Tagged.

This is a poem I wrote today for my creative writing class. I hope you like it. 

Tagged

My heart drops to my stomach

As I watch her life flash before my eyes,

A film running through my mind beginning with her

Bundled up with her father, a cozy toddler

Unaware of all the unfortunate events that would

Plague her life until every drop

Of childhood innocence was drained out of her.

The next scene I picture is her standing on a stage,

The rest of the world in shadows

As she sings “somewhere over the rainbow”

For the church play,

So nervous, but so in love with the music

In the days before she was told that

Her dreams and passions were less important

Than the money she could make getting a ‘real job.’

The image develops into her playing in the snow

The last bits of light left in her eyes shining more brightly

Than they ever have since.

She’s building a snowperson and creating

Scattered snow angels in the backyard,

So beautiful, her brightly colored winter clothes

Against the white of the blizzard

Before she is covered and blends in

Starting to disappear.

Tears well in my eyes

Blurring my lenses

Causing me to lose my focus,

And then jump forward to

one single frame that reveals that she is no longer

Anything I expected her to be.

Her secrets exposed,

This picture,

Taken in a room filled with smoke

Bottle of vodka in hand,

Donned in the clothes of the man

That has his arm wrapped around her.

Her eyelids hanging low as

Her lips brush the neck of a scantily clad female that has

Jumped into the picture before the

Intoxicated photographer yelled “1…2…3!”

This is who she has become,

This is who I’ve let her be, and

This photograph,

Available for the whole world to see

My child

Pretending to be an adult

Is in no way how I expected this

Movie to end.