I have a story to tell you. I hope you do listen.

Yesterday, some friends of mine died.
I don’t know what their names were or what they looked like,
Only that they were beautiful.
One was a girl, no different from you and I.
To us, she appeared carefree and lovely and charming.
To her, she was ugly and worthless and stupid.
She stood on the edge of a cliff, teetering. Only we could save her.
But we didn’t.
A cruel wind carrying songs of hatred came around
Sung by a chorus of fallen angels
And knocked her off the cliff
And she took her own life, thinking the fall would save her.
What she didn’t know was that those ready to catch her were still waiting on the cliff’s edge.
My other friend was a boy whose home was a lion’s den.
He was afraid of his home, for the lions were always angry and hungry.
His school was no better – it was a cage full of laughing hyenas biting at him.
He tried to run, but how could he outrun his own mind?
And when they gave him “medicine” for his “insanity”
He swallowed them all, hoping it would cure him once and for all.
What he hadn’t known was that the cure was really in the hopeful smile of a girl
Who would now never smile again.
A little known fact about stories is that they never have to end.
This one is no exception.
You and I have friends all over the world in the same position,
Staring down the barrel of a gun
Or caressing the edge of a knife.
They’ve been lost in the labyrinth that is their head
But we have Ariadne’s string.
The secret to it’s magic?
A little love and a few hugs thrown in here and there.
So, come,
Let’s unfinish this story.