How beautiful it is to lock your self inside
to turn the volume all the way up
and let the words of your favorite artist,
your most compatible soul, paint the bathroom walls,
with tranquil melodies.

How free it feels to let each note fill the recesses of your mind,
until you are hollow no more

How rebellious it must be stand in the spot where you and him made love, and let the warm shower water cover your icy veins and open wounds with embrace and dignity

How badly you want to scream and shout and declare your anger unto the world,
how badly you want to shatter mirrors and forget the memories,

Well darling, shatter away,
Graffiti the walls with words that make you cringe,
rip the doors off their hinges,
ignite the memories in flames till your mind is burning,
not for the past,
but for something new
something grand.

Throw the ashes in the ground and let them cultivate and grow,
into something they were never capable of being.
break down the barriers.
defy the odds of what this cookie cutter universe of fallen stars and broken dreams has to offer.

You're not like them.
you're not a fallen star,
your edges are never stagnant
you're like the sun,
you rise
you fall
you have your lows
but even when the shadows off the night lurk in,
we still see your glow.

We flood into the auditorium like a frenzied herd of animals, pushing at the gates. We crowd each other, everyone frantically stumbling into seats. My anxiety isn't nearly as binding as one would think it would be and my mind goes into a state of total strategy.

2 minutes to get to the girl upstairs

I map out battle plans, trying to see if it would even be possible to reach my best friend on the third floor. Only four floor above me, and yet this is the farthest from her I've felt in years.

1 minute to get the library

My dreams of being a hero to the girl I have loved since the second grade plummet, just like my heart, and my leg bounces nervously. Libraries have always been safe. Libraries have always been home. But not even books can help me this time.

30 minutes to get to the sanctuary

Home is so far away that it isn't even an option I should allow myself to consider. I consider my grandmother at home alone, and I wonder if she's thinking of me. I wonder if she is even aware that her granddaughter is holed up behind auditorium walls, daydreaming about escape plans instead of cute boys. Trying to pass on comfort, instead of passing notes.

1 minute to get to the makeup room

I know this part of the school better than anywhere else. The theatre is sacred, and I have dedicated my life to the stories on the stage. The makeup room is where my friends share everything from stories to eyeliner to hairbrushes to kisses. It is a room built for anxiety, and pre-show jitters. I wonder if it would calm the nerves I have now.

30 seconds to get to the wood room

It's interesting that the rooms that have been my safe places for years, could truly be my safe havens as I wait for attack. The room hidden under the stage is dusty, and full of dismantled sets and large, clunky monitors. I would if those monitors would let me see the action, like watching a film from the safety of your home, watching reality from the safety of four concrete walls.

15 seconds to get to the scene shop

It's the safest place in the school. I have spent a lifetime in there, washing paint off of hands. I wonder if I could ever look at that mess sink the same way, if I had to use it to clean blood off instead. I consider the way this day has changed all of these rooms forever. Will I ever wipe down a makeup room counter without imagining hiding beneath it? Will I ever check out a book without imagining using it for a shield? Will I ever see my best friend's face without imaging myself jumping in front of a bullet? This day, no matter the outcome, has invaded my most sacred spaces, and turned this school into an battle ground. I pray that it will not turn the school into a graveyard.

A muffled voice lets out a sigh on the teacher's radio. The herd stands back up, and we return to our lives. Everyone is safe. My mind shuts off the timer, stops counting the seconds, erases the maps.

The space between me and the world doesn't seem quite as important anymore.

I don't remember what he looks like.

I am told that I carry much of him in myself, with my blonde hair that curls around my shoulders, foreign green eyes, and a smile that could never belong to my mother. These are all his traits. Everywhere I go I carry a piece of him inside of myself, in everything from my complexion to my complexities.

My DNA is 50% monsters in the closet.

I wonder if that's why I always have an urge to punch the mirror.


I barely remember his name.

I am told that when his mother asked my name, she cried. She cried as she was told that there would be no evidence of him there.

I wonder if my mother knew even then.


I don't remember the day he left.

I was too young to understand why this goodbye would be any different than the others.

I am told that my mild mannered brother, all toothy grins and silly jokes, curled his hands into two identical fists and growled, "I am more to her than he will ever be"

I wonder if he ever resented me for forcing him to become a man at 14 years old.


I remember a doll.

A soft rag doll with yellow yarn curls and dimples, nearly identical to my own.

I am told that he gave it to me.

I wonder if he noticed the resemblance.

I wonder if he ever noticed me at all.


I remember a phone call.

The way my mother's hands shook. and her words followed suit.

I was told that he wanted to see me, nearly ten years after he left.

I wanted to tell him that once you've ripped someone's still beating heart out of their chest and devoured it whole, it was bad table manners to ask for seconds.

I wonder if my rejection even bothered him.


I don't remember a father.

I don't think I ever had one.

