It doesn't matter how the world sees you
For the world is quite subdued
It set's the limit of what is acceptable
What is regrettable
What is transposable
What is disposable

All that matters is how the people in your life view you
Are you loud, are you crude
Are you brazen,are you rude
Or are you the voice that soothes

Do you do your very best
To make other's feel blessed
Even though your more than stressed
With your own life a ****** up mess

Do they see your strength, does it show
Even though your hope was gone long ago
Do you still brave each day
Fighting there, in the gray

Can they find the hope you lost
Do they see you go on, no matter the cost
Do they love you anyway
Even when your in the hole, do they stay
Stand beside you night and day
Love you, even when you're in the sway

When depression takes your hand
Leads you to it's lonely land
By you then, do they still stand
Do they hold you close, do all they can

Or do they scatter
Leavening you to feel you don't matter
Making you out to be the Mad Hatter

Can you take off your disguise
Will they think you unwise
Not to continue your "happy" lie
Can they withstand the agony and sorrow in your eyes

If you do, and they can't
There will be no need to feel bad and rant

For when you drop your mask you'll find
You simply had friends of the wrong kind
Then you can leave the others far behind
As new friends start to unwind

©Pauline Russell

I find myself forgetting more and more frequently
that the world I have painted on the walls of my cell
is not reality

Death is a boy to me
An ageless boy with brown, curly hair and golden skin
He is an egotistical trickster, three steps ahead of me
Cruel, unfair, unfeeling
And for some reason, intrigued by me and the messy Life I breathe

In my head, I can make deals with him
In my head, he protects me, gives me choices, even as he pulls me closer
In my head, he is beatable
In my head, Death and I are falling in Love

But though it makes Death bearable to think of,
to believe it has characteristics it cannot is dangerous

Death loves me no more than it loves all of us
An embrace at the end of agony
It will not speak to me, it will not listen
It owns my Life and there is no deal I can make to change that

Yet

There is something beautiful about the boy in my head
Death a life of its own
A vision I can't escape
The walls around me painted the endless black of the stars

I love to try
so I try to love