d2// eran whitz

I ran to the woods for freedom, and so that I could finally breathe among the trees that provided so much wisdom, adventure oxygen after drowning so long in homework, training water so deep that I couldn't stay afloat.

They say I'm a bird in flight, always moving forward, flying upwards and upwards hitting the skies above, but I know - I know their gentle encouragements can only take me so far. The sky is vast and large, like the mind, but the body - oh the body is trapped in the confines of gates that surround me, us - I am a bird flying upwards and upwards, but never outwards. I am a bird flying upwards with a string attached to his leg - always pulling, pulling, pulling me down right back here, District Two.

I kiss diamonds that send electricity coursing through my veins, they say I'm reckless for climbing trees - but I say what use is a good Sunday suit but to collect grass stains on the knees and tears in the bottoms. Church suits were for little boys, I am seventeen and can kiss girls, and decapitate dummies; however, I can't seem to find the - knock knock knock - exit to the glass dome we, they, I call home.

My hands I set on fire. I'm a lucky one - aren't I? I cleanse my hands in flame and suffocate on the fumes to fall asleep each night. They collect and hover in my lungs, I am weak there - I can taste, taste, taste the gripping around them, God taking care to ensure that every step I take is filled with -

suffering. Wheezing and coughing, sprawled across living room carpets, tracing the motifs with my fingernails. They tell me that poetry is all about rhythm and I find beats - knock, knock, knock - in patterns on the floors. There are beats in the air, on the grass, through children's screams. Running, running, screaming, wheezing, I feel God grip my lungs and tell me, that's enough Eran. That's enough for today, is it not? It is not. Mr. Keaton tells me to never stop, to keep running because the second you take to stop is the second that shadows catch up to you. Yet asthma grips my lungs and tells me to slow down for a while, to take a minute to watch the tragedy around me.

Stone buildings constructed from the bare hands of soldiers. If I'm not reaped, is this not my fate, twisted along the alleyways and open space. picking at gentle diamonds, and turning diamonds to coal, turning coal to stone. I set fire to my hands and suffocate in the fumes so every second that I stop is a moment out of consciousness. Swimming around in a state of foolishness, in ambiguity, I am never all here, and never all there. I am merely. That is all.

I am merely. Merely present, merely alive, hung by the strings of puppets and tied the planks of wood left out to dry.

Kiss my hands, rough and ragged, I cut my fingertips to make sure that I'm still bleeding red, once I heard that monsters bleed black - but I don't believe most stories. Please define - define robotic. Robotic: noun, a machine that resembles a human and does mechanical, routine tasks on command. Defining each movement I swing eagerly across training room floors, defining my sword, letting the tip pierce ever so gently into anything I can get my hands on. Defined are the arms of the robot of a boy who wanders unknowingly through fire without breathing. Defined are his facial features, his chin ragged, his nose jagged, his lips soft and pursed. Tracing lines down the robot's face, find him and tell him what they feel like to you. What they look like.

I look in mirrors and glaze my eyes over with willing cataracts, why see in front of me what I already know is only the host of something much deeper. A lifeless form, twisted and stuffed into a body waiting to scream. Each time I bleed I wait for anything to leave me, any sort of evil, any bit of me that needs escaping. I feel it, every night, I feel the deep darkness that situates itself in my stomach and twirls, dancing endlessly across a tight stomach, probably way more skinny than it needs to be. Please tell me what it feels like to support a monster bleeding through your veins, and tell me if I'm feeling the same. Or if this monster is just an extension,

of

my

personality.

Weak-willed, my eyes are filled with cataracts so that I don't need to see the carcass of what a boy might have once looked like. I imagine he must have been happy once - but he's a good, I'm a good actor. I set fire to my insides, listening to them sizzle and appreciating that every step across a slender body is one step closer to extinguishing whatever demon lies beneath. The monsters that shout, kill, kill, kill. When I shout, run, run, run. Opening Pandora's Box, I hoped to find Hope among a series of plagues but all I found were letters plastered in blood across my walls early in the morning.

FIGHT THE ESTABLISHMENT. Run little boy, run away, fight all you want, but at the end of the day - run. "Come home, Eran. Right after training." Which home, I ask my father, but his paper is more important than my whispers. Which home, I ask my mother, but she sleeps all day to avoid my father. Which home is supposed to be real? The one in my imagination? I imagine trees of gold, and nests of twigs big enough to sleep in, the golden leafs bronzing as they touch the silver ground. Kissing the sky with it's emerald clouds and opal skies, I dream of a life in diamonds, not a life of stone. I dream of a life beyond a District that wants to hold me down. I dream to fly like a bird, spread my wings and soar upwards and onward, I am

obsessed, with the idea of fighting my way out of the gates and soldiers. Macbeth fought his destiny, only killed by a man who was woman born, destroyed by a cesarian section. I am a boy of birth unknown, I trickle on the edge of humanity, constructed and pieced together with nuts and bolts. Describe robotic. That's me - spotlight hits center stage and we see a boy standing center stage with blood on his hands.

"It is concluded. Banquo, thy soul's flight,
If it find heaven, must find it out to-night."

I have murdered my best friend, I have murdered - I have killed dummies and pictured them being my father and my mother, I have killed so many dummies and they have all been me.

I must die, I am Macbeth and Banquo - I am destined to die by the curse of conforming to prophecies given to me by my three witches,

Witch Father: You must be a career, son, or you will be no son of mine.

Witch Trainer: You must learn to think like a career, or you will be no career.

Witch Mayor: You must listen to the rules, or you will die. We won't hesitate to shoot.

I become a robot, I toss aside all love I have in my soul and I live within my boundaries. What does this make me? What am I? I am nothing but a tool to my users, batteries may come included.

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow; I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone;

And all I loved, I loved alone.

Alone by Edgar Allan Poe