You used to disappear for months at a time
I was too young to understand but I did anyways
You hurt me like you hurt yourself
The difference is I remember
As children we were sad and tragic misfits
Hell bent on escape of some kind
You used to try to jump out of second story windows
Enough to break eternal but not to close your mind
I found you once trembling in the kitchen
In your pocket was a handful of capsules
Ran for help and with reinforcements recommitted you
You told me I could stop you now but there would be a tomorrow
Your depression worsened and school became your nemesis
You singlehandedly proved how cruel and evil children can be to others
A victim of your instability and chemical imbalance
A social untouchable, they kicked you and you scampered under the porch
The progression across the spectrum of moods made you manic
I could handle you when you had lost hope, but you became unpredictable
Needing everyone’s help, you couldn’t bear to act alone
Always making scenes we were bashful when in crowds
I picked you up after class and you showed me your self-assigned art project
Your room was filled with them, scribbles on the walls
Poetry and carved incantations and letters
Just the way you were when you lived in the hospital
I will always remember when I was first allowed to visit
Your expression dull, eyes dead and voice hoarse but constant
Your babble was brilliant even though you spoke in tongues
Drew me equations, diagrams, promises and master plans
I keep them still and hope that you will make no replications
Reminder of the horror that goes into reparations

My thirst for conversation has continued to impress me
Fills me with stories helping to shape another in my eyes
Met with friend for a mutual exchange of identity
An interview with questions directed; I asked first
Starting with the earliest formulation of conscious thought
Hers was the return of a sick father
She eagerly embraced him when he arrived home safely
Vividly describes the large red chair present
I transitioned to exchange of reflection most powerful
Searching for a single memory of hers that stood alone
Her face brightened, her eyes shining with nostalgia
Her dog’s name was Max
Max entered her life when she was one year old
On the celebration of her birth in fact
He was the runt of the pack, a ruby retriever
Grew to maturity and average size, with love
Max made his way into her writing in the classroom
His possible harm one of her first worries
He was a cherished family pet, she loved him with all her heart
Being a young child, sometimes she was too rough
Cancer took Max from this world at nine years of age
He was buried under a peach tree in the back yard
The peaches swollen and ripe make death turn to life
To this day they represent the sweetness of his soul

Her early years were full of stress at thought of parental separation
Subject to fickle fears and frozen emotions
Her true panic began in high school days
Developed into distinguishable attacks and episodes
There were never tangible reasons or focus points for fear
Racing thoughts, vertigo chills, imminent death
Creeping insanity and the dry, frustrating inability to swallow
Worsened as college approached and the familiar faded fast
Week one was worse than any panic period yet
Heart flutters, helplessness and disorienting dizzy spells
Friends were far away or had yet to be encountered
Sympathy for perceived insanity ran thin
These experiences require constant care and medication
Hospital visits and appointments with understanding ear
She shared her life with me through effect of anxiety
I shared in turn, but couldn’t help distraction
We did not record the interview so I took it upon myself
Documenting with equal force her story and my amazement

Life stories are the purest form of expression
They are your interpretation of your existence
Your lens; your skewed perspective of the world
No one can take your memories from you
You can only choose to share them
I choose to collect them
Recently I came across a hurting man
Howling about lost possessions, wrapped in material mourning
Thirty years of age half his life spent in a cage
He carried the marks of his imprisonment on his neck and torso
Symbolic scribbling coupled with raised traces of injury and survival
The beauty of his anecdotal being represented
He showed me a photograph, a gorgeous girl of nine
He fought for the privilege to make her acquaintance
Her face he wore on his heart, where she dwelled
“Daddy’s Little Girl”
For thirty brief years these eyes had seen much
A walking burden, society had no vacancy nor sympathy
Money made from paving, though once upon a time
This figure provided every intoxicant imaginable
We bonded over mutual encounters with death
He narrated a story where seven men made an attempt to end him
They beat him repeatedly, punished him publicly
Like Jesus
His arm broke cleanly from a bat, but the seven hadn’t finished
They ran a van straight for this man attempting paralysis
He moved at a critical moment
This driver he later met
Alone, metallic tool of death in hand and vengeance flaring
He returned the favor, blasted the knee of the newly handicapped
Half joking, I asked if he had ever been apprehended
Half joking, he replied no and searched me for a wire
Next, he shared another instance where he should have left us
Riding a motorcycle over a hundred miles per hour
Carelessly on a quiet stretch of road, headed for fateful arbor
He ejected himself; the new bike totaled his helmet scarred
His hand shattered and held by screws like mine
In his words I saw myself
Despite his fortune at enduring such a wreckage relatively unharmed
He lamented his survival at the expense of prized possession
This criminal on the brink with Italian flag in ink
One who never learned to appreciate
Small, thin, bald and distinguished by goatee
Upset over the misplacement of a baseball cap
He made my friend aware of her beauty, assured her he was unworthy
I shook his hand and promised never to forget
Here he lies immortalized