I have started this letter one hundred times. I have referred to you as my friend, my "cousin", my love. No term seems more right than brother, as you have grown with me, and we have lived our parallel lives. I have known you since the day I was born, and I will know you until the day I die. I have long since memorized each freckle on your face, each vein in your hand, each scar on your hip. I am saying this in the hopes that you will understand why it hurt so much when you looked me in the eye and told me to calm down.

As we skipped rocks in the river that runs past my house, you complained to me about the cousin with the crazy feminist ideals. I laughed it off, and tried to reason with you, trying to teach my dear brother a valuable lesson. That's when you stared at me, with those gorgeous, piercing eyes, and you said, "I know women think they don't have rights, but like...just calm down, okay?"

Not okay. It will never be okay. It can't be okay until boys like you stop ignoring our pain. Stop writing off our suffering as hormones and gossip. Stop telling us that our feelings are invalid.

You have always said that I was your little sister. As children, you were the first to teach me how to throw a punch, so I could take care of myself. You were the first to grab me by the hand and whisper, "I will never let anything happen to you."

If you wanted to protect me, if you wanted to love me, if you wanted me to have what you have, you would not ignore the hardships of myself and my sisters. You would not tell me I'm making it up. You would not tell me to calm down. You would not stop until everything really was okay.

I wonder how much you actually know about feminism, and how much you actually know about me. Once I thought you had memorized each piece I have given you, the way I have memorized every curve in your body, and every corner of your brain. I suppose, looking back, you never were the best listener.

The day before you came to me, angry about the unfairness of your parents. I would never say to you, "I know you think it's not fair but like...just calm down, okay?" When you came to me about your anxiety, I would never say, "I know you think it's hard, but like...just calm down, okay?" I would never ignore your words, would never patronize your pain, would never tell you to calm down.

Something inside of me has been broken ever since that day. The day that I realized that my big brother wasn't always the good guy. Some days, he's the villain. Most days, he's part of the problem.

I will always love you. You have been with me since my first breathe, and I'll be ****** if you're not there for my last. I will always listen, always hold you, always love you, always be here for you. But the one thing I refuse to do is dilute my anger for you. I will not sugarcoat my oppression, will not sweep away my sadness. I will not calm down.

And maybe, with you by my side, we could make things be okay.

There's something exhilarating about watching the hero of an action movie soar across the silver screen, thrusting fists into the face of some grotesque, mustached villain. Every time I see a thriller, I am at the edge of my seat, bubbling with excitement.

When the security guard came sprinting into the lunch room shouting, "This is a lockdown." I didn't feel anything even remotely close to excitement. I didn't want to skip through the commercials, didn't want to turn the page. I wanted to close the book, to pause the movie, to curl up in the safety of my own skin and never leave.

It was nothing like the movies. There was no hunky hero waiting in the wings to save us. There were only teachers on the edge of a breakdown, as they slowly realized that they were responsible for the two hundred lives they had just herded into the auditorium.

The villain was invisible. He was a crackle on the radio, a shadow in the corner, a ghost hanging in the forefront of everyone's mind. There wasn't a clear cut solution, no Bruce Wayne to bust in and kick some ***. Just terrified kids, and the teachers who were so much more human than I had ever seen them.

The girl next to me's hands shook in her lap, her voice carrying a note of panic that I'm sure matched my own. My knuckles turned white as I gripped my phone like a lifeline, trying to send words of love through the airwaves to my everything, who was cowering in a corner of the algebra classroom three stories up.

In the movies, goodbyes are always a performance. They are dramatic and gut wrenching. They are sobs into the sky, and screams into the night. What the movies don't prepare you for is the idea that your goodbye could be an eight letter text message, or a whisper no one would ever hear. As I waited for a reply, I wondered what would happen if this was the end. Maybe I'd hear her name on the radio that the teacher was holding, read from a list of casualties from another teen drama. Maybe I'd come home to find her name plastered across tv screens, my best friend's face synonymous with a caricature of tragedy.

If they made a Lifetime movie about this, I wonder who would play her, what glamorous Hollywood actress would dissect her personality and attempt to transform into a pale ghost of the girl I've known since childhood. I wondered how much money she would make for wearing a dead girl's skin.

Somehow, "school shooting" has become a marketable phrase and sold to me with a perfect soundtrack and a dramatic title. I wonder how much money I have given to the same people who wouldn't hesitate to turn my tragedy into a blockbuster for all to see, as they fill fiction with the faces of the nonfictional dead.

The voice on the radio signaled the all clear. The girl next to me breathed the deepest sigh of relief I have ever heard. My best friend sent back a text much longer than eight letters. A happy ending, I suppose. But as I walked out of that auditorium, something shattered inside of me. I will never hear a gunshot without imagining it coming from behind my best friend, never watch the news without wondering why it wasn't us, never see a bullet without feeling it pierce my mind.

I haven't been to a single action movie since.

I've already lived one.