Leaving Rhode Island: Alaska

I tried hiding out but they found me

The knock on the basement door

Asking me to come up

My Mom crying

My Dad with his head in his hands

Saying this was like Nazi Germany

The officers saying they didn’t like it any better than I did

But they had their orders and so off I went

First to jail, because I had just turned eighteen

Then, after a few days

To Alaska

My parents found me a place there

This old woman was looking for somebody

To live with her

Cook her meals

Wash her clothes

Stuff like that

Sounded like a good fit

Like I could, you know

Stay out of trouble

When I got there, everything was going fine

Alaska is a really beautiful place

Not really what you’d expect

The old woman was nice

She had a soft voice

Never yelled

And her she didn’t let me do half the stuff for her

That I was supposed to do

Turns out her son placed the ad

Looking for help

But she was pretty independent

Used to wash her curtains by hand

In a big tub out in the backyard

I liked her

Not that she became a surrogate grandma or anything

We’d eat meals together

And talk sometimes

But mostly we just lived next to each other

Not really with each other

Then one night, I hear something in the kitchen

And I get up, out of bed

To see if maybe the old woman tripped and fell or something

I walk down the hallway

And as soon as I’m in the doorway to the kitchen

I see the blood

The old woman’s lying on the ground

And there’s a guy standing over her

Dressed in black

Holding a knife

He came in through the sliding glass doors

And she must have been up having a midnight snack

He didn’t even give her a chance to yell for help

Or maybe she did, I don’t know

I guess there’s no way for me to know

Except that I’d like to think if she did and I had heard her I…

Anyway, the guy came towards me with the knife

And I disarmed him pretty quickly

He wasn’t expecting it

Young girl like me

And he was twice my size

But those are always the easiest guys

To take down

I took the knife and I jammed it into his throat

Just like that

Didn’t even have to think about it

He fell to the floor and made a…a…

Well it was loud

Scared me

The sound of it sort of—

Woke me up

I don’t think I had really been awake up until that point

I knew it was self-defense

But something in me just sort of cracked

And I grabbed some clothes and my coat

And I took off out the door

Been out the door ever since

See, when my parents hid me down in that basement

That wasn’t because they were trying to protect me

They were trying to protect other people

From me

From what I could do

I don’t know about the other people they sent away

But I’ve always…

I have a problem

Or an ability

It depends on how you look at it

I can hurt people

If I have to

Or…

I wonder if they knew that

The state, the government

When they came to get me

But why not keep me in jail?

Why let me out into the world

And risk me being the guy coming through the window

Instead of the girl he’s running at?

A lot of people have theories about

The people who were exiled

About why we were chosen

I wonder if maybe it was because they knew something about us

That we’re all…bombs, you know?

In one way or another

And maybe they figured…

If you can’t disarm a bomb

Just make sure it’s in somebody else’s backyard

When it goes off