We pray for children
who sneak popsicles before supper,
who erase holes in math workbooks,
who can never find their shoes.

And we pray, for those
who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire,
who can't bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers,
who never "counted potatoes,"
who are born in places where we wouldn't be caught dead,
who never go to the circus,
who live in an ******* world.

We pray for children
who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions,
Who sleep with the cat and bury goldfish,
Who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money,
Who squeeze toothpaste all over the sink,
Who slurp their soup.

And we pray for those
who never get dessert,
who have no safe blanket to drag behind them,
who watch their parents watch them die,
who can't find any bread to steal,
who don't have any rooms to clean up,
whose pictures aren't on anybody's dresser,
whose monsters are real.

We pray for children
who spend all their allowance before Tuesday,
who throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food,
who like ghost stories,
who shove ***** clothes under the bed,
and never rinse out the tub,
who get visits from the tooth fairy,
who don't like to be kissed in front of the carpool,
who squirm in church or temple and scream in the phone,
whose tears we sometimes laugh at
and whose smiles can make us cry.

And we pray for those
whose nightmares come in the daytime,
who will eat anything,
who have never seen a dentist,
who aren't spoiled by anybody,
who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep,
who live and move, but have no being.

We pray for children
who want to be carried
and for those who must,
for those we never give up on
and for those who don't get a second chance.
For those we smother…
and for those who will grab the hand of anybody
kind enough to offer it.

We pray for children. Amen


-Ina Hughs

The fact of life is that you will change.
The secret to living is knowing you are changing.
And the trick to growing instead of decaying, is taking responsibility for your own personal evolution.

You are not bound to this instant, This moment is at the mercy of your influence.


-Rowan A. Eyzaguirre

It's the chills, the chills that you feel scuttling from the edges of your face toward your nose during the thrill of overstimulated excitement, or release. Brought on by physical speed or sensation, a feeling conjured by something audible, a story or a song, a race or the breath exhaled right before you truly test yourself physically, or maybe it's just the view over the pass that you've been hiking to for countless hours that forces your mind to flood it's body and soul with a substance so euphoric that it hovers between a liquid and a gas.

A sensation that grows and multiplies over the surface of your skin. Like a time lapse of grass encroaching on a patch of fresh soil, reaching up with soft blades, ready soon enough to lie down on under the summer sun.

The rippling shiver that makes the skin on your face feel like flowing sand, like a sound check for the nerves in your face saying: "I don't think you can comprehend this feeling right now. Of being alive. The sort of alive that makes you understand how dead you have been your entire life up until now. The sort of alive that makes you question why people spend their entire lives never waking up from their deathbed. Never wanting to get up to feel the blood rush through their veins and test what being alive could really mean."

-Rowan A. Eyzaguirre

Before then I thought I had felt it all. I thought I had felt the hottest hate and the warmest love, the coldest loneliness and the smoothest sorrow. But in that moment I thought my blood would ignite. Every blood vessel in my body felt the instant pressure of rage, a burning heat of pain with the searing speed of betrayal I thought I could never handle.
Simultaneously my heart froze, my pump couldn't take getting pierced any deeper. So in the moment between a blink and the tear, ice entombed my heart. Making sure nothing would ever cut so deep again. Even the heated rage of my blood doesn't stand a chance to warm my soul in time for the spring melt.

-Rowan A. Eyzaguirre

Excuse me sir, but could you leave her alone. She didn't ask for you here and she's terrified you might look at her with your eyes so self-serving.
Excuse me sir, but please never speak like that again. Your giving men a bad name, a man like you are the reason boys like me never had a chance. It's men like you that taught women how to be terrified. It's men like you that taught them how they should see themselves. It's men like you that make me sick. It's a man like you I wish I could I could see the blood run out of your face, as my boot comes down to close your mouth for the last time. It's men like you who need a knife to separate your body from your soul. Slick with red and never satisfied, that knife I wish I held in my hand. I know what I do with my anger will never change what you've done to the beauty in women. But maybe selfishly, i might feel less embarrassed to be apart of your same gender, If only I could hold the hammer that stopped you in your tracks. Blood trickling down your face while tears stream off mine. My eyes so bloodshot I can't see your pain anymore. Because I don't care how you feel, a man like you doesn't deserve a listening ear or an eye that cares, a man like you deserves to drown in hot oil, so you can feel the blisters rise and pop just like the burn you've left in that girl's spirit. Except your pain cannot compare, so I intend to make you withstand as much as I can give you before I stick a barrel in your mouth and clear your throat with lead. I'll hollow you'r chest so you might finally know what it's like to feel empty because of someone else.

They fit so unnaturally you could swear they were pieces from different puzzles. The one part you have control over, the one piece you can manipulate, might fit alongside someone else's, but you know the color will never match up.
The lines mismatched, ends desperately trying to find each other by any means. Trying to squeeze a connection so tight you might be able to relate.
It's the kind of cosmic joke that makes you cry so seriously that you know you could go the next week without saying a word.
because it's so not funny you would rather sleep for days on end than try to convince yourself it's worth getting up in the morning.

-RÆ

No matter how hard I pushed, I couldn't be the cure of her disease.
Without fail, my pressing reason, trying to grind out the addiction plaguing her life, would bounce right back to remind me that it isn't my sobriety to claim.
She needed her own help, not mine.

Though I know now it was never my job, and I knew all along it was never my fault, it does sting my withered heart to know it was never my responsibility.
That maybe I never did and never could make a difference.

But the saddest page of this story is where I finally come to terms with the jealousy flowing through my veins. Pure unparalleled jealousy and hatred for a chemical that without fail has controlled countless lives.
Jealousy that stems from the realization that I couldn't and won't ever be her drug of choice. I'm not as good as that simple compound.
Everything my life had to offer pales in comparison to an intangible high.
My humor, my laughter, and my smile were worthless compared to the instant satisfaction that her drug gave her. My life becomes secondary to an inanimate chemical.
My heart became a side order to an entree of addiction.

-RÆ