Innocence -- Lemon Chiffon

          Before my adoption, my life was cheap, pointless, and without-a-doubt, ruthless.  Sitting on my bed in the orphanage every night, I would gaze out the window in search for a wishing star with hopes that my dream would come true. Every time though, a blanket of pollution clouded the night sky, sending my soaring hopes crashing to the ground. Frustrating as it was, I was persistent, until one day it paid off; I had a family to call my own.  To this day, I wish on shooting stars, though this time, wishing to undo what I have done-- found a family.

          Laying in bed the night of my 15th birthday, I was awakened by a series of crashes and thumps. Knowing already what kind of monster would be awaiting me if I left my room, I just rolled over on my side, and tried to ignore the pounding in the kitchen and in my heart. Life repeated itself, and mom was drunk constantly until, one night, things stopped. In tragic lives, there are words for  orphans like me, there are words for someone who loses  biological parents, but, in life, there are no words for when someone loses the only thing giving hope and determination to keep a family bound together.

         Everything fell apart after my mom's suicide, including my sister.  It seemed as though my sister had grown so far away from me, when I say her name,  there is a pang in my heart as "Megan," seemed so foreign. One day though, she took a turn that wasn't going in the right direction-- at all. This one day, life seemed to be a movie put on pause, as someone went to get popcorn; except now it wasn't popcorn, replacing it was a knife. "Kill me," was all I heard the 26th of June, and it rang in my ears for days. My sister. Asking me. To. Kill. Her.

          After weeks of being haunted by Megan's statement, I decided it was time to end my worries. Baking a cake that afternoon, I knew what I was going to do. A lemon chiffon cake, innocent, harmless, and smothered  with ignorance. Everyone would think differently of lemon chiffon now.  Choosing  not to follow the ingredients shown in the recipe, I reached for a small vial, and drop by drop imagined my sister lying motionless on her bed, all she had wanted.  After cutting a sliver of lemon chiffon, I found a doily, daintily placed it on mom's best china plate, and crept up the stairs in search for my sister. I sat in her bedroom and watched her eat my cake.  I smelled, in her bedroom, death lurking in the distance. I listened, in her bedroom, to her last words. Not only did I end my worries that day, I ended my sister's life. I. Killed. Her.