I packed a box in my head,
With my pain and tears.
I shut it and sealed it,
With strength and resolve.
I left it to gather dust,
From neglect and abandonment.
If I didn't think about it maybe it wouldn't feel real.
Instead the pain burst out through the seams,
The box lay in tatters with the edges of my mind.
You can't feel happiness without pain,
The two are what make you feel alive.

Am not sorry for the times I stood up for myself.
That was your job and yet you left me all alone.
Waiting,
Always waiting.
For you.
For me.
Somehow we never met halfway,
All the tears I shed hoping you would change your mind.
That you would have my back just once.
Instead I had to hold myself together so I wouldn't break.
I learnt to breathe on my own.

You are the need that echoes back to me.

Somehow I find myself here again,
At your mercy.
Will you embrace me or shun me?
Draw me close like a wrap you wear.
You and I fit like pieces meant to be,
The dot to my words,
The need in my soul.
I call to you,
You echo back my cries.
And it all makes sense,
We fit like a picture puzzle.

Going round in circles,
That's what he does best.
Turning my opinions inside out,
Pushing me, pulling me, being with me.
He says am special, he says am not.
He never says yes or no.
Deftly playing my heart like strings,
tucking, twisting, threading me.
He wears my heart on his sleeve,
Like a cuff-link.

He is frozen in time,
At a place where everything moves slowly,
Snow flakes falling round his heart.
He doesn't move to stop the pattern,
Stuck between past and future
There is a place where it all makes sense,
Somewhere he lost himself.

It was the way he said my name that broke my layers of resolve not to cry.
I was weak, just like always.
Why did i expect this time to be different?
To hurt less simply cause I didn't want to cry?
It was the seriousness in his voice, I think, which tripped me up.
He really wanted out.
I was desperate, homicidal even.
I didn't want to be alone.
The shadows scared me.
Following me around like a tracker,
I couldn't help a shudder everytime I caught sight of one.
They grew and shrank in seeming unison.
I clutched his robes and begged.
I will do anything, just don't leave me alone.
They might hurt me.
I have lost everything.
Please oh please I don't want to be alone.
My cries fell on deaf ears.
He had turned away, his face like stone.
This was time to pay.