she can't cope.

"Just put a happy

face on it"

was all they had told her,

so that's what she had done.

The mask

the brilliant smiles made

fooled all but her.

The pain wasn't going away

from her; it was going deeper,

to places much harder

and more painful

to clean.

Her feelings festered inside

for years,

 nothing real,

only a display of masks

with moving eyes haunting

every step.

She battles

them, they crack,

and people begin to see

through her.

She's afraid.

She doesn't want to face them.

She doesn't want to lose

what she loves.

People begin to pester her.

She isn't one of "them" anymore.

her self-esteem

plummets,

and she begins to fear

rejection.

she pushes others away

and begins to fear commitment,

or anything that resembles

Love.

With no one

to comfort

her, she begins to let the emotions out, unable

to completely

control the vent of steam inside.

No one's ever taught her.

Depression

seeps into her. Things that once brought

joy

now hurt

or don't affect her. People who once thought

they knew

her realize

how wrong

they had been.

They drift away.

Rejection

seeps in.

A thought comes to her-

the thought she'd rather die

than to go through it

any longer.

Simple solution:

she kills herself.

Everybody's shocked.

Why?

My heart is not at home.

My teachers love me so deeply,

more than my legal guardian aunt,

more intensely, passionately,

then my own mother.

This school of brick and mortar is my real house.

The teachers are my parents,

the counselors, guardian angels,

the other students, siblings.

I sleep in a building made of brick and mortar like

my home is, but it is not

my home. In here

I am as a troubled, bothersome ghost;

I drift by, leaving the other cold,

wanting to fight the chill-

or what caused it.

But fighting ghosts does nothing.

They only get angrier.

and have visited many moons

Through this galactic journey

I emerge

different

for you can never

truly

go somewhere

without taking a piece of it

with you, to be a part of you.

After so many pieces

there are none left.

Of many moons I have taken the first,

of the Planets

I have taken the last.

Of the moons

there will soon be others;

of the Planets

I stand

Alone.

with tubes

coming out of him

everywhere.

I find it ironic

people waited to help

until it was

too late.

I hear people talking-

people I once thought I knew.

I was too hungry for love,

for acceptance,

to see through the masks,

and if not for now

I probably never would.

Whoever said ignorance

is bliss

never felt

betrayal.

without becoming depressed.

Success is being held by the one I love

and feeling loved in return,

never again feeling

alone.

Never again feeling like I don't belong,

like I'll never be good enough.

Like I don't have the strength to stand

on my own two feet-

because when I feel like that,

I don't.

When is it the time of no turning back?

When is the time of no reconciliation?

When is the time of losing my mind?

Or have I already lost it?

Has the time come and gone?

What must I do?

What can I do?

Is there such a thing as time travel?

Can I go back to the past and make emends,

or will nobody ever forget,

ever forgive?

The wind was fierce,

the rain came down in sheets.

She came,

she talked to me,

kept my eyes off the storm-

until passed away-

she was my hero.

I needed a hero.

A new storm began to rage,

trees began to fall,

the waters were about to rise,

I was about to lose it all.

He came, he hugged me,

told me everything would be all right-

and then it was.

He was my hero.

I need a hero.

In time another storm will come.

It may only take a smile

to make the sun shine,

a hug

to make the waters recede.

Will you be my hero?

That these people could really stop

whenever they wanted.

I couldn't.

I snapped at a word

a look

a person's presence.

I can't.

I even know why.

Most people don't.

but even in the knowledge I can't stop it.

Even though I want for all the world to close that chapter of my life I can't. I'm scared. It's been a part of who I am too long. An essential part of how people understand me. I wonder if they would think of me the same way if they didn't know. I wonder if I could possibly hide it. I wonder at so many things. I never felt anger before this. I don't know what to do with it. I don't know if I could really let it all go when it's thrown in my face constantly. Or is it? Is it only me hitting myself between the eyes? I lick wounds with acid. They never go away. I feel a consuming fire burning within me and it is definitely not the one they talk about in church. I don't relate to anyone there anymore. I don't relate to the youth. I feel as if my life is coming to close because of the seeming preparation I have for it. Like the child whose dreams just before her death teach her to have an understanding far beyond even her father's age. I will fight this. I don't know if I'll win, but I'll fight this. I don't want to be the life that teaches all to live life to the fullest. I don't want to be the one to die in the fullness of youth with everything in the future going for them. I don't want to be that person. Why do I feel I'm going to be? It seems a heretic thing to say, but I feel as if I'm cursed. Like someone, somewhere, really hates me and wants me to die a slow and painful death. How can I fight it if I don't even know from where the evil comes? Or is it really evil? Is it the good fighting an evil me? Am I the one at fault? Lately it seems I might be. I might be turning darker by the second. Personally I think I'm just letting more out than I did before. That the people are getting to know a deeper level, a darker level of my personality. I think I got fed up with the rainbows and flowers lie that people seemed to believe of me. I wanted them to see me for who I am and now they are and I wish they had never caught the glimpse. People have a habit of blowing things out of proportion. If they think the slightest bad, it's all bad. Just like one apple spoiling a barrel. I can't seem to handle this. I'm barely controlling myself from blowing up in somebody's face. I break down over and over again. I don't know what's wrong with me. It can't be just the one thing. It just can't be. And yet even with all the other things it still doesn't seem like enough to break me down like this. Somebody needs to help me but nobody can. I'm the only one who can get me out of this mess. And I just don't know how. How can I even serve what I believe to be my calling and help people if I keep breaking down like this? That's like a patient performing surgery. It just isn't done. What am I supposed to do?

These thoughts keep crashing into my mind,

thoughts of anger and discontent, thoughts of action.

Why do none of these thoughts become action?

What am I afraid of? Is she really- Does she really

have that strong a stranglehold

over me?

Do her hands

still grasp my neck,

any second to snap it?

Will that memory

haunt me forever,

will I never be able

to really trust again?

But again the anger.

She senses it. It feeds her.

It feeds her anger, strengthens

her hold, which makes me angrier.

Some day she will succeed

in snapping my neck-

unless I get out of here. again with the action. How am I supposed to get out of here?

What if I fail?

Then what?

The attempt will surely cost my life.

But what do I have

if I don't attempt?

A chance?

I have a chance if I try... but- the certain end...

they would hunt me down.

It's so near the end

but so far away.

I don't know if I can quite- if I yet have the strength

to pull myself through these last few.

She wishes me fail.

She pulls me down,

all in the hopes

of teaching me to be the subservient, firm "lady"

she wants me to be,

at the same time exacting revenge

for wrongs done her by a face

that looks like

mine but is not,

that I know not.

The past is seen within me

and I am the only one

that keeps it where it belongs.

I am, to her, a ghost

that haunts her every dream,

her every memory,

her every step,

pulling her into the abyss

of madness.

I wonder if I am already there?

Who would, if honest

with themselves, really

be able to tell?

who could fathom the depths

of foreverness,

of nothingness,

to tell what

it was like and what it might

look like?

And what is madness?

Is not madness

simply the perpetual state of being misunderstood?

Are we not all

mad?

Who can really

say that they are completely

known?

Fools, who do not know themselves,

may make the attempt,

but to what avail?

We say they are fools,

and then what?

Have we captured

with so shallow

a term the entirety

of their human existence,

however shallow their existence

may have been?

For instance, why

are they fools?

For the why

is an important factor,

indeed a part of the what

of who they are.

I don't allow myself anger.

Anger kills me.

Anger brings a directionless fist.

Anger breeds frustration.

Anger brings tears.

Anger kills all.