lying in a grass feild surrounded by my thoughts wind droning on about the flowers

Hear the music of my heart Hear the birds in the trees Hear you breathing next to me

See the bright blue sky see the clouds driting through see the beautiful face of you

feel the grass on my fingers feel your breath as it lingers feel the stress melting away

Smell the clean air smell the freshly bloomed fowers smell the colone in your hair

Taste the spit in my mouth Taste that this is going south Taste your lips in my mouth

Feel you grabbing my skin Feel you pulling me in Feel myself creating a sin

Hear your jagged breaths Hear your heart beating fast Hear your eyes blink

See your eyes closed See the wonder that unfolds See you grab my dress

Smell your cologne stronger now Smell your sweet breath Smell the air feeling warmer

Taste your tounge tangled in mine Taste you biting my lip Taste the sweet victory of a kiss

Hear the birds sing Hear you breathe Hear you sigh

See you shed a tear See you pull me near See you hug me tight

Feel you embrace me Feel your gentle kisses Feel you stroke my arm

Smell the grass underneath us Smell the space between us Smell our newfound love

Taste sweet success Taste one final kiss Taste a bitter goodbye

I was running. No time to think about anything. Just run. Don't question why.

"Your just doing your job" a little voice in my head said.

"Your not a bad person"

As I chased the target down in the woods I slowly assured myself that I was a good person even though deep down I know it's not true.

I threw one of my blades at the target and hit them in the back making them fall to the ground with a thud.

I pulled my knife out of their back. I turned them over and tried not to look at their face. This one hurt more then the rest. Yet I couldn't figure out why.

I slit their throat quickly with precision

I dragged the body out of the woods and disposed of it.

I went home and yelled into the house, "honey I'm home!"

No response.

"Honey?" I yelled again this time with more worry in my voice.

I started looking around the house for her.

Nothing.

It was then I realized I made the biggest mistake of my life.

I looked at a picture of me and her together smiling, that was laying on the counter.

The only difference was the blood.

You disgust me.

I wait in water, as murky as this body’s limitations.

You dragged me down, since I’m gurgling in this little puddle.

You fail me, my vessel.

Potential thrown as your muscles rip.

This mass of matter, floating and moving as one, analyzing information and forever lasting,

Stuck in a prison.

Only made of flesh and bones.

Constant possibilities wasted as this body wastes away.

You are holding me back, human.

But you’re me.

And I’m you.

Am I?

As this body decays, this mass dancing in the dark scrambles to ways of salvation.

I can’t be held back, I can live forever.

I am immortal.

The vessel bent and broken, muscles jerking, eyes dimming, the brain signals for help, a hand stretching out before the rest of the brain’s body darkens, bringing this immortal potential down with the mortal and decomposing vessel for the last time.

My sister liked photography. She snapped pictures of everything. It always bothered me when I found pictures of animals eating other animals or of dead things.

Our upbringing shoved us from trailer to apartment, then back and forth enough that we never really understood our mother. I left home as soon as I turned of age. All I ever wanted was stability. What I wanted for my mother defied my mother’s definition of good life and she pushed her views on my sister.

When I found time to visit once, my mother called me out on my way back. At that time, they lived in an apartment decorated to look like the interior was made of wood.

“I don’t know why you’d want to go back,” she said.

“Because I have a bed there. I’ll have a bed there as long as I need.”

“You have a place here.”

“Where? I don’t remember this place from last time.”

“We moved. You left and we had to move on.”

I said, “And I moved on once. I came to visit. I’m going back to where I left.”

Her eyes became half open. “I’m getting older. You need to come back to be with us.”

“Or you can stop moving.”

“Life moves me. I have no choice in the matter.”

“We know that isn’t true.”

“What do you know! You moved out. You haven’t been here.”

“I know you.”

I saw on her face that she wanted to tell me to go to hell, but my sister was in the next room. She always played nice around her. She came out carrying her photo album.

“Hey, big bubba, you want to look at my pictures with me?”

My mother returned to her room. My sister and I looked at her album on the sofa. It told our lives in a straight line until I moved out. I finally saw some of her and others or her and mother.

As my mother aged, my sister stayed with her. My mother found ways to shake things up even in retirement. She’d rationalize it by saying that God did it. Her faith is what kept her alive longer than anything else. I tried to get her to stop, but she told me she’d stop when God let her. I told her she was a moron. We didn’t talk much as she became older.

