A wound like a long-lost friend
Not present but never truly gone
Invisible to all but me at all times
Deeper than a knife to my heart

I never want it to close or heal
A reminder of that which is lost
A connection taken from me
To a port in life’s terrible storm

I hate this ******* empty feeling
That I can’t be truly whole again
Piece of me permanently dead
That used to make me feel so alive

The sum of all the parts is clear
Life has kicked me down the stairs
To begin for the bottom once more
Reminding me how unlucky I am

I survey the damage as I stand
No broken bones, only bruised pride
My mind is still clear like the morning
My stubbornness fully intact

I will take these little victories
To rebuild my life once again
I will scratch and claw forward
Toward a future better than today

Mirror wounds only show we braved the same knives
Your run for safety only leads to a solitary false harbor
Keeping you in place as I lament from behind my line
My failed battles have been with demons like yours
That will keep you in place to strengthen your weakness
There is no perfect world where these wounds won’t reopen
But the blessings can outweigh any tragedy if you let them be
There is no amount of days which will let me stop wishing
For those days marching in a row creating our own music
This imperfect world will try to cleave us repeatedly in two
Yet cupid’s arrow has kept together those without light and heat
Your feelings of failure are the result of what is now missing
As your soul yearns to restore the completion we both once had
It’s more than just our share of scars which line up perfectly
Broken bones can heal repeatedly but hearts stay that way
What will you do about the blessings you already had?

A storm like this
We never saw coming
Cold November
Icy winds so numbing

Blinded by white
Hurricane of white sheen
I cannot see
Ship is starting to lean

Erie has roared
Inland sea upheaval
I fear sinking
Nothing for retrieval

But we can’t leave
Our light may save others
Our duty clear
As the vessel shudders

My hurried words
Are probably my last
Goodbye, Nellie
Ship is breaking up fast

My worn, weathered armor is spattered with mud and blood
From a brutal and deadly siege which seems never-ending
The lone queen stares down from her perch with her glacial glare
Concealing from the world a broken heart needing mending

I know she can’t look in the mirror and see the truth
She is her own jailer, prisoner of her own design
The keys in the door of her cold solitary cell
Evidence of me decorating her suffering shrine

From her perch upon the ramparts I reveal to her
The scars I’ve acquired in war to my very heart and soul
They line up so perfectly to the wounds she obscures
She doesn’t realize they are a map to who makes us whole

My vow was to never storm this castle she adorns
Believing a perfect world may exist, I tempt the fates
Unleash the slings and sharp arrows, pain and broken bones
The line has been crossed, it’s time for her to open the gates

It was a cliché, smokey country bar
When she crooned into my memory
As I heard a hint of her old accent
From a bygone Virginia residence
Faint and fading but not all gone
In the minstrel’s spell she cast in her song

Life put her on that stage for me
And I begged for her gaze to be on me
To end the long, cold, lonely nights
And as Etta said, at last, this night
She caught my unceasing, tense stare
And right then, she sang only to me