I don't have hope.
I don't do hope.
I have calm. Calm is better.
I have a knowledge from somewhere in my bones that it will be okay.
That even if everything I've spent all this time worrying about actually happens,
I'll be alright.
It may not be pretty,
And it may not be the happiness I long for,
But whatever happens to me, I know I will survive it.
And that gives the girl who spends much too much time stepping back and giving others what they ask for a peculiar edge:
When everything that I fear has happened,
And I should be broken,
That is always when I stand the tallest, and let pride put steel in my spine.
I don't have a secret weapon,
I am a secret weapon.
Because although I long to be content, I was made to be tested.

And whether I like it or not, I test well.

I wanna be like the autumn,
I wanna be like a tree.
I want my leafs to fall
So that new ones can be born.
I wanna be like an old movie
That you remember once in a while.
I wanna be an old memory
That keeps making you smile.
I wanna be the stories that are still left to tell.
I wanna be the absent rain that you are still able to smell.
I wanna be the smoke that slowly drifts away .
I wanna be like the sun that disappears at the end of the day.
I wanna be the sunset soon forgotten,
I don't want to be gotten.
Because, darling, I can't love you anymore,
You put my mind in a state of war.
So please, please, just go away,
Because I need to move on and I just can't make you stay.
Be the sunset soon forgotten and make your own way
Because the clouds are coming to make the blue sky return to gray.

I'm a girl untouched.
Many have passed through my body,
But no one has ever passed through my soul.
She is a girl untouched.
He may kiss her lips and hold her close
But he's not the one that she chose.
She may say she's fine and laugh all the time,
He will never know her internal grime.
She may say "I love you" and he may believe
But she knows she not meant it and she's just naive.
Does he know when he look you in the eyes?
Does he know every one of your disguises?
Does he search for the part of you that dies
Every time you lie awake hoping for better skies?
Because only a fool can't see everytime that you lie
When he asks "are you okay?", tell me, do you deny?
We all know that the nights were made to cry,
But you always seem so strong, so darling tell me why.

You are mine.
And I am yours.
Our minds belong to each other.
Our bodies are far apart.
We will never possess one another.
But you will always have my heart.

Somedays I wake up,
and I pray to whatever is above me,
whether it be God or something else beyond my comprenesion,
isn't there to wake me up.

Somedays, I lay there,
In my bed,
surrounded by the warm layers of fabric that seem to hold me together,
and wish that they would just curl tighter around me,
and constrict me closer into myself,
and pray that they can gently convince my lungs to stop working,
so I can just not wake up.

Somedays, I wonder,
Just gazing around me,
If i can just stop the clock, and stay right where I am,
safe and sound comfortable in myself,
away from all of the anxiety I feel as it would
rise and fall in my chest and bury itself with the confides of my stomache,
and all the other nitches that it can find,
and I dream of not waking up

Somedays, I win.
Somedays, I lose.

I usually lose.

And I find myself uncurling from my happy prison of warmth,
and I feel my feet on the cold hardwood floors,
sighing as I run my finger thrugh my ***** hair,
wondering, not praying
how I ever was able to wake up.

I had hoped that you loved me,
and that that distant gleam I would see in your eyes,
was just you daydreaming about a world,
where you would not be able to hold your hand in mine.

I had hoped that one day I could take you home,
taking the three hour drive in your broken maroon car,
and have my parents beam with the fact that I had found someone,
with my brother murmuring under his breath,
that you looked "homeless" because your gorgeous long locks and band shirts,
that I suppose did not appear to appease him.
We would laugh about it later.

I had hoped that even though I knew all these things,
that at least you would care about my attached feelings,
and that you would not toss them away to the sharks,
in order to dance another dance with another girl,
someone prettier and who can tell better jokes,
who can make you smile and someone who completes the part of you,
that I guess I was never able to fill,
who you hoped would envelope the empty whole,
in your heart.

She wonders who she really is.

To her parents, she is the "reliable child",
while her brother was off doing bath salts and fighting the "greater enemy",
she was at home reading books and tending to their every beckoning need,
with a smile plastered to her nimble face,
causing her features to slowly turn into a mask of perfection,
only to hide her yearning to escape,
and to taste the alcohol under the kitchen counter.

To her husband, she is the woman of his dreams,
with a graceful charm and a impeccable body,
she is the angle that awoke him from his long eternal slumber of loneliness,
and the one that is the biggest supporter of his dreams.
He never wonders if she does not love him as much as her loves her,
but the scrabble of her footsteps leaving the bedroom every-night,
are starting to weigh on his thought process.

To her work, she is the most valuable member of the team,
the one who always has the files organized by client last name in alphabetical order,
who can rattle off statistics and coffee orders as if they were the facts she learned in grade school,
and who always gives the best toasts at the yearly Christmas office party,
dressed perfectly with the smile frozen onto her face.
Little do they know, she has panic attacks in the bathroom between conference calls.

What astonishes me the most is when she needs a person to help her,
how all the people in her vicinity abruptly vanish,
and how she is able to blend in with the dark walls and floors,
and be completely out of sight.

She is the chameleon.

I saw the downfall
Of a leaf today --

A sad sight
To have seen
On a day so bright
And green.

There was no wind
No breeze to set the stage.

The little leaf
All red and brown,
Just let go
And fluttered down.

                               All alone it
                               Fell and lay.
                              All alone on
                              Its last day...

I'll never understand why I keep doing this.
I'll never see you in your dress for that wedding you're going to.
And a lot of other stuff I'll never see
Just because we can never be.

But what you will never see
Is how hollow I'm gonna be
When you're no longer around with me.

If you knew I wasn't over you
would you feel pity
or think I was weak?
You moved on before the seasons changed
and this new light is a harsh reality
casting shadows on this vacant pillow.
My eyes bleed tears with every sunrise
because I know your heart has left
and I can't bait it back to mine.