Pause
Stanza 1
I don’t remember her ever telling me she loved me.
She stood across the room and yelled “What’s wrong with
you?”
I don’t remember her tucking me at night.
She continued, “you’re worthless, just like your father.”
Pause…
I put anything into my body that would make my sadness go
away.
He sat across from the desk and asked,” So why do you cut on
yourself?” I replied, “It feels good”
Pause…
“It feels good compared to what?”
“Life”
She sat across from the desk and said, “We are really
concerned about you, how can we help you?”
Pause…
“Can you give me a different life?”
He prescribed me an antidepressant and said, “You are
suffering from severe depression”
I remember being upset and taking 20 or 30 pills at once.
Pause…
I hated my life.
She sat across the bed with my baggie she found in my
jacket.
Pause…
She said, “I’m going to show you what you’re doing to
yourself.”
He stood across the cell and said,” We’re going to teach you
young guys a lesson.”
Two inmates held me against the bars as he punched me in the
ribs and stomach.
I fell to the floor, lifeless.
She said, ”I love you.” and O.D.’d on a hand full of Valium.
Pause…
They pumped her stomach and I cut an M into my wrist.
Pause…
He sat across the courtroom from me, “the state is pursuing
a minimum 15 year sentence”
He put the gun to the side of my head and threatened to pull
the trigger.
She lay next to me and cried
Pause…
She said, “ I love you, but you’re killing yourself”
I prayed he would pull the trigger and finish what I had
been trying to do.
He approached me from across the room, grabbed my arm, and
pulled my sleeve up.
She stood across the hospital room, monitoring my vitals
I told my little brothers through the visitation window
Pause…
He sat across the desk from me, handcuffs smothering my
wrists.
We know you did this, fingerprints, eyewitnesses,
statements, and photographs, proof.
If I thought it would get me high, I put it in my body.
Pause…
I sat on the edge of the highway overpass trying to jump
She sat across the bed from me and said, “Lets OD together”
He sat across from me in the day room and said, “What are
you in for”
I was slowly destroying everything around me.
Pause…
She sent a letter to the court
He said, “If you don’t change your behavior”
He said, “We are tired of dealing with you”
She said, “We found you unacceptable for our treatment
program due to the severity of your involvement”
Pause…
He said, “I didn’t need to be here, that I needed help”
She said, “There was a different way”
He said, “You need to get away from your family”
He said, “We don’t know what to do”
She said, “”I can’t be around you like this”
He said, “I don’t want him in our home”
She said I was a “very troubled and people have given up on
me”
He said, He said She said, she said,
I
Wanted to Pause…
