It was many and many a year ago,
  In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
  By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
  Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
  In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
  I and my ANNABEL LEE;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
  Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
  In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
  My beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
  And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
  In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
  Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
  In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
  Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
  Of those who were older than we—
  Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in heaven above,
  Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
  Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
  Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes
  Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride,
  In her sepulchre there by the sea—
  In her tomb by the side of the sea.

I wrote and rejected my own words,
I marked them basic, unoriginal.
I erased lines I never replaced.
I stopped making new worlds.
I loathed that I was only typical,
I hoped it would only be a phase
But I paused.
The pause turned into a halt.
It turned into a break, turned into never.
Then I wrote back all that I lost,
Stopped stopping and breaking and believing the false.
I want to continue writing letters.
So I will mix and match and reach my goal to have never been better.

It's bright in here and I don't know what's outside.
But I'm sure that it's bright here.
I'll stay here. It's safe inside.

Art is my escape
The place I dare to dream,
Depositing frustrations
That make me want to scream;
Tying up the loose ends
Of mental threads about to snap
Seeking peaceful solitude
From a world that's full of crap.
Sometimes, pen and paper
Are the only things I trust,
When all around me shatters,
And turns to empty dust.
Here among the soft lights
Of lamp, and desk, and ink
I give into emotion
So I do not have to think.