I was walking home from school one day,

and I passed dozens of faces

with bright eyes and warm smiles

Suddenly I bumped into a very lonley-looking girl.

Her eyes were like caves that had collapsed from the weight of her secrets.

I could tell, each day for her was another

farther and farther from the pain

she called reality.

She'd gotten on a boat.

To take her down a new path.

A path dotted with pills and powders with tiny showers

of danger

that would water the seeds

of the bad dreams

that feed off her broken soul

making her weaker and more numb,

turning her into another number

on the billboard of bad decisions

as she makes each precise incision

along her wrist

just hoping for a little bliss,

for someone to tell her that everything is going to be okay.

Even though it's not okay.

And every day,

her hopes of getting better

become more like drops in a pond of unlikeliness

with a stillness that scares her

but she fights back,

using the only weapon she ever knew of that worked.

Hiding.

Behind a house made up of vodka bottles.

Drained to hide the pain of this path- this path she chose

to hide within herself,

to display every bad choice on the trophy shelf within her mind

to show her bruises and scars to the mirror

so she wouldn't have to tell a single soul

about the hole she feels inside of her.

She pulls out her lighter and sets fire to a cigarette, sending smoke signals up to heavens

so that maybe god will notice her

and take her away from all this.

She goes home to a family that doesn't notice her scars,

because how do you notice something that's always been there?

She keeps her secrets burried in the deepest parts of her mind so she never has to find them

and instead of looking,

she just takes another swig of loneliness,

wipes her hands on her dress,

and marches off to fight the same battle another day.