I can squeeze myself like an orange
Giving my sweet and sour soul
To sate the thirst of passerby
Whose stomachs will never be full

Strangers sipping saccharine nectar
Spitting putrid pulp
Tasting only the sweet of fruits
Wasting what makes us whole

I give my body for others to love
Not for them to take
My personality is part of me
So please don't cherry-pick

Forgive me for I have fallen
From the fair sky
And ruined your beautiful wings
That you had made for me alone

And yet as I plummet
Plumes prancing about my descent
Your gift is even more lovely
Each fragile piece flickering in the sunset

And as I am burnt from heaven
With third degree burns of passion
I will bask in the flames
My body branded black to the bone

A coal to light another pyre
As my passing brings another life
My cries converted to cries anew
In the larynx of another love

Should I change to be the me that others want me to be?
And change to maintain that which I have already obtained, or remain the me that I have always been?
How will I survive without the me that has been alive as me when I throw reality away for another me?
Now I am not the me who I have been for I have changed my personality, permanently barking up an unknown tree.
Tossed aside what I was inside so that I may contrive an identity, from me others can derive their sweet desires.
Will others flee when they see that I have not become what they want to see and rather the me that pleases me to be?
I agree with great certainty that the me that I want to be is uncertain, for even I do not know why I cannot simply be just me,
Why I need the validation of words from lips unimportant,
from gazes of eyes that widen with admiration and pride,
from applause to a facade, a disguise,
compliments to a me that is not me?
I try to provide all that I can provide,
for without the lie that is not me,
those that look up to me may lose themselves too
and just as I have, with a sigh long, long ago
they die.

My eyes are not furnaces,
melting realities into idyllic casts
disfigured until their original forms
are but ashen memories
upon the ****** anvil.

Nor are my eyes windows
Through which I gaze
And through which others gaze back
Pure transparency
And no deception

Or mirrors that reflect
Images mimicked
Upon an insincere facade
Merely a copy
Never as beautiful as the first

My eyes are not any of these
They are pools of water
In which I see both myself
And that which is beneath
The world below the surface

Everything I see is painted me
The shade that I have made
For myself and no one else
Ugly, beautiful, personal
To me and me alone

Milky dreams drip from my ears
And molten frost leaks as faded tears
Corroded whispers escape my lips
And from my soul the echo grips

final breaths of rain
as a barrage of sighs on concrete waves
the deadline for their journey unfinished
wails of the storm
it shrieks for children crushed
by their own momentum
wishing it could cling to its babies
until time ceased
and with it
they could stay
forever
taut delicateness
in rueful tears
vibrantly transparent
fragments rise to the ancient gestures
of golden fingers
tendrils of vaporous labor
assimilate to form a smoky embryo again
birthing another generation
destined to fall