One day, I received a call from my sister. She wanted out. The honest truth isn’t what she wanted to hear. My mother needed a place to live by herself where she would stay. My sister tried, but never left her side. From what I heard, the two talked less and less.

The end was silent between them under one roof. I came to visit with my fiancée. My sister and mother played house well, but it was clear that she hated mother.

The two argued like an old married couple when they did talk, and marriage was one of the reasons the two argued. My sister found a guy she liked. She wanted to move in with him. My mother told her that she was abandoning her. My sister packed her bags and left.

On the way out, my mother told us of a trip she was taking to Chile. I told her to watch back. She told me that God was watching her.

For the first time in years, I prayed for her safety.

I returned to life at home. My fiancée and I prepped for marriage. The weeks spun on until it seemed to blur through the year. In the middle of a Saturday morning, I was about to mow when I received a call from Chile.

“Mr. Daniels? Your mother is Flora?”

“Yes, Flora Daniels,” I said.

“I’m sorry to pass on the news Mr. Daniels. Your mother has passed.”

The news didn’t hit me immediately. The talk was short afterward except for the details of how to deal with her body. She was to be cremated. I cried in bed that night.

My sister flew in for her funeral service. She stayed in the our spare room. She asked if I’d like to see her album. I said I’d see it when I had time. She left it on the coffee table to go shopping with my fiancée the morning after the service.

After I finished my morning schedule, I went to see the pictures. I turned through all of them. My sister seemed to have left her husband and also traveled South. The last picture is what really struck me. It was of my mother’s hand, laying blue and purple, as if she was dead.

“June 2nd.. only daughter of a single dad.” “Born on June 2nd. According to his Facebook posts for your last four birthdays, and your friend Kendal’s birthday post on instagram. You guys looked so cute in those old pictures. So young. You’ve grown up so much.” “I wondered how important 0-6-0-2 would be to him. I wondered, would 0-6-0-2 be his front door code? Surely it couldn’t be so simple, but I had to test my theory.” “So I waited, waited for old dad to get done with his 9-5, pull up past his chipped white picket fence. He should really have one of the neighborhood kiddos come by and touch that up… anyways past his fence into the driveway, up to the door and… 0-6-0-2! Happy Birthday Lily right! Every time you walk in the door, Happy birthday to you. The numbers were a little blurry through the binoculars but I knew what I was looking for. And I was right, but wait! What was that noise? As he opened the door, I heard a beeping and it didn’t seem to stop until a few seconds after he shut the door.” He leaned down and lifted Lily’s head above the grass field she laid cold in so that he could bring her in close enough that he not have to raise his voice. Not that anyone would hear them out here. “Is that an alarm system? Now! I got to wondering what could the code to the alarm be…” “You don’t think?” “Lily your father surely wouldn’t use the same code for the door as his alarm system? Right” “Another theory to be tested.” “When did I do it” “Anytime during the forty hours any given week your father sat in that cubicle selling stock paper and you even more that you were off at school or with Jason who your father always thought was Nicole you slut!” “Now that I have the code to the door I walked in. Broad daylight. That beeping is annoying let’s take care of that. 0-6-0-2” He grabs Lily’s red splattered cheeks and pulls them back to make her blueing lips crest a smile. “Alarm disengaged” “Wow!” “So I decided to make myself at home, his flat was tidy, I expected a mess based on how wrinkled he keeps his wardrobe but I guess not everything about your dad is worn on his sleeve. I found your room.. and took a few souvenirs from your top drawer. I found your dad’s room too, and I remembered him posting pictures at the shooting range. Where does he keep his pistol I wonder. In a four-digit combination locked safe tucked under his mattress” “I wonder what code that takes?” He chuckled laying Lily’s head down in the grass field off the side of I-74. Her hand tipped with her blood falls beside her. “People should really be more careful.” He muttered getting back into the car.

