Prompt: A place I would never want to go back to**

My childhood was spent on these cracked streets,
worn and broken from the life they have seen. The air around them, stale and heavy, makes a body grow weak and tired, as though age can seep in through the creases of the skin from the atmosphere and take away its youth.

In spite of myself I look once more for a second chance, an excuse to stay. Instead I find  memories. Memories hidden around every corner, stuck between the cracks of a building, twisted among branches of a tree; melted deep into the sidewalk like a forgotten candy bar.

Once again I am eight years old, swinging through my backyard jungle; discovering a buried treasure beneath the apple tree; walking the plank of the patio.
Imagination created a shelter when the world around me had collapsed. Imagination became my place to escape; my safe haven.

Then it happens again. The heart inside my chest beats at an incredible speed, my palms sweat with fear; my mind trapped in a moment.
I can no longer separate myself from these ghostly memories,
they have become a part of my soul.
This place is suffocating.

There is no other choice. Staying behind would only seal my fate.
This town will poison me as it has so many others, it will mold me into its history. I will become another pebble on the road, a crack in the sidewalk, the strong breeze in the air.

So this is it, my bittersweet goodbye.

Prompt: Describe a day in the life of a painter or artist**

Wake up. I tell myself for the millionth time.
I want to stay in bed, break away from the chaos I once called life,
but the crowd inside my head has been screaming my name for hours.
“We need you!” it continues to say, and although I want to fight back,
tell the crowd they are wrong;
that they are perfectly capable of living without me,
I know they will not stop unless I get up, they will not let me sleep.

So I get out of bed, slightly hungover from the night before.
As I slug my way to the bathroom,
I remember that even a celebrity
has the same ****** functions as a normal human being.
While I sit there, on the ***, the metal bar that holds my shower together suddenly comes apart, slicing across my neck as it break and falls.
Blood gushes from my throat and I gasp for breath through gargled pleas. Death takes me in the end and I sit on my toilet
until the maid finds my blood-soaked body.

The sound of a dog barking outside my window forces my eyes to open.  
I curse that this was merely a dream and not reality.
I flush the toilet and was my hands,
trying to avoid my reflection in the mirror.
I slither my way into my study and sit before my creations,
half finished and hardly something I would consider art.
Today is the fifth day I sit idealess,
unable to think as I once had of paintings to entice my fans.
The only thing I can remember is her…
how I have not been able to get the image of her mangled body twisted among the forgotten metal scraps out of my mind.

They had found her three weeks after she had gone missing.
It had only taken me two days to know she was no longer alive.
Since that day, I have not been able to produce a painting I enjoy;
no longer can my mind see colors for everything has turned black.

Frustrated I grab the sugarcraft knife that lies on the desk before me,
turning its sharp blade over gently in my hands.
For ten minutes I debate a decision that had already been decided five days earlier. I press the thin sharp blade against my neck and pull,
feeling no pain as it slices a thin pinking line across my throat.
As I await the sweet release of death, my blood becomes my final masterpiece.

Prompt: Fill in the details of this phrase: “The place was boarded up seven days after Easter.”**

Vacant lots remain where hundreds of cars once sat, leaving nothing behind
except their deep tracks, proof that they had once been place upon the earth.
Where there were once beautiful reds, purples and oranges,
now stand deer bitten flowers, brown sticks that seep deep into the mud like a quicksand victim.
The place was boarded up seven days after Easter, taking the ticket office too.
Every building left just as it had been moments before, as if evacuated for a storm.
That’s how they do things here, forsake places that have become a nuisance,
disregarding a place because apparently it has outstayed its welcome.
I want to go in to take one last look around campus, but they have blocked off the road
from the public. Instead I wait by the wooden horses and look at a place I once called home.
I heard that they plan to tear it all down, leaving nothing behind but a ghost
of what used to be.
So once more, what has once flourished has now been forgotten,
but its memories will live on within the hearts of its alumni.

Sometimes it is easier to see a person’s weaknesses
when they are less willing to show it.

Sometimes the only way to find the truth
Is to look behind closed doors;
Peer into the shadows of a hidden room
invisible to those around you.
They see you, but they see through you.
You are not there to them, you are merely a fly on the wall.

Beauty is truth.
Truth is beauty.

Sometimes the only way to grow
Is to accept what is
and forget what is not.
It is hard to get past what we think we know and
understand what is real, for contrary to what
others will have you believe

      There is no black and white.
Everything is a shade of gray.

But to see life and understand it…know why up is up and how down became down,
To see a color and understand why it is there...
No greater gift can be.
None.
To look past what is logical and understand what is...
If only the world could take on this idea.
If only others could see what is there.
If only.

Though the pain from watching you
     walk away
has simmered to an intolerable
Scratch,
The fire of my love has merely been reduced
to smoldering embers, still wildly glowing
With my lingering love for you.

For I still cannot look at you without my heart aching
     just a little.
I still cannot see her face next to yours
without secretly wishing I were she.

I cannot think about your new life with her
Without feeling the cold, hard stab
    of jealousy.
Cannot dream about where your new life will take you,
without wishing I could experience that with you.

What upsets me most; however, is simply that
I think these things.
That even though its been almost a month now,
Since those "bells did chime",
I still cannot completely shove you from my mind.

Though I tell myself,
"Enough is enough, he has a new life now..."
My heart struggles to believe that it is over.

It is unbelievably irritating that the harder I try
to shoo you from my thoughts,
     The more you seem to appear there.

Memories of you, I didn't even know I had
Have suddenly emerged from whatever
Darkness they were hiding in.

Practically anywhere I go...
Anything I do leaves me with an old memory of you.
Something we once did...
Words you once said to me...
Secret love no one else seemed to notice.

Though I am doing better than expected,
Getting over you...
Forgetting you...
Deems to be a task I can hardly achieve.

The act of being strong, Is failing me by the minute.
Or perhaps I am failing it.
Or perhaps the issue
Lies with the fact that everything in my little world
Seems to be changing right before my very eyes,
Leaving me completely helpless, powerless to stop it.