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Cardboard Houses
When we were young
Imagination was our sanctuary
We did not hurt
Because we could fly
Away to neverland
And our cardboard house
And our parents saw
And kissed our cheeks
When we grew up
Our imaginations faded
We started to hurt
Feeling heavy as stone
We forgot how to fly
We forgot how to smile
And our cardboard houses
Collapsed
We relied instead
On cardboard boxes
And smoke and cigarettes
To fly up high
We burned our fingers
And blackened our lungs
And our parents saw
And bloodied our cheeks
When we grew more
They didn’t care
So we drank our hurt
In want of warmth
And our cardboard houses
Were replaced by glass cells
And our parents didn’t see
And tears stained our cheeks
We decided then
That we wouldn’t grow
And we built ourselves
A cardboard home
And grabbed some pills
And took a knife
And climbed inside
Our cardboard life
We slit our wrists
And watched the blood
And took the pills
And curled up
We went again
To our neverland
And our parents saw
And felt again
As our cardboard house
collapsed.
![](http://cdn.teenink.com/art/Oct99/BlackeyedSusans72.jpeg)
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This piece was inspired when I found myself wondering what the world would be like if I was never born, and the train of thought evolved to wonder what many of the teens who committed suicide during the 1980's might have felt as they went through the process.