Hushed tone voices drone on
as my foot shakes to dispell the nerves
Beginnings are always the hardest part.
Fear tries to slide into my mind
As I fight it off with lyrics of my favorite song.
If I don't belong here
I don't belong anywhere.
The present is not what past me expected.
I'll keep fighting to survive
And hope the fog begins to fade
As the days continue to turn into years.
Maybe future me will look back
And remember present me's endurance
And feel encouraged.

You will get through this.

Your good intentions are killing me.
You're pouring affection over my head
I wish I was dead--I'm drowning.
Pointing my toes as far as they'll go
In some hopeful attempt to reach solid ground.
It's nowhere to be found.
Surrounded by your misunderstanding
I have nowhere left to turn
It's hard enough silencing the voices in my head
Shut yours up. I've had enough.
Just let me live.
Take your emotions out of it.
Life is uncertain
Love me enough to let me go.

I have you but a moment
A fleeting breath slips through my lips
As you slip through my fingers
You're gone as quickly as you came
My eyes are open
Searching, waiting.
Hoping to see you
walk through that door.
I'll slip back into your arms
Next to your heart
Your hand in mine
Where we belong.

I hope you can understand my random bouts of classical music and writing and deep feeling.
Of things I can't explain but that encompass me wholly.
Of illogical mumblings about impossible things that are so real to me.
And now I sound crazy.
And maybe I am.
But I can't imagine me without these things.
It pulses through my veins, begging me to keep living.
To rectify all those who have endured before me.

This isn't just me, but about all those who have lived and died this way.
Who could have given up, but didn't.
Who faced hell and walked or ran or crawled through.
This is about carrying on what they fought so hard for.
This is true humanity.
This is what it means to live.

What was the ground like
Before you were in it?
Solid and untouched
Not yet a body pit.
Did it know this was
the fate that lie ahead?
Were there other hopes
than consuming the dead?

Now I’m sitting here
Knowing you’re six feet deep.
The thirsty ground yields
the tears from fallen cheeks.
Maybe after time
Has come and gone from me.
There will sprout flowers
Where my tears used to be.

Then there I will be
Next to you in the ground.
Nothing more than names
On tombstones to be found.

The smell of the city is beginning to wear off
Reality is setting into the fibers of my clothes
The monsters are waiting for me
Behind doors I closed as I left.
This skin I'm in is still the same.
I see the world through eyes that
Change color when I cry.
The very eyes that have seen everything I know.
Every terror and triumph
Logged in my same brain,
Filed and put away.
These fingertips have touched worlds both here and there.
Same heart, beating words I can never say.
But now my eyes stay brown.
I don't cry anymore.

Four years have passed.
Nine years have passed.
Fourteen years have passed.
Twenty-Nine years have passed.

All these different "anniversaries"; remembering people I used to touch, used to see, used to hear them laugh and speak. Now they're six feet under, kept alive only by memories.

I constantly find myself fighting off that tinge of fear, wondering who among me might be next. Who do I have here today that could be gone tomorrow?

And really, I'm one of the lucky ones.
I haven't had everyone and everything I know and love taken from me with a quake of the earth or a wave of the ocean.
I haven't been stolen from my home and sold to fill some sick propaganda.
I haven't had my race attacked in attempt to wipe them from the face of the earth.
No one has come into my home or school and opened fire.
My house hasn't been burned to the ground for my beliefs.
No, I have more friends above the ground than below it.

I've never even seen a dead body,
Save for the open caskets at funerals.
Swollen faces of friends dressed in their Sunday best.
Bruises on their neck.
Bruises on their face.
Bruises on their arms.
Depending on their fate.

Who knew that their stories would end at
Seventeen Years,
Nineteen Years,
Twenty-Four Years,
Sixty-One Years?
Who knew that their story would finish that day?
Whatever legacy they've built with the time they were given being all that's left to carry on now that they're gone.
And whose responsibility is it to make sure it doesn't die with them?
What does it really matter if it does?

Please know,
Even though the names are countless,
I still pause to remember you.
I still feel the sting of the loss.
It may fade, but it never goes away.

Please know your life is worth it.