I fell in love with the girl behind the screen. You were an ex-convict who spoke too sweetly of the way my legs looked in the exaggeratedly posed photos I would send you. In my state of false teen rebellion and defiance for society, I did the one thing you told me to never do; I fell in love with you. Thoughts of you sent me into a fourth dimension where sunrises did not signal the end of sleep but rather the beginning of a slothful day. I wanted to kiss every freckle I imagined would be on your face; imagined only because I never knew what your face held, and feared I never would. I fell in love with a faceless girl. Mirages of walking hand in hand through the streets were inevitable, until darkness came and those sweet mirages morphed to the pleasure of your whimpering body tied to the bed. Whilst I dreamt of being with you, you were enveloped with your girlfriend who spent too much time with others who were not you. I imagine I gave in to giving you everything you plead for all too easily, giving you too much. I gorged you with texts of compassion when you begged for relationships of sadism, a gorging of the type I did not wish to give you. I wanted to be the girl that caused your empty breaks in conversation when you would forget how to speak for the brevity of a moment. For weeks I incessantly checked my phone for your messages I would never receive, for you would never love me. No, never in the way I was in love with you. I fell in love with the one thing that could destroy me without ever laying eyes on me. I fell in love with a face I would never see.

I speak out for the children whose homes have become warzones,
They are afraid to open their mouths in fear bullets will fire.
Shaking and hiding inside of this covering they call skin,
Words that will never be spoken are encased in a
Heart they wish would quit beating.
Words are pounding at walls created too thick to escape
Into a society that boycotts free thinking.

Children scream in alleys, never to be heard.
Children with fears louder than their screams.
Children whisper words they wish were important enough for someone to listen;
Soon they find the only one to listen will be a blank page.

Words burst the walls down of their prison hearts
And flow to the fingertips of the young bodies with the still beating hearts,
Even though they used to wish it would quit beating.

The words that escaped to the paper will be read,
And society will call it inappropriate,
And parents will call it a phase,
And friends will laugh,
And teachers will not understand,
And the children will feel alone in the only place they have ever called home.

The pens, notebooks, and fugitive words will be moved from the kitchen table
To the locked drawer of the nightstand;
Only to breathe cold night air of a sleeping home.
The children will learn to hide every thought they have ever had,
Because they are afraid of the warzone we call the world.

There is a girl you will see at 8 a.m.
Drinking her morning coffee.
She will wear flowers in her hair
And never stop smiling.
Happy.
She will be happy.

Did you know,
Only one-tenth of an iceberg can be seen.
All the rest is under the water.
Hidden.

Did you know,
This is the girl
At 8 a.m.
Happy.
Only one-tenth.
Hidden.

Because
There is a girl you will not see at 1 a.m.
Choking down her sleeping pills.
She will hold a razor blade in her hand
And never stop crying.
Sad.
She will be sad.

But you will never see sad,
For sad hides in the dresser
With the razor blades and pills.

And she will struggle to be awake at 8 a.m.,
Dissolve her pills in her morning coffee.
She will pick daisies and put them behind her ear
Because they were her mother's favorites.
And she will smile
Because she does not know what else to do.
She will force the word into her mind,
Happy.
Happy.
You will be happy.

Her pale and cold fingers
Gripped the ends of her sweater
Tighter
Tighter
As their words ever so slowly
Tore her apart.

Later that night
Her head will drop
Slowly
Slowly
Down as she stares
At the empty bottle of pills.

She has found her way out of the labyrinth.

You are the worst kind of monster.
Not the kind that hides under the bed,
Or in the closet,
Or even in the dark.

Because you did not hide.
You lived in my neighborhood,
In the daylight.

Unsuspecting.          Watching.           Stalking.

You watched us for weeks,
Two ten year old girls.
Cataloged every step we took.
Ignorance and innocence blinded us from you,
And our lives were beautiful.
Until you decided to take one.

Ending.          Ruining.          Stealing.

When the news broke,
You hid.
But you did not hide your tracks.
And they found you.
And I was told the truth,
Shes never coming home from that walk.
You stole more than a girl that day.

You stole her innocence,
Her virginity,
And her chance to grow up.
You stole her entire life,
And that was not yours to take.

The court charged you with second degree ******.
But who cares what that really means.
All I know is you will spend the rest of your life
In this cell.
At least it is better than no life at all.

Rotting.          Pacing.          Thinking.

There were crimes you made that day,
That you will never be charged with.
You took more than one life on
March 28th, 2006.
For you have taken my life too.
My innocence.
My happiness.
And my sanity.
And that was not yours to take.

I have not been alive since I was ten years old.
Another life you stole,
But one that you cannot be punished for.
For I am

Rotting.          Pacing.          Thinking.

Over that day too.
I relive those moments every day.
And what gave you the right
To take our lives?

You are the worst kind of monster.
You did not come from a horror movie,
But you do reside in my nightmares.

That day's memories are swirled in my head,
An ombre mix of anger and tears.
Gone.
You are gone.
You pulled a vanishing act in and out of my life
And suddenly I wonder if you were there at all.
I was so young,
A age where they teach you object
p-e-r-m-a-n-e-n-c-e.
But you were not permanent at all.
To tell a ten year old
Her friend is never coming home
Will tear her
a-p-a-r-t
For the rest of her life.

"How have you been?"
You asked me emptily out of habit.
To tell you the truth?
Let me think.
To tell you the truth, I stopped eating three months ago,
          But you wouldn't notice that.
To tell you the truth, I'm having an affair with my manager,
          But you wouldn't care about that.
To tell you the truth, I've been depressed and suicidal since you left me,
          But you wouldn't want to know that.
To tell you the truth, I have empty liquor bottles laced through my apartment,
          But you already know that.
To tell you the truth, I've developed a stutter from my antisocial anxiety disorder,
          But you could hear that.
To tell you the truth, I've reopened those scars on my arm from when I was ten,
          But you could see that.
To tell you the truth, I'm still in love with you,
          But you couldn't handle that.
So I just said
Good
And avoided eye contact to avoid the chance you'll see past
My lie.