"Think Before You Speak" (Piece #1)

"Think Before You Speak" by: Blake Messier

There once was a little girl, tortured by her peers she'd thought were as precious as her grandmother's pearls.

The first year was all a joke, any kindergartener would think that.

But as kindergarten became first grade and first became second, the little girl realized something.

Those jokes weren't just nothing.

Second grade turned into third and those few kids that pushed her on the playground became herds.

She was bound to herself, unable to speak.

She hid her sorrow with a frown painted on her face like a clown. She felt weak.

It wasn't until grade six that her sadness turned into rage.

The little girl has disappeared without a trace. Her pearl like peers would see her as a bear that they had poked in his cage. She was a ticking time bomb.

When all was calm her head was numbing and her sanity plummeting.

The woman was tired. Tired of her pearls speaking to her as if she was the dirt that soiled their beauty. She wanted it to stop, she wanted to scream and cry for help. But all that left her mouth was far from a yelp.

Grade six was the time she was sick. Sick of her life and of her soul. Her brain told her to reach for the knife and just do it. It's sad I don't have to continue my sentence to have you all know what she wanted.

She couldn't do it. What if her mother found her with the blood on her wrists, dotted across her arms? Or her sister barging into her bedroom seeing a rope around her neck, tightly knotted.

Her plans were stupid and thankfully aborted.

She played out the conversations she'd never have with society's children in her head before, but that night she'd crafted so much more.

The only thing she wanted to ask was if talking is even speaking if you're not clearly thinking. If that was the case, maybe if the pearls had put thought into their slurs then they wouldn't be the real losers.