The blackness descends upon me like a 500 LB twisted freak of nature; I can't open death's door. Hell is cold, oh so cold,when you don't have a gothic tuna fish sandwich to hold. The mayo runs through my fingers, dripping blobs of goo. I want to splatter the tuna juices all over my pale misbegotten face of twisted sick depraved raped misshapen agony. I don't want green eggs and ham, I want my gothic tuna fish sandwich, and I want to slaughter it like a lamb. Chewing it's every bite; I feel it invading my dark blackened discoloured pit of darkness that is the hell of my soul. Oh yes, my gothic tuna fish sandwich make me full.

"this is highly effitional and edumacationous.......for my brain"

Because courage comes in so many forms we often fail to recognize it when we see. Most of us, though, have felt the hot coal of courage as we swallow in anticipation, though mine seems more like a watermelon right now, and most of us have "picked the scabs off" our heart as we relive all the mistakes we have made in a relationship gone bad.

Luckily, though, it doesn’t take too much courage to face what life throws at us because most of the time we have no choice but to face it. Walk or be left behind forever. Endure the bullets and bombs or die. Face the despair of divorce or live the rest of your life unloving and unloved.

So we get up and face life, do the best we can, and hopefully appear brave enough to to those who most love us.

Hopefully when I get old I will be ready to put on my slippers and stride out the back door into forever, though I somehow doubt it. Until then, I expect each spring to seem just a little more beautiful than the ones before. I may even be able to love those around me just a little more,

from Anne Sexton