I wrote this piece for my 12th grade English class. I didn't realize I was so angsty until I re-read this.

I woke up covered with sweat. My hands were cold and clammy. My eyes glazed over in thought, the haunting memory of my friends' suffering and my family's agony vivid in my mind. “Not again. Please.” I pleaded to the heavens.

A gray-winged butterfly, dazzled, circled the yellow light as if a cosmic sign was screaming at me to accept the meek conditions in which I was resigned to live. “Embrace what you have,” it whispered “because even if there is something better out there, the brightness is out of your reach”.

One could hear the breathing of the night, hushed and calming. I decided to take a walk. As I was leaving the innkeeper said, "Everything's closed." I glared back at her and I went out anyway. I grew up in places like these. The uncaring and unforgiving streets with angry and frightened people who had no hope remaining in their frozen bodies. Dazed and alone, at first I couldn't see a thing. I meandered along; I lit a cigarette. The light from the flame of the steel igniter illuminated the street before me; sinister and hostile. Before I could defend myself, I felt the point of a knife in my back. I raised my head. The glowing enchantment of the stars above that looked so close but was just out of my reach. "What do you want?" I asked. I was ready to give into anything, accept the punishment for my uncouth aspirations. I was willing to wither and die by this stranger’s hand. "What do I want?" a sweet voice asked. "I just want your eyes..."

When I walked...I felt free. Suddenly, I stopped short. Senses overwhelmed my mutilated body. The smell of the flowers in neighboring home gardens, the feel of the uneven pavement beneath my feet, the sounds of car horns and sirens in the distance; all of these new sensations were coursing through me. Colors and shapes flashed in my mind.

No longer entombed by the obstructions that were my short, twenty-one years.