Be quiet
Don't fidget
Don't waste their time
Don't tell them your problems
Don't tell them your hurts
If you tell them your problems
Their brokenness will be your fault!

Surrounded by birds
Was I the cage?
Be quiet don't fidget, don't overwhelm them
Don't open your heart or they'll fly away
Don't be needy or greedy, just go to your room
They're busy with others, there's no time for you
They have too many problems to talk about yours
If you tell them the truth they will break and leave you

Stay silent,
Don't whisper,
If they need you they'll tell you
But they never did
You're useless and ugly
If anyone needs you they'll tell you
But they never will

You're useless and ugly
Just hide in your heart
This feeling of pain
A dam of sorrow ready to burst

Be quiet,
Don't fidget
Don't waste their time.
If you tell them your problems
Their brokenness will be your fault!

Your heart is light and full of purpose
Trembling with hope and life
Believing a beautiful lie

Lenses of optimism obscuring signs
Seeing meaning in a look or glance
Thrilled by a phantom

This ghost haunts your memories
Once reality slams it's heavy gavel
The past rewritten

Truth sets free the specter
Unshackles the memories from their hopeful cage
But like Bitter medicine they linger

Hearts beating at different paces.
One flame growing brighter the other flickered and died
The dissonance of desire

Looks deemed precious
Shatter like glass
Beneath the weight of retrospection

Optimism unveiled as wishful thinking
Signs once ignored spring with life
Blossoming to painful thistles of shame.

Who were you talking with?
Them? Or a fiction created by your own mind
Grieving a ghost that never existed

America the land of the free
That never was
But someday hope to be

We are what we eat
Can I eat someone disciplined
And abandon myself
To shed my self hatred
And become someone new

They say "fake it 'til you make it"
How much longer
How many fake laughs
How many empty smiles
Does it take
To make happiness

Those around me love me
Those inside me hate me

Immune to truth
Resistant to reality

My quiet voices scream
You're unworthy

So hard to silence
So difficult to ignore

I fight a war for survival
In a world of peace

Hiding from fears of unknown pain
Embracing familiar death.