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 filled my bullet holes from the inside out
Concrete substitutions for flesh laid by a man of stone
So cold to the touch in the moonlight hours
I almost forget I was ever warm
Perforated to the core of my being
My initial rebuttal to the pain i felt was to harden myself
Teach myself to live with the cold
And look towards the solid shadows I then casted for inspiration to carry on
Fool myself into believing in the wholeness of a broken man
I lived as a creation of my own twisted and transformed imagination day in and day out
Dragging along the heavy weight a shield of hate brought with it
The problem being
Behind that shield I was protected fully from any outside source of grief
But I was trapped as well
A layer of thick rage and apathy deflecting any and all other emotion
A poison that constantly ate at what was left of me
Soon I became too weak to stand
The price you pay for being invincible against all other forces is that you can never stop yourself from dying on the inside
I had built a fortress to no avail
Because I had trapped the evil within myself
On my knees, my body rotting away
What was left of my flesh began to shrink back
The concrete was losing its grip the walls of skin that held them in retreating
The evil had won
Chunks of cement fell to the ground and crumbled
The agony indescribable
I was losing the last ounce of security I had left in this world
I was weak and the heaviness of the shield left when I could no longer hold it
I was defeated
I sat awaiting a death that in my mind was the only thing left assured to me
But it never came
Instead, I saw the sun rise over the horizon
I felt its warm rays on my disfigured flesh
And all around me was illuminated
In the light I saw how horrible what I had done to myself really was
At the price of living I had bought myself immortality
Nothing more than a cruel joke
Night never came again
And eventually I stood up
The light shone through my bullet holes as I did and the last of my disgust for the world was gone
I buried the shield and the crumbled stone deep in the darkness and never went back
Because no matter what may have been in my past, no matter how much blood I had shed, I knew that now I could live,

Truly