17.

"i have never wanted someone to hurt and be happy so badly.

i told you i loved you. last resort. i told you i loved you like a bomb shelter, something to hide in after the fall out, but we would always be hungrier than our rations would allow."

-- kevin kantor, honest confessions on letting go.

harder, harder. push him so far into the wall that he disappears completely. watch as he transforms from a boy to a body, to a skeleton with skin, to a skeleton in a box.

he remembers how they said that this would be easy, how it wasn't supposed to be this way.

tell his mom that he's sorry she had to find the body, tell his father that he is sorry it had to end this way but that he is not sorry that it ended. tell the bullies that threatened his life that he won, too slow in this human's race, that he imagined them pulling the trigger. tell depression, "good game -- i almost had you, motherfucker". tell the pain he said goodbye. tell goodbye he said hello. he doesn't want better. better is temporary. better is a father's presence. the bitterness is all he has. he doesn't want to think about what he has left, what he has to live for.

starts to revel and marvel in the pain, doesn't know a life without pain. always knew pain, always welcomed pain as an old friend. and he knows that if pain were to come back five years later, he'd welcome the pain freely because it felt real, felt real with the pain. he's a bruised and battered ship after a war and his pain is the anchor. can't leave. this life is all he knows, and it's a never ending chase that he can't stop running. he's in a maze, and his feet won't stop moving. time is the minotaur, but he is not theseus -- he is no hero. he is ariadne, waiting and waiting for nothing to come.

his pain is poetic. a mess of a boy. the kind of boy that people write poetries about. he's a stereotype. a stereotype of a sad boy with marred skin who can't leave. and this life is like going through the nine circles of hell, and now he knows what dante must have felt trying to save his wife down in satan's abode. he's living a life where he is dante, everyone else is satan. no escape. orpheus in the underworld, orpheus looked back and sealed his fate. orpheus had a choice. but he, he does not. he's lost.

because he was never yours to claim, but you will still follow him to the ends of the earth, regardless of that, because of that.

beauty springs from ugliness. this is the eternal lesson that flowers and manure teach.

tough love was coming home with scars littering his body because he's too clumsy for his own good and his pain hurts from the inside out and he's forced to tell his mom it'll make him stronger, misery builds character.

the bullet may have hit you, the bullet may have festered in you. but the shrapnel has long since been taken out. you may have inhaled the gunpowder, but you quenched the fire it created. you did not let your injury possess you.

it's harder to hit moving targets. and you are so far out of reach, a sniper could not hurt you without causing collateral damage. bullets rarely hit the same place twice.

a bullet with his name on it hit you. but he did not go unscathed. he got by a bullet, too, with your name on it. the only difference? he has yet to see the shrapnel. he has not cleaned for gunpowder. a spark will ignite if not take care of. but that was his choice.

it was your victory disguised as a loss, but it is a victory nevertheless, and in this future, tonight, you are truly victorious.