Tick, Tick, Tick. How much more

of this will I be able to endure. These seconds are dragging with chains attached. They are rattling inside my head. I do not know much more I can fit. My head is swelling with these thoughts. Please God

make them stop. These should not exist, even in the darkest of minds.

The bottom of the ocean should not even retain such darkness. They are swimming and stinging and shrieking. Fucking let them out. Someone please come here now. Fast. I need you to puncture my head. Pop my cranium. Relinquish these devilish ideas. For I am growing weaker as the hands move

around the clock. I am now begging on my hands

and knees.

Oh god, why me? I ask to the empty room. I guess my life is empty after all. I grab my head in hopes that I can tear my ears away for the whispers are becoming louder. There is a beckoning from under

the bed of my night terrors. I look up only to catch that mirror. I no longer see myself. There is a monster. A kind of demon where my body should be. I reach out my hands but they remain at my side. My control

is disappearing. My god, I am going mad.

Mad I tell you.

I cannot scream out to my parents or my friends. Tell all those pretty girls I loved them. For I deserve to be cut for my stupid mistakes. I should swallow

a pill for every bad judgment. I should tie a knot for every selfish act. And I should jump

because I was never worthy of myself or this damned world. The devil cackles;

tells me it is not time yet. He picks up my left wrist and throws it in my face. My eyes sting of pain and weakness, but I see.

For on my left wrist is still the ink. Etched out in black and bold, a semicolon.

Engraved in my flesh. I am still me. There is still strength in my bones. By god, I will rise again. I am the author of my own life. I could have chosen to end my sentence.

However, my story was not to be finished yet.

It lives on past

the semicolon.