16 Million
16 million babies each year are engineered by teen mothers
But lets look a little smaller
273,105
Girls who annually contrive babies to life in the United States
But lets divide that number down further
35,249
Adolescent girls whose lives become defined by a child in the state of California alone
But once more lets focus in even smaller
1.
One Athena Young.
Standing slightly over 5 feet tall, with chocolate kissed skin shelling her strong build and a wide white smile full of joyous laughter that covers convincingly that which you would only know if you asked her: that she is a teen mother whose heart and soul has sufficiently suffered.

Perhaps from birth she didn’t stand a chance
Pushed out of the womb to a path of dissonance between success and endurance
A low class family whose glance rests not on her best advance but on their personal pleasure
So on they prance leaving her alone at night to fend for her own life.
And as she navigates this path she is stopped in a trance of seemingly endless romance
That swept her up into a dance that waltzed whimsically one night to her bedroom where she let this boy advance into her pants.
And that once seemingly endless romance crash lands as he implants into her the blow that log jams her path of success and sling shots her to side of endurance.
Fraught and distraught because she was never taught how to not by the people who brought her into the world
Or maybe to spite the strife they have placed in her life because as words from her sorrowed soul said “its when you don’t care about disappointing someone that bad things happen”…
And happen they did as we bid goodbye to the boy who didn’t try to be a father to his joy and pride or a husband to a bride
But instead strode out of sight with a gun at his side to a land that didn’t care whether he lived or he died because he refused to stay true to the girl tangled in his tango.
Left her glued to a growing womb
A single struggling parent, seclusion and confusion in raising a brilliant baby girl in this wicked world she had not yet navigated herself.
And grades started to drop as her life was dragged and dropped to 4 different spots within 3 sun cycle slots.
She said if only they had known that chaos that was going on at home
And the baby that was growing then they could have shown her grace and love…
But they would soon know and throw her out with doubt that she could complete courses while her veins coursed with blood to flood nutrients to nourish her new fetus.
Alone.
No comfortable home.
A lack of understanding left her with no friends to call her own.
No potential for preferential favor on this jagged darkening path too well known.
Abandoned
When suddenly a light landed and handed her a second chance to better advance
To move past her heart-break romance
Her families abstinence,
Her friends distance,
Her schools disinterest.
What was this glorious light?
The alternative high school Mark Twain,
Provided shelter in the acid rain of isolation and pain,
Tamed the sinister storm that reigned and splayed her life into disarray.
For Shanti, a beautifully big-eyed bubbly baby,
Twain gave certain shelter and care from an elder so health could bury deep and fester while her mother, her positive protector, could center on gaining a degree that in theory will better their cumulative future.

But perhaps the hill to highlight is the hunk of hamlet handed to her.
A gallant group of life-giving girls, warrior women who baked and bore and breathed life into children.
Allowing her alienating anomie to be history by fulfilling her need for meaningful community. People who can share relating stories of baby daddy drama, family problems, baby progress. They understood and gave value to a valiant victor whose violent world had previously brought her bitter.
There was room to be a mother,
And room to be just another teenager
A people that taught her to lead her daughter to grow up with honor of her soul’s armor so the similar story would not cycler any further.
And her giving advice to her fellow friends raising soon to be men to avoid the vice she strides against, to teach their boys “to not leave the girl”, striving and fighting to brighten the bleak world that they are no longer merely surviving but thriving in with the aid of the high school who looks past the “normal” and “socially acceptable” and to the broken and vulnerable.
Now she sits.
Waiting.
Anticipating.
The degree her hands will soon hold.
The college campus her calloused feet will soon conquer.
Seeing her dreams of being a military general driving down the street towards reality
Thanks to the inspiring community.

So 1.
One Athena Young.
One out of 16 million moms
Whose once overcast life has forever been spun to the ever-brightening sun
By a school that showed her love and
By friendships that fought to rise above.

I wish we could go back there, to that one time,
When it was you and I in the city at night,
Talking beneath the light of the moon.
When I felt freely and fully alive.
When you first asked to kiss me before striding out of sight.
And we laughed and listened,
exchanging stories of two souls in a past life,
before they knew what the other was like.
When your blue eyes and seamless smile momentarily erased my fright
in their effortless warmth and wonder.
And I walked away, high in flight but utterly terrified.
I was falling.
Trying with all my might to halt.
I never wanted anyone more than I wanted you that night.
And you wanted me too.
So I would fight to stay by your side,
Which is strange and foreign to my independent type.
Never thinking upon speaking that you were someone I would actually like,
Let alone allow to wreak strife all over my mind.
But lets forget the fact that for now you are gone
And simply go back to that one time,
When it was you and I in the city at night.

I once met a girl,
She waltzed past me in the woods.
Mesmerized by her moves, I followed her path.
She sung a melody that enticed me
Her eyes spoke her mind and I didn’t mind
The rope it wove around me as I walked behind.
Passing trees as free as she,
I neglected to see the edge she so elegantly danced off
And when my sight came to I realized
I was falling.
My darling, I was
           Falling
                                    For you.

