...and soon there will be no one left to keep telling me that it isn't.

The first time I shot someone I was five. It was a dream. It stays with me. I articulate the death with cheerios and milk, mourn the villain with a flower jerked like he was from life, cry because I wet the bed again. In class I do not act out, I do not rage against an inflated menace nor tare the face of a child who is like me, innocent, alive and yet somehow still unborn. I do not look at the bullies with crazed empty eyes, I am pushed down and do not rise up with a rage too distilled to be contextual, I do not stand in front of traffic lost behind a face with no tears or will.

I am ten before I hold one. All of them, even the small ones are heavy.

At fourteen I kill something with warm, red blood. And when I kill myself I tell myself, this is different, this is not a dream, but no matter how many times I say it I can’t take the gun away from my face, I can’t remember anything else because this is a dream, right, this is still just a dream…