Price Tag

Alma Gaxiola

If every life’s a story
Then their’s will always be worth more
Mine was drowned out by the water
Running like fathers for the door

And if my Sunday morning Toons
Were the sounds of a life lost
On the streets I played with friends
Whatever did my story cost?

I guess the price I paid
For you to promise them a chance
To leave every mistake I made behind
With my prewritten happenstance

Was just the story you now tell
Only a life of wasted tears
And if you bottled every one
They’d sell quicker than the years

Passed by like sinking ships
In rivers filled by my mistakes
I guess a moral floated by
One I didn’t mean to create.

Created in my wondering
Formed by my midnight screams
Into my blood stained rearview mirror
The hands I killed with wasted dreams

But if I had heard a story
To stop the bullet in mid flight
Whatever might have changed?
What would my life look like?

Would you still use my life
As an example not to follow?
Would I still have stopped to ponder
The fatal questions in the hallows?

“Could a bullet really cleanse
Every wound of mine in salt,
From the closed eyes of a mother
For every child she has lost?”

“Could a shot or two really mask
The blood red ringing in my ears,
Of the baggage I forgot
To drown out with my biggest fears?”

Well, if every life’s a story
Then I just hope their’s aren’t lost
I hope they never stop to wonder,
“Whatever did my story cost?”

Alma Gaxiola is a sixteen-year-old first-generation Mexican immigrant who can be described in one word- passionate. Passionate in her convictions, the way she loves, her art, and the stories she hopes to tell through poetry. For she is most passionate about one thing. There are still stories that desperately need to be told.