Nonfiction speaks to the head. Fiction speaks to the heart. Poetry speaks to the soul. It's the essence of beauty. The essence of pain. It pleases the eye and the ear.

Red and raw like my heart, pried from your's, the two beating, no longer together, but a thousand miles between them when only yesterday they thumped in unison.

Cleansed, chlorinated to the point of chemical peel, sore muscles relieved, I felt almost human again. Tiptoe to my room, up a darkened hall, past closed doors, I wondered if I'd ever feel completely human again.

In fact, since the accident, Mom doesn't love anyone. She is marble. Beautiful. Frigid. Easily stained by her family. What's left of us anyway. We are corpses. At first, we sought rebirth. But resurrection devoid of her love has made us zombies. We get up every morning, skip breakfast, hurry off to work or school. For in those other places, we are more at home. And sometimes we stagger beneath the weight of grief, the immensity of aloneness.

Me? Beautiful? I'm plain as cardboard. That may be how you see yourself, but the rest of the world would be hard to agree. You shine brighter than the Milky Way. Now there are those who might try to take that from you, but you don't have to give it away. Keep on shining Pattyn. And when the right young man comes along, he'll love you all the more for giftin' this sad planet with your light.

Too much to take in, too much to purge. Why must every memory, once sweet, dead end in such ugliness?

Girls are impossible to satisfy." "Not every girl." Not me. I'd be happy if he'd just like me a little.