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I am seventeen
it is nineteen ninety something I am in a room full of teenage boys my boyfriend who has brought me here treats me like a pretty chair I am from Maine this is Virginia Beach one of his friends has just died in a gang shooting it is my first funeral an open casket I watch his mother cry as she holds on to his lifeless body I wear a navy blue dress I cling to my boyfriend who brushes me away like a cobweb now I am here with all these boys I don't know they seem like men so much bigger than me passing around a blunt laughing when I cough we are all drinking but I don't know what I want to leave because all I can see is the dead boy with his bullet wounds standing in the corner in the distance I hear his mother crying I tug on my boyfriend's shirt he swats me away while his friends take turns talking about raping me while I am this high I leave and go sit in the car push on the car horn so hard it won't turn off my boyfriend comes out so worried about his car I cry in the passenger seat his friends come out shake their heads and talk about me as if I am already gone she is beautiful but crazy they laugh while I cry the dead boy with bullet wounds holds me hushes me while my boyfriend screams at me in the car for ruining his car I am so far away from home I don't have a home I sleep on the floor in his mom's house she tells me how his father abused her she takes my side for once in a blink I see his future he has twins but not with me I decide to leave him but it takes me another year the dead boy blows me kisses while I lie awake remembering a room filled with smoke guys talking about ass raping me while my boyfriend laughed I hear my boyfriend in the other room complaining loudly about what a bitch I am for causing a scene in front of his friends now its just the dead boy and me he got shot from behind he tells me you never see it coming but when it hits you you still think you can run his hands are just vapor but they are still hands reaching out to me and I am so lonely so scared sometimes touching each other's wounds is enough to get by
1 Comment
6/18/2021 07:49:52 am
This leaves me spent .. your writing is just so intense, visceral and immediate; how you bring in the gun violence victim so casually in the third stanza. I look forward to reading it again and again, as well as more of your work
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AuthorMichelle Tinklepaugh Archives
June 2023
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