Her First Homicide Poem by Tamra Craft

* This poem is for a man named Corey. I killed him by dragging him with me on my downward spiral. Many will not understand, but I was years older than him in innocence, and he was the victim, not I.*


As I bounded down the stairs, I caught you watching me.
With blue green eyes, it was the first time I saw you.
My mother introduced you as her gay friend from work.
She said you could be converted, I wondered why she’d want to.

You were only a twenty three year old waiter
With mahogany waves of hair draped down your chest.
You became a regular at my house, drinking in my living room.
So the day you showed up hours early was just like the rest.

I sat down beside you as you poured a drink and handed it to me.
This was the beginning us, soon you were coming over every day.
You let me inside you and told me everything, It made me have to ask
How if you had never been with a woman, could you know you’re gay?

I’d caught you speechless, a rare thing for you.
You couldn’t come up with any good reasons.
Just that it was the first thing you experienced and you liked it
You’d only had sex with men. I had only willingly slept with woman.

One night, on the couch in your apartment
You leaned down to kiss my lips.
Everything after became a blur
Your body brail beneath my fingertips.

We gave ourselves to each other that night
For the first time, sex felt safe to me.
The beginning of you and I together
Another secret we both had to keep.

I wanted to experience everything new with you
And do everything I had done already, with you there.
I felt certain that your presence could make anything better.
The world could have been falling down outside, I didn’t care.

It was my own fault for seeing you stronger than the others.
There are some things I never should have introduced you to.
But I was so eager to run away form the pain in my life.
So before I took my hit, I emptied the syringe into you.

So began another lesson, I wish I had already learned.
Unlike me, you refused to come back from your escape.
And the more I would try to talk you back to the world
The more and more you would take.

I tried to stand by my only love, I tried to understand until
The morning I stumbled in to find another woman beneath your covers.
It was the day I couldn’t believe my ignorance because I now saw
That when I threw drugs into you, you were just like my mother.

I told you that and your face paled at the ice in my words.
I turned away as you stood up, proving to me what you’d done.
At that moment I was so torn apart, and angry
Livid that I could have been so stupid to think you weren’t like everyone.

I left you naked and pleading. I refused to answer any of your calls
I tried to pick up the pieces of the girl you left broken.
I tried to pretend you were gone till I heard your voice on the machine
It had been weeks since we had spoken.

I’ll always hear your voice in my nightmares, begging me
Soft at first, then screaming, asking why I won’t take your call.
I listened to four messages, before you said you were ending your life
And I heard you smash the telephone against the wall.

I called you but I kept getting busy signals, so I left my house.
I ran all the way to your building, and slowed as I approached your open door.
I pushed it the rest of the way open to see you lying on your stomach
When I ran to you, I saw the needle on the floor.

When I rolled you over, your blue green eyes were lifeless.
I clung to you, screaming, Asking God is their any end to my pain?
I’ve never known sorrow that could compare with holding you Corey.
If it was okay for people like me to poison everything, hell and earth are the same.

I closed your eyelids with my fingertips, and gently kissed your cheek.
This would be the first man that I murdered with my disease.
I arranged your beautiful hair around your face, Oblivious to my screaming.
Until I looked up to find my self surrounded my police.

They tore me away, and swarmed you with paramedics.
They questioned my presence, all I could whisper was suicide.
Your family was there now, Your sisters and mother.
When they asked me why I was there, for them I lied.

I have to live with the guilt, of it being my fault forever.
You’re still some of my best and worst dreams.
I gave you my virginity, my heart, and part of my soul.
The biggest part of me died with you when I was thirteen.