She was alone,
Positively prone to persistent poverty
Cruelty
Shown shuttering darkness as the door locked,
The light gone.
Her moms love massacred monstrous by drugs
As her heart stirred to stone
But see, she’d rather be alone.
She could die by neglect benign rather than the desired suicide
A homicide
Would cause the law to head on collide with her mom’s careless ride
And crush her from the inside.
Mental ******
As prison became her permanent reside
Why was suicide desired,
Seen brighter,
Than life?
Why was dying alone,
Locked in the never ending absence of home,
better than being with her?
She only provided horror,
Terror,
Tore her limb from limb,
Skinned her clean and hung her limp
Her body was perfectly profitable
Tasty, like prey for an animal
So mom made money, men got ******, and her spirit died brutal
Utterly dishonorable
She clung on for survival
All the while that devil on her shoulder told her to crumble
To let go and tumble
For the darkness of the depths would feel better than the bombs of this one-woman brothel
And in despair so utterly understandable her hand unbuckled
and she released.
As gravity pushed, her speed increased
Chest hit the ground, her battling lungs ceased,
Blood clung to life on the sidewalk, filling every crease.
Peering over the edge,
her mothers face was emotionally at peace
as the light of her day forever deceased.

‘Cause I looked up at you as
Glory shout through my ears
And lightning struck my chest.
You sat,
Entirely unaware of the shock you
Sent through me.
I battled against every tear
Forming in the wells of my eyes
As they simply stopped,
Staring at you.
Quietly. You remained, unnoticing.
Breath barely found my lips.
You wrote.
Glasses hanging from your face
Glancing the words and they rolled
On and on.
And on and on
I gazed at you.
The heaving thud of my heart
Tearing tremors through my fingertips
And they tried to convey
You.
Poorly. As if knowing their inadequacy.
Even if written in blood upon the page
Only my veins
Would know what that lightening was like.
Slowly.
Only they have felt every drop you have
Changed in me.

My, how inexplicably beautiful you are, but I cannot tell you.
You are gone, and the lights are off,
And I am alone.

It’s dark.
No, more than that, it’s entirely stripped of light.
The hairs on my arms are rising.
The air strikes the back of my throat, freezing my esophagus, as it penetrates my lungs.
I hear a thud.
It’s slow.
Deep.
Low.
Cautiously I step.
My hesitant footsteps echo.
As I creep the thud gets slower,
Deeper.
Lower.
It surrounds my body, seeping into every crevasse, breezing through my hair, running under my fingernails, crawling onto my knuckles, climbing into my ear canal.
I continue creeping.
With every echo I am coming closer.
My breath is hushed,
reserved.
Suddenly
A single red light flips on, shinning down on a glass box.
But I cannot make out what is inside.
It holds the thud but my eyes cannot see what is ringing in my ears.
Creeping,
I reach the box.
I see It now.
Suffocating.
Barely pumping as Its blood is wrung out, dripping, covering the bottom of the box.
It is captured,
Caught in a hand with a grasp too tight.
It’s fading quickly.
I glance down at my chest,
At the jagged hole releasing my insides.
I need It back.
Panic sets in.
Enraged, my jaw clenches, and I kick the glass.
It sits still.
Seemingly cemented on its stand.
I kick and kick and kick and kick.
My hands ball into fists, held tight, arm swings back,
And I release.
I hit.
I hit and hit and kick and hit
And nothing changes.
It sits, still, encompassed in glass, with ever slowing beats.
With all my weight I push,
In hope of forcing it off the stand to shatter on the ground.
Stuck.
It will not move.
It wells up in my throat and I scream.
I scream and kick and hit and fight as tears flood down my face
I fight.
To retrieve what is gone.
Lost.
Dying.
It is in your hand.
Tight.
Dying.
Why did I give it to you?
Tears flowing, arms flying, breath heaving, I fight
and fight but I cannot break the glass to release your grasp.
I stop.
Blood rising in the box and covering It up,
Suffocating.
Drowning.
Thud… thud…. thud….. thud…… thud…… thud…….
Silence.
The light shuts off, stripped back.
Tears freeze to my flesh.
And the emptiness is all that resides.

Again it has returned.
As I waltz,
Immersed in the flowers of the meadow.
Enveloped entirely in the rays of the sun.
I wander, in wonder,
Peaceful wonder,
Into the cave of evergreen woods.
The rays that once warmed me
Do not reach me there.
As I turned to leave,
Bolting towards the opening I’d entered,
It was deceased.
No Exit.
And that is when I see it.
Its **** yellow eyes fixated on me.
Its body, tar black, stands next to a tree.
Staring.
Sinister.
Its chest, in and out, contracting, shaking slightly
The bush dying at his hands.
Emotionless.
The place is barren of sunlight.
Just the black horned creature,
With **** yellow eyes,
And the single candle that illuminates his face.
Why has he returned?
Did You not take him away?
The ground has clawed onto my feet.
I glance down at them, then back up again.
And suddenly he is there.
Smelling his breath on my face.
His ripped tongue
Slithers out,
Licking the purse of my lips
Ever so slightly.
Breathing.
Staring.
Emotionless.
The pounds of my heart strike their blow and
I crumble.
Crashing towards the ground, where his hooves find rest.
Too weak to fight this battle once again.

