“Guilt is a burden. Mine’s deserved. Forgiveness is a virtue. Or so I’ve heard.” 

~ Charlie Halsler 

My innards, mangled like a twisted bush of thorns. 

Like desperate fingers reaching for anything to clasp.

Thick unescaping arms of burden with no escape. 

Guilt contorts me like a never ending maze. 

Into a part of me, I never knew existed. 

When you believe you are happy, you remember what you did and why you can’t truly ever be forgiven.

A flower that is picked, will remain picked, no matter how much you try to put it back into the soil it came from. 

Nothing will ever be the same and nothing can change that. 

A person that has been stripped of compassion, will always remain with hauntings of the past, present, and future. 

She was like a snowy foal, with tall long features and graceful limbs. 

She looked like a Viking queen or a majestic elk. 

With the palest skin and hair I’d ever seen. 

Her eyelashes looked like fresh wintery frost. 

Despite her icy and ethereal features, she had a smile that made you melt. 

Her curious gaze landed on me. 

She subtly tilted her head like a dainty elf. 

The strings of wispy hair on her head hung off in the direction she tilted. 

Her startling eyes were like olives: shiny and round and black as obsidian. 

I smiled back nervously, knowing, as soon as she walked through the school doors, she was a lamb to the slaughter. 

It wasn't long before unforgiving third-grade girls closed in, and it began. 

Like sharks to chum. 

Like savage wolves. 

My eyes welled up with tears as I saw her slumped onto the floor, defeated by her tormentors.

My heart ached to help her, but my feet remained planted. 

Like sleep paralysis, I could only stand there with a pitiful look on my face. 

I could feel intense fiery eyes burning holes into me. 

I glanced up, and the look on her face startled me. 

Begging for mercy like an animal with crazed eyes. 

I was her sole hope. 

I turned away. 

I left her to the wolves.