
I hugged you and told you to stay safe
and then I left you alone in that batting cage
and I had no idea you were still planning your demise
more police reports
the news is informative
that’s what my grandpa always says
your parents were out of town
your parents were at a family reunion a state away
one you didn’t want to go to
phone records show that you didn’t call anyone after 10AM on Saturday, the robot officers in blue repeat
oh my God
I’m not supposed to use the Lord’s name in vain, that’s what you always said
that’s what your cousin taught you when you were eight
but you aren’t here anymore to correct me
I’m watching the news with shaking hands and I think I might break into sad molecules right here
because I know my bad feeling was right
the pit in my stomach wasn’t lying
God,
I did it
I held the broken boy before he shot himself in the head because he wanted to be sure that this time he would actually die, unlike the time he slit his wrists on his bedroom floor
it’s true,
I touched him last

they'll tell my story someday about the pretty little blonde thing that fell too ******* a hot sidewalk that burned her eye sockets out
they'll talk about the blue eyed gem that wasted her life away and ruined that pretty little heart of hers because of a silly boy
they will relish in the memory of a sing-song soul who let a green eyed demon eat her from the inside out until she was only a shell
they will take peace in the fact that heartbreak is universal and her skin is under his ***** fingernails, screaming to be free
they will whisper the poetry of her demise and of the hospital bed she sat at when he tried to die, and how they turned off her life support in the same sterile bed
they will scream out the truth of the falling out and how all the candles melted into her heart and she can't even feel anything now
they can cry and fail to understand why she let his snake skinned lips silence her free will but even she can't explain it