It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth -- and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up -- that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had. - Elisabeth Kubler-Ross


When people say “you see your life flash before you when you die”, they’re bull****ing you. It isn’t anything close to it, or it isn’t for me. Honestly, it is easy, probably because I fell down the stairs and was gone by the time I reached the bottom. It is a boring death, just like me. Damn it. To get shot or maybe run over by something might have some spark, some action, but no- I trip over my own feet and fall face first down my stairs. The saddest part, no one knew till a couple hours later. “So sad” or “I feel bad for you”, you might be thinking. Well, screw you.
It is another day, another Wednesday. I am running late for school and the smell of burnt toast rises from the dirty kitchen. I hate Mom’s cooking, because she burns everything which makes Kevin more valuable. I wasn’t going to eat the toast anyway, because I wanted to fit into a new dress. Mom is already out and Kevin probably drove to school, leaving me to take the crowded bus.
I hate the bus, because I don’t really like the people on it. But I take it every morning to that annoying place called school. It is a huge school, made up of about 1,500 kids. God bless public school, or at least protect it from itself. Chester High is cramped with obnoxious people, weird people, dead people, smart people, rich people, poor people, overachievers, underachievers, smokers, druggies, possible killers, and of course me: the norms.
I am the cookie cutter kid with the Mom and Kevin in the average income house on the street named after a fruit. “Peach Lane” stares at me from my window, and the identical houses make me wish I'd accidentally burn the house down sometimes. But I don’t. No, I trip down the stairs to escape.
I’d love to say I planned it all, but nah- that takes too much work and more energy. Being angst-y takes a lot of concentration, so I don’t. I live me life, try at school, and hope to get out of this house, away from Kevin, Peach, and Chester. Maybe I’d live that glamorous life I dreamed, not that I am much of a glamorous girl.
Never wear make-up, partially because I cannot and partially because Kevin encourages it. I own two dresses, one which looks like something a kid would wear to her first communion. But, hey, at least now Mom will pay for me to look good. I do not think that scenarios in movies happen in real life. You know, the one where someone walks in and it seems like the whole room stops breathing to stare. Nonetheless, I never feel it or give it. No one deserves it, certainly not the regular girl living in the middle-class home.
I look over at my house, the white one on Peach Lane. I never see this many people on my street. Kevin comforts Mom as she cries into her pill cabinet. Friends and neighbors come over to console and gossip about the “nice, good girl” who gets “moderate” grades; I am finally the talk of the town even if I don’t have the perfect grades, the amazing looks, the big money, or the right friends.
Damn, I shouldn’t keep using the present tense. Since I’m not part of the “present” anymore, I am only the past. Maybe I didn’t have that flashing lights thing because my life really didn’t have any lights to flash. Either way, the sad thing is that…I wanted to live.
I really wanted to eat my burnt toast, smudging what little lip gloss I have on, in my identical white house on Peach Lane before going to Chester High with my normal friends and seeing Kevin pretending he doesn’t know me as he writes on the board in homeroom. Too late now, I guess.
Damn burnt toast, you made me trip.


I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity. - Gilda Radner