Dare she wander into the openness of the universe,
May the days go unforgiving.
Dare ripples of sunwaves touch the surface of her eyes,
May the darkness linger still.
Dare she take the beauty of the world for her own,
May nothing satisfy her.

M.J.

He was only a young man of nineteen when M.J. wrote her famed poem.  He was in college, studying philosophy. He was fascinated immediately. He became obsessed, overtime, always trying to decipher the message, always trying to understand. He was expelled eventually for vandalizing a brick wall with the words “MAY THE DAYS GO UNFORGIVING”. Something about those words, the way they took over his prudence. He went quite fantastically mad, and by twenty he was placed in a mental asylum, and for the rest of the days all he sat in his cell, staring at the brick wall, for he could not understand how something so beautiful could make him so insane, and so confused.

She was young, ten almost, when her mother read M.J.’s poem to her. She hardly understood it, and she never would. Even so, she had it framed above her bed, and she read it every night after she had said her prayers. Ironically, while her prayers contained hopes, the poem spoke of pain, sadness. But she loved both her bible and her poem the same, and read them daily. After her mother died, she placed her precious poem in the casket, and kissed her mother goodbye, crying as the casket was lowered, deeper and deeper into the ground. She cried every day now, for her mother was gone, and so was her poem. A little bit of her heart as well. She had stopped praying. She just stared at the blank wall, letting the tears flow.

He stared at the stars, wondering what M.J. was doing. He was fifty now, and he was still unmarried. He didn’t care for women anymore. M.J. was dead, and his soul was dead. The only thing that kept him alive was the stars, and her poem. He couldn’t fully interpret it, but he knew M.J. well enough to know that she wrote it, not so people would understand, but so people would question themselves, confuse themselves. But that was just how he fell in love with her, questioning if he was worthy, confusing himself more and more as she quietly eroded away. She had never loved him anyways, or why would she kill herself? Artists, that’s all they were. Pariahs in life, famed in death. He wished he could snatch a star and steal her back to the earth, but he knew, even if he could, she would still cling to the darkness, for it was then that she shined brightest.

Her boyfriend was in war at the time, when she was nineteen, and he was twenty two. He sent her a letter, the first and last letter she ever received from him. It contained no words of love, nor longings nor assurances. Only a poem. Only a few days later did she receive another letter, from her boyfriend’s commander, that he was killed in a bombing caused by the enemy. She was angry at him then, because he never bothered to leave anything meaningful, just a poem. Just a few words that didn’t mean anything. And then she was broken, because she didn’t believe that he had died, that maybe he didn’t care about her when he went off to war, that maybe she was going to end up alone; on and on and on, over analyzing, over thinking. Thinking that maybe she was what the poem said she was, unforgiving, unable to be who she wanted to be.

Ever since she turned twenty-one, she felt the energy that only young people feel. Energy that makes one feel as though they can accomplish the world, that nothing can stop them from taking flight. She hated black, but she wore it anyways, because it was M.J.’s favorite color. Or, favorite non-color, as she would say, because “black was the absence of color”. M.J. always said weird things like that. “Today is the day to become what Today was meant for you to be”, “I know the demons that lurk on the outside trying to get in”, “Snowflakes descend because they’re tired of the sky.” Today marked the anniversary of her aunt’s death. She had almost forgotten entirely about it, everything was a blur now. It was her father who had called her and told her about M.J., and the famed poetry he read to her every week. They were the only words he said now. She didn’t understand why.

He was at the funeral. More out of curiosity than respect. An accomplished middle-aged writer, he hungered for a good story to tell. Picking up a discarded pamphlet from the ground, he was shocked. The famed poet, M.J., dead! Great story. But as he stepped closer in a sea of black, he felt very out of place. He noted details, the huge sobs of the man in the first row, the ignorance of the little girl next to him. The filtered sunlight through the stained glass windows, the public reading of the will. The pastor’s gold cross, and the shaky voices. All reading the same, the same words M.J. had written. And while their eyes may have been open, their minds were closed. And the days went unforgiving.

She shrieked in agony, the dream was reoccuring. She was a little girl then, and it was her sixth birthday. She was crossing the street to her home when her mother started screaming. There was a body on the ground, and there were papers all around her, soaked in blood. Her mother told her to stay away, but curiosity took over. She picked up a paper. Reading, she was, and quite dazed as well. The poem. Sentences breaking off into phrases, then to words, then to letters, then to the demons she didn’t know lived inside of her. The words in that moment, literally flew off the page, until the world was covered with the darkness of letters and letters. They had voices, whispering at her, hissing and laughing until they were screams. She began to cry, wanting to pull away, but the papers trapped her, and all she could do was shriek hopelessly, defenseless, crazed. She was terrified of words, the power inside of them, the nightmares they possessed within her.