Danny thinks to himself as he gets out of his Toyota and starts toward the front door. Fourteen days have passed since the passing of my daughter. I can’t eat, I don’t want to. I feel empty. He goes to punch his code into the door when he realizes his foot is brushed up against a package. Is his mind so worn from the past two weeks that he hadn’t noticed? Neighbors and friends were dropping of meals and baskets by the truckload but they stopped the past week. Everyone has moved on to their normal lives. That pissed him off, like his Lily was some trend to them all, his angel, but he was to tired to be mad at the world. He bent down to the brown neatly wrapped box, and grabbed the small letter off the top. He opened the envelope, it smelled of glue as he broke the seal. And he pulled out a birthday card. The front covered in balloons and cake, and the inside… the card trembling in his hand read “Thanks for the loan but it seems you need it more than me. I left a round for you.” And written in small red ink in the corner, so small Danny almost did not notice “06/02”. He dropped to his knees ripping at the box to reveal its contents. Stunned after opening the lid he sees his 1911 pistol, the silver peppered with red, and a Polaroid picture of his baby girl laying bleeding from her chest.

bang

As Bria ran as fast she could she unexpectedly realized she had no where to go. But before she could process that entire thought she was struck with a brick three times before collapsing to the ground. Jameel pulled the gun from his waist band and shot Bria in the head three times before turning the shotgun onto his self and pulling the trigger.

“God, please save me. Forget all my sins. I promise to change. Oh, please do salvage me from this torture.” These words spiralling in my head continously as I ran in the woods barefeet. My legs felt like noodles I could barely feel my legs anymore as if they were no longer mine.

Running, breathing, hoping for salvation, suddenly my legs gave in. I could no longer run. I hear them. Their chants gradually getting louder. This might be my destiny. There’s no point escaping it.

“Mother, Father, I Love you”, I took my last breath and smiled a waiting my disastrous fate.

I’ve always been my parents favorite child everyone always said Sarah was a little odd, too odd never once did it ever occur to anyone in that little town that Sarah the darling beautiful girl would murder her own sister on Halloween. Sarah was always jealous of me, I mean I couldn’t blame her for it, the parents fancied me. Got me new clothes most of the time and presents but somehow she never got anything she was jealous of said thing and we got in a fight. I turned around “This is pathetic sar” “You know what’s pathetic Adria? What’s pathetic is spending your whole life getting frowned upon because your own two parents couldn’t handle you, gosh you make me sick that your the perfect child” “You got into drugs” “Why do you think I got into them in the first place Adria!” “It was an accident” a horrible mistake, Sarah never wanted to go to prison, Sarah never wanted to hurt me but when I stopped moving she knew something was wrong… She’s always the perfect child, I had no idea what to do I froze up. I should have gotten help. We got in a horrible fight in the woods she must of hit her head on a tree branch when I had pushed her a little too hard.. and then next thing I knew I was running away from that life, I changed my name. I knew Adria wanted me to be honest with everyone but I left that life. My parents thing I’m dead Drop dead

I woke up early one say, it was so early but I felt something wrong which driving me to opened my phone checking my email box to fond a massage from my work that they would not renew my contract! I was frustrated because I realy love my work, however I considered my job my dream job. I admired that I didn’t take my work seriously , in the same time I was sometimes going to work so late because my bad friends. They come to me in the evening then they left so late. These days is not easy to find any job so to find a nice job it can be difficult. I would probably suffer to find a nice job again.

I feel like I’m suffocating. I can’t believe someone I loved so much could do this to me.

“It wasn’t serious, you know I love you,” he says, as I stand in the doorway, seeing him in our bed with HER. She has the gall to look shocked, as if she herself isn’t my best friend and doesn’t know how much I love my husband.

“Please, please don’t be mad at me,” she pleads, rushing toward me with MY BEDSHEET wrapped around her.

The winds blow harder outside, as if screaming for me.

“I… I can’t do this right now,” I say, rubbing my belly as if my unborn daughter can witness this heinous scene.

I run out of the bedroom toward the front door, slamming it open as I hastily put on my jacket.

“Let’s just talk about this! You can’t go out in this weather!” he dares to plead, making a pathetic attempt to run after me.

The winds scream louder.

The sky cries.

My heart thumps wildly as I run farther and farther away from my heartbreak.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

I run until my legs can’t carry me any further. The storm rages around me, but I don’t care. I collapse onto the wet grass, the rain mixing with my tears. The cold ground is a stark contrast to the fiery pain in my chest.

As I lie there, sprawled out in the grass, staring up at the stormy sky, I feel a strange sense of calm wash over me. The wind howls, and the rain pours down, but for a moment, I am numb.

I place a hand on my belly, feeling the life growing inside me. “I’m sorry you had to be part of this,” I whisper. “But we will get through this. I promise.”

With that vow, I find the strength to sit up. The storm begins to wane, and the first hint of dawn peeks through the clouds. It’s a new day, and despite everything, I know I must keep going.

For her, I will rise. For her, I will find a way.