Allison in Fairfax, Virginia #61 (Violence)

I shot him twice in the chest. He slumped to the floor. I laid my head on his chest and my hair soaked up his savage blood.

Samantha in Bend, Oregon #60 (Sorrow)

Life hasn't been too kind to any of my brothers. One of them died in a drug deal gone wrong. The second killed his wife when he found her with another man; he's serving a mandatory 40 years in the pen. My youngest brother got leukemia when he was 8 and died 6 months later.

Ansel in Hazard, Kentucky #59 (Self evaulation)

I flatter the devil with every word that comes out of my mouth. I looked in the mirror a couple days ago and I saw leprosy eating away at my skin. I started clawing at my face, trying to find the person I was underneath all the layers of atrocity and pain. I ended up just scratching my face up pretty bad; nothing really changed. Hardly anything ever does.

Elizabeth in Ogden, Utah #58 (Dreams)

I have a recurring dream where I'm sitting on the hood of a 94 Dodge Shadow that is driving down the highway at a dangerous speed weaving in and out of traffic. My legs are spread and I'm topless. With one hand I'm squeezing my nipple and with the other I'm fingering myself. When I try to look back and see who's driving the car, I always wake up.

Clemencia in Chiapa, Mexico #57 (Sorrow)

Life has teeth to chew up girls like me. When you think about me you think about my big red lips on your lips and my hands on your body and my crotch writhing in the darkest moonlight and calling you by your secret name saying: "fuck me." (Christopher Feltner)

Abri in Port Elizabeth, South Africa #56 (Love)

I was wise enough to no longer expect your letters but when I gave up hope for them I gave up something vitally alive inside myself. When you stopped gorging yourself on my flesh you had learn to love my failures and my frailties instead of my strengths and successes and you were unable to do so.

Mercedes in Beckley, West Virginia #55 (Sorrow)

I found out I was pregnant 3 weeks before my 16th birthday. The daddy was a shit for brains 18 year old drop out who talked me into snorting oxycontin at a party and then fucked me when I was half out of it. God there's a sort of sick loneliness in this world and even when my mom and daddy and that fucking junkie were desperately trying to talk me into having an abortion I kept thinking about how it was gonna be nice it was gonna be to always have someone with me that I love. In the soft glow of an early fall evening I was carrying groceries in and felt this cramping pain in my stomach and I collapsed in the driveway. My mom called an ambulance and they hauled me off to the hospital; the whole way there I was hemorrhaging this rusty brown blood and crying softly as I felt my child dying in my agonized womb. When I got to the hospital, the doctor told us what I already knew: I'd lost my baby. That pill head fuck up really dodged a bullet when he knocked me up, huh? (Chris Hodge)