When you truly wake up,
you no longer need your dreams

We could die tomorrow with regret in our heart, or we could live today and fill it with joy.

I live on the streets;
poor and cold.
Once so young,
now so old.

My wealth is gone
as are my clothes.

I wear nothing but a rag.

But all of this does not matter to me.
There's only one thing I really need..

Just a nice, hard ****.

It follows through iridescent dreams.

It stares and it lingers.

It watches with saddened but dead eyes.

Sometimes you'll see it, most times you won't.

But either way, it is always there. Even when you awake from the nightmare, it remains.

Can you remember holding it?

Do you remember smiling as it giggled in your arms?

Do you think of it staring back at you as you lightly feel its soft skin?

No. Because you never did.

You never watched it take its first steps.

Heard it cry in the middle of the night.

Clean up after the mess that it had caused.

Or hear it call for you.

And now you never will.

Do you regret that day? That choice that you made?

Do you wonder to yourself what might have been?

If only that child was here today and you could tell it that you would love it and protect it.

Would you?

My frightened friend once said to me:
"I'm scared... I think I'm gay, no longer straight!"

To which I replied:
"I do not care, I like you for who you are, and to me you're still my mate"

Im afraid that if I allow those feelings
To surface,
They will be as consistent as they used to be.
And Ill go back to feeling that
Fear
And deep burning in the pit of my stomach.
I have spent years medicating
Myself so that I never have to
Feel, hear, taste or smell them again.
Now that I dont have my go to solution
What do I replace it with?
I dont know who I am
When Im not numb.

Theres a constant itch from the inside out, and it feels like I've been swallowing mouthfuls of the blackest ink
for a lifetime now.
It runs down my throat, coating the words that have been carved into me.

Sometimes I can't see myself anymore. My hands become someone elses and my skin feels like
Static.

How did I get here?
Ive spent years dusting my body for fingerprints, trying to put together the unknown.
But every night I go to sleep,
I wake up asking the same questions.
With a glass of black ink sitting next to my bed, a note stuck to it saying -
"Drink me"

It has taken me twenty years to finally understand the beginning of what I am worth.

It is not 2pm boredom that turns into pretending to be different people to strangers on the internet.
It is not bruises on the inside of my thighs.
Its not 4am lines with people I dont know, but insist are my best friends.
It is not selfies meant to entice and draw in whoever likes the shape of me
And wonders what the scent of my skin is.

It is not "If you love me, you would do this for me".
Its not drowning out the inner voice that has been taught to speak by everyone who didn't understand -
How to love.
That I was a human being.
They are weak for needing to hurt me.