In a world of zombified teens so loaded up on antidepressants,
anti-anxiety and anti things-
it must be asked.

Did that boy who jumped off the bridge just last week,
leap in an attempt to grow wings?
Maybe he did it just to see if he'd be scared?
Or perhaps.  
He felt just too much to live
with the numbness his medication offered
He was never looking for
A temporary solution to his pain.

What about that darling girl who's arms and thighs are
In a love affair
With an abusive razor?
Does she stay with him for fear of going back,
Again and again,
only to be called weak for leaving in the first place?
Or for the fear that she'll
Never
Feel the same exhilaration
From another's kiss?

The last question of tonight.
How is it that I am just noticing now,
How carefully he avoids the word
Home
Almost as if he knows the place
I grew up in
Will never be a home again.
Not to me.
Does he know,
It represents
Nothing but a return to the front line?
Just like being ****** back into the trenches
A still wounded soldier.
Nothing but a band-aid
Covering what once
Was a gaping bullet hole.

She still feels his hands on her.
They sound as loud as a grenade in her head
The slap of his hand traumatizing as an atom bomb,
She reaches for her lover,
Hoping he can distract her from the battle
All while
Neglecting
To acknowledge he brings with him
His own
War.

They all stand at his funeral
Holding hands and saying a prayer.
Hoping,
Praying,
He grew his wings.
Nobody understood
What could have led him
To choose the pain of
A jump
Over
The silence of a pill
Or the speed of a bullet.
Most of all though,
His mother just wants to know
Why he didn't tell her he needed to be held.

We all have our demons,
Skeletons in the closet.
What people don't realize is
Wars are fought every day
The trenches lie
Not in Dead-Mans Land
but
Inside our heads.