Naked, wrapped in nothing but a ***** white towel we’d stolen from the pool,
She shook.
Pain that stabbed her insides as the initial shock was ripped off like a Band-Aid used to heal a wound but this…
this one was ripped off too soon because her heart has not yet begun to heal.
It was shattered in a pile of “I no longer love you’s” and
As tears shot like bullets down her face,
Piercing her chest, she said it, the question that holds no answer:
“How could God let me love someone so much,
who doesn’t love me back?”

Sitting amidst a world of beauty,
Of rolling mountains, winding rivers, roaring oceans,
Of crystal blues and emerald greens,
You are still the only thing on my mind.
Capturing my thoughts.
Constraining my ideas.
Because the Pfeiffer
Only reminds me of you yet
It doesn’t even compare to the striking blue
of your eyes.
And the entirety of the scene I sit in is incomparable to your splendor.
Oh how I wish you were here.
Beside me,
Gazing upon these sights
As I gaze upon you.
And if I could stay here,
In all of this wondrous creation,
Forever,
But that forever was without you,
Than I would chose to leave,
To storm out of the absurdity.
If this place is breathtaking than you have suffocated me,
Stealing more air from my lungs than this world ever could.
I crave you.
I crave your laugh and the smile that follows,
I crave your grasp and your warmth,
I crave the words that pour from your lips.
Oh your lips.
May I feel their kiss that floods my body from head to toe?
It is limerence with you.
Why do you have the hold on me that you do?
Even your flaws,
They drive me insane,
The insane where nothing else can be done because you
Are all that I am on.
You upstage these cliffs and outshine these stars.
The glow radiating from this sunset takes me back to the glow of your skin,
That first roped me in, and has since refused to let go.
And as these sand fleas hop from grain to grain
Your image hops around in my brain
And I cannot wait to sleep,
For morning will bring a new day and that new day may carry your voice with it
And place it in my ever-craving ear.
Hurting to hear your beauty that is triumphant
Over the sound of these slow rolling waves.
As cheesy as this may be,
The cheesiness you deem to hate,
I write all of this,
Which your eyes may never see,
Your ears never hear,
Your hands never touch,
Simply to say…
I miss you.

“That dark night in the soul where it’s always 2:00 in the morning”
…Its 2:35 and I am feeling that.
There is a reason people are afraid of the dark,
The Devil lurks there.
Haunting us with lies that begin to feel real,
Because maybe they are.
Maybe they are not lies at all
But rather uncensored revelations of the truth.
The truth that we would rather tie up with a neat bow
Or simply ignore all together.
The raw slab of human flesh that Lecter slaps down on ***** plate in front of us,
that makes our stomach quiver.
And perhaps his greatest deceit is making us think they are lies.
For if they are,
There will be no need to change them because they are not real.
And they will continue to linger in our lives.
They will destroy us.
And we will point our fingers at God in blame, screaming
“WHY DIDN’T YOU SAVE US!”
Because we sit awake,
At 2:44,
Lurking in line with the Devil.

Because I am supposed to be writing this
And all I can think about is you.
And you are all that I have written about
For hours uncountable to thieves.
How have you stolen all I know
With smiles stretched across our faces?
Veins pulsing through my wrists
Reflecting the green of your ever-gleaming eyes.
Beer bottles dripped of shared saliva
Dareful demons in a room of angels.
You, seeping my sweatshirt in smells of you.
                  Oh God, how they envied us.
                  Oh God, how I envied us.

I walked into the woods and there you were again.
Amidst the brush
Staring at me with those all too familiar yellow eyes.
In the crisp winter air, your breath was white,
Contrasting the shade of your face.
The chill in my spine sent shockwaves through my heart
Infuriating its ventricles.
I glanced down at the war in my chest
And suddenly your breath heaved against my neck.
This time I did not cower.
Looking you in the eye,
Breast touching breast,
Words welled up in my throat
And exploded as spit upon your face.

Then I set my feet on the path,
          Finding my way to the meadow where she lay.

As the rain dripped down the edge of the windowsill
I thought,
Maybe we were meant for another time.

Headlight after headlight passed by
Contrasting the nocturnal night
And blinding my eye.

Melancholy music tore open the memories of my mind.
A flood of earlier times
As we drove the desert dry.

You were my pain in person,
Torn with tears
And seared in secrets.

The tangled up sheets of
Dream and desire
Shackled in the chamber of
Crude laughter & closed doors.

You were the figure
Dancing on the inflection of
“*******”

The water penetrating my pulsating
Flesh
As it pressed against the shower’s floor.

You were the fingers inside me,
Numbing the walls
reeking of desperation and
Drenched in depression.

The solemn shot burning the shards of shattered wood that
Stabbed through my esophagus,
Branding the butterflies of
Suffocating screams and smiling sofas.

Moonlight kissed your skin
And laughter escaped your lips.

Your fingers caressed the
Palm of my hand,
Claiming these memories
And attaching them to the fading melody.

In the second of silence between two songs,
You were my story:
Encompassing my pain,
And wiping it clean.