Never
by Katie McClanan
January 24, 2012

 
Slam
The wooden door crashes against the cracking
white frame
Another day in a school I don’t want to be in
With kids and teachers that hate my guts
And there are less F’s at the Fast Food Festival than on my last report card
Light
Blaze
Scorch
A herd of flames lunge at my face
Without warning
a dragon with a tongue of burning blades,
waking from a deathly slumber
Fall back with a painful crash
onto my uniform plaid skirt
Another aspect of Meadow Grove Middle School that I utterly despise
The flames grow bigger at my already destroyed doorstep
Like a crowd of people,
All prepared to tear me to shreds
not so different from my actual life
It hits me
Charlotte
My little sister
the only thing that means anything in my trash I call my life
The only person that I could ever trust
not to be gone when I come home
Need courage
I get up and plow into the wall of heat
explosive crimson
then white
Blank
Feel myself hit the ground
Tuck my head in my soiled collared shirt
dragging my self across the floor to the phone
See a blurred corpse about a meter ahead
“Charlotte! Charlotte!”
I scream with every last bit of soul I have left in my body
It looks like the well has run dry
Nothing but the sound of flames flickering in my face
As if to flaunt my unbearable pain
and heart ache
I see my own charred bangs, once golden,
now the color of the night my father left
Slamming into the leg of a table
I grasp the phone but
I’ve lost all feeling
the phone crashes to the floor
I grab Charlottes arm and drag her across the blistering floor
I look down to see the face of an innocent girl layered with soot
take two fingers and press them against her neck to check for pulse
nothing
Wrist
NOTHING
"Stay with me!
Don’t let go
Please!"

How can anything so sweet be gone in an instant?

It should have been me
should have been me
have been me
been me
me
me

Collapse
That’s all I can do
I did my best
Not
Good
Enough
people have been telling me that my entire life
They
Were
Right

I will never be good enough
Never
 

Audio: 

Katie McClanan.mp3