He was at his deathbed, rightfully so, he was close to his hundredth birthday. What a burden to the world. No one came to visit him but the young nurse, who smiled and asked if he needed anything. He asked for her to sit down. She did. He asked her to read M.J’s poem. She did. He began to cry, his breath growing shorter, the world turning slowly as he closed his eyes. M.J. understood him, his pain. The loneliness in the dark corners of his mind, lingering still. He could hardly remember the time when he was outside of the hospital now, he could hardly remember anything. But he could remember M.J. How, out of all the memories his brain had once possessed, was this one chosen? Because it was the only thing he was satisfied with, the one thing that made him think. And with this last thought he stared at death, daring it to take him into the abyss.

She remembers when something first felt wrong. Love is the objective, she is the victim. She was heartbroken, betrayed, hopeless. And instead of picking the pieces back up, she let them decay and turn to dust. She became lifeless. Just going through the motions of life, pretending to be happy, pretending to love who she is, pretending that everything was okay. Hiding all the anguish, pushing it deeper, so that sometimes, she forgot the devastation. No one notices her subtle changes, because she hides them so well. Masks her face with smiles, laughter. Acting so much like her former self that no one realizes that she had been stolen.
She is crying, again. Tears fell to the oceans as she watches the world move slowly. Why was everything like the way it was? Perhaps she was not meant for this life. Nor the one before, nor the one after. Another and another, water droplets formed at the corners of her eyes, and she lets them descend like rain into the earth.  Where had the love gone, where had the love gone? She taps out a rhythm with her pen, trying to think. She doesn’t need anyone, or she doesn’t want to need anyone. She can’t make up her mind. It was as though life had just stopped, but her heart was still beating. And she can’t find the right words to explain the feelings inside of her. She is crying, again. And she doesn’t know why.
She is writing. Writing, yes! The words that will become her identity, the words that will leave the world so in awe, so in desperation. The defining words stringed together with sorrow, the words that cut the final vein. Her eyes burn with anger, darkness, sadness, audacity. Who am I? she thought. But the more she thinks about it, the less she knows. The pencil moves, slowly but surely, across the page. As the letters form on the page, her hands move, automatically almost. Her eyes sting with tears, but she refuses to break concentration from the page.
She is going insane. She is, really, but how come no one believed her? They told her she was perfectly fine, and that it was just her brain getting bored. No, her brain was never bored. The doctors just shrugged, sent her off to get more pills, more medicines, more drugs to pull her under. Just more to distract her from the insanity. Ah, she hates the light, she hates the way it pierced through her skin and made her sense warmth. The way it made her feel as though everything was alright, even though she knew perfectly well, it wasn’t. The pain, the madness, the darkness inside of her. It grips her at the neck, slits her wrists, makes her scream, makes her cry. Over, and over, and over again.  Perhaps this is insanity.
She stares at the letters in her hands, across the floor, all over the room. Angry letters, sad letters, hopeful letters, trash. All blaming her for what she had written. Letters about suicide, desperation, darkness, everything she felt. Were her readers just like her? No, there was no one that could ever be as broken as she was. No one that could ever feel so much pain. She shakes her head and reads another letter. She has forgotten to feel empathy now. After the fifth hundredth letter, she had stopped feeling anything. She just reads.
She sits on the sixty-fifth floor stairway, fifteen more flights to go. Pausing for a break, taking more pills than she can handle. She could collapse where she was now, she is so out of it. But no, she has to go on. She holds a folder in her hands; she’s printed as many poems the printer could handle. She has them now, here, tucked under her jacket. She closes her eyes, a bit woozy, but nevertheless, persists as the steps grew weaker and it was harder to breath.  Why is she doing this to herself? Why? The same question she asked herself the night he broke her heart, what had sent her into this daunting world of questionable realities, damned hallucinations, internal wars and external madness.
The ledge. Ah, fate! it screams. Like the sting of a blade, or the piercing of a needle, sending shivers up her spine, exciting her almost. Drugged, bloodshot eyes, trembling, but smiling still. Laughing, almost. So it was decided, so it was decided. She would be gone, because no matter how successful she was, how much she thought she felt she could be someone, there was still the endless want. But for what, she could never figure out. Taking a deep breath, she takes a step closer. The pain overcomes her, consumes the last bit of sanity. And she doesn’t care anymore, whether she lives, or dies. She’s already living hell anyways.
The ledge. The voices in her head. The want. The need. The ledge. This was the end. She throws the papers in the air,  screaming words no one will ever hear. And in that final moment, she felt free. No more tears to bleed from her eyes, no more crimson to flood through her skin. She was free. The freedom, in spite being in the claws of gravity, in spite the claws of hell, She loved that feeling, in that moment, gambling her life, not caring the outcome. She was beautiful, the way she closed her eyes and enjoyed that last moment. The moment seemed to last forever. But all moments come to an end. And the end was a pool of blood, scattered poems, and a dead body. And that was the end.