Briana Tetlow's
Writing Portfolio
Written in 2012 - Revised from High School
Genuine and Unprepared
You told me that I’m hated most in this world and I believed you because it’s true.
The sun constantly licks fire at me and the moon drowns me in the tide, slow and indefinably smooth.
Within the crumbling city I find the feed. Billboards hang heavy next to obsolete window panes and they tell me regurgitated thoughts of dead guys and homeless men and fictional boys and sailors, lost in the canvas and confused between commas, quotes and periods.
I came home to the town where I exhausted you, and I found pieces of you within everyone’s mouth, loose and captive in the jaws and in the teeth.
“She fell asleep and got lost in Wonderland” they said to me when I uttered your name.
“I close my eyes and the world drops dead” I replied. They never liked it when I spoke.
But I didn’t care. Chanting your name until my lips bled I searched for you. The street drains, the uneven curbs and loose pieces of asphalt that crushed my bones all told me you died alone, a long, long time ago.
Within the crumbling city I found the feed. I crawled back to the heavy window panes, a magnetism within my head and in its heart unable to let me go. The thumping electrical and symmetrical chambers deep in the core of rusted iron and folded steel echoed to me, quicker and quicker, closer and closer.
I showed up there and stayed, alone, a long, long time ago.