The pills didn't work.
You made all your calls,
sending a faint SOS in your goodbyes.
Then you woke, pale and disappointed in a small room
where you started to plan your escape again.

The bullet worked.
The black lead seared through every painful memory.
You erased them from your mind
by blowing away your brain.

If only guilt and fear could be surgically removed...
But like an uncontainable cancer
they spread throughout the body
till death is the only cure.

There are times when I believe 
that only you would forgive me
for my life between the ages of 
seventeen and twenty-two.
All the diary pages ripped and burned
trying to undo them...
to hide them from myself.
But the ashes sift through denial
into a pile of conscious shame.

If I knocked on your dark door, 
you would open it
and welcome me 
and say, "I understand." 

by Lisa (Teel) Rodriguez
1984