You are a grave digger.

Exhuming the heart I thought dead.

It was entombed like a love buried in the backyard of my essentia.

I dug it low with  pain a shovel

Deeper and deeper till I could not see the light.

Piled the dirt down the pit to a heart that could not become more soiled.

It did not matter you put your ear to the ground that night and listened intently

You didn't have a shovel you only had those patient hands.

You got on all fours and began to excavate clawing in the ground with quiet determination

A smile creased across the face as the muck caked your clothes but it did not ***** that spirit.

I thought you lost in the depths to claim a prize I tried to hide.

Then there you were a grin from ear to ear and a tender thing held in just one palm.

I froze uncertain as each step brought it closer.

You simply dusted it off and handed back the heart like a old hat I had lost.

I tried it on for size again and felt the familiar weight of it.

It still felt a burden but that look in your eyes made me believe that I could bear it

The only time I want to look back is to make sure no one fell behind.

We all have value and so I work down the line

Count the people by their names and not by number

See their face with all my sight one at a time every individual.

Spread kind words to each just to catch a smile and to keep lit their eyes

Embrace with abandon amongst the masses not huddled but held.

One in many we find more strength when we hold together

You are an atomic bomb as you lay wasted in the couch my grandmother wanted me to have.

The shockwave blows me back to the past to cross stitch and conversations about getting hitched to the innocence of the boy next door.

She checked out 3 years ago and the year that followed saw you check in.

A modern marvel guaranteed to end my worlds internal struggle.

I soon learned bombs aren't made for saving and you scorched me worse than any ******.

I stare at you the fallout; My Fat Boy

you use your body as a weapon against me

I don't find it endearing when you sear me with your touch

You hold my hand that makes me chafe like manacles clasped too tight so I won't escape.

You unload clip after clip tearing me open till I hear you go click click

Even Your words flood my space like a toxic cloud as our relationship deepens into trench warfare.

My life was a peaceful meadow till it met the tread of your boots

You close the distance with a knife a last desperate attempt to win a war and strike down the last of my will.

We were never soldiers. All these words just metaphor. I step outside and simply shut the door.

Oh Lordy need a forty
Going in the city on this sortie

Making menace  while speaking witty

We're dead inside but make merry corpses dancing in the darkness between streetlights.

The lights flicker fail and we gain new territory.
Wolves in the night we cast long shadows stretching distortions of our inner demons. They claw and scrape over concrete to rake across dismayed  faces.
The sun rises too soon a cleansing fire that burns away the umbras but not our memories. We know the time after dusk and revel in it.

I'm not the product you sought to buy. My "I've been used by dates" shows I should have been expired.

Yet still here on the shelf
stuffed to the back down the wrong aisle

my label is illegible but they still try to place me with their sloppy stocking hurting me more

All the scars becoming just damage to the packaging voiding warranties and wants of me.

Take me on discount.
I'm a steal.
All my values plundered
But never brought home.

You build your love like a sand castle

Stack it on high by the bucket

Enshrine it with walls built like pallisades

Dig the  moat by hand to keep out intruders

Decorate with a thousand scintillating shells to make a beacon on that beach

The storm always comes

The waves crashes

Washing away all but the memories

Eyes deceive and so I rely on something deeper than just vision.

Something with more depth than just whats between your thighs.

Don't spread your legs wide but unfurl your mind lay it out like a map so I may bear witness to the whole.

I gaze upon thoroughways of your thoughts and feelings, the canals of your being and viscera of the soul.

The rise of the hills and dive of the valleys etch a landscape beyond any other natural beauty.

Seek to memorize what has been charted by the artist named life making each of us a work of art.

To know more than with five senses so you can be touched beyond what these hands could ever hold.

Through virtue and vice I am who I am.

I've come to know the truth of who.

I see sooth in self and speak no deceptions.

I have shed my doubts mind free of their clout

Reborn of my own accord no one to claim me as theirs

I've left all the baggage at the station to conduct this life by a lighter load

Worth of mine that shall not break to another.

Self not to be carelessly given to be lost by an unguarded guest.

One known better is all I've ever needed

I Cut and Cut to shred away the skin I wore when I was with you.

I tear away the time we’ve had to find the me before you.

Find the old cloth under all the patches you placed over me.

You thought you were fixing me
By covering the holes, the tears, the tatters. Those were me ; my loves my losses, my memories.

By Friends and family I will piece together a new self. They will be the stitches that put me back together and hold me as a reborn whole.

The quilt made by my hand,  held together by my choices. will be all the warmth and comfort I will ever need.

You are the only wind through hell.

The gentlest of caresses a cool embrace that warms without heat.

The only Deviation from an existence with little alleviation.

Closest thing I can feel to joy in this place.

Were you stronger you could ******* from here.

Alas I am no kite and must walk out on my own accord.

In the silence gain the strength from anger.

Then Bite the hand that feeds. Clench your teeth and watch them bleed.

Rip the arm straight from the socket, you don't need an owner.

Eat the ugly  face to erase the fear it once caused

Chomp down the heart that never held kindness

Consume the flesh piece by piece to swallow whole your hatred and sleep in peaceful happiness.

Life is born without shape.

****** out from one to become none

Fresh clay to be cast, spun, and molded

Folded in mother's arms she begins to give  form

With a kiss from the source the little form is claimed and a wrinkle above the brow is creased; the maker's mark.

New movement comes in each day stretching out the raw material and shaping more detail.

A mouth of questions spoken to fill in the scrawling words written inside. A hidden design with each learned answer

The world takes a turn. The work  is carved, scraped, and left scarred but still more beautiful in the details.

It sees others begin to set dry becoming stuck in their ways. So brittle now in their inflexibility.

Defiant to the end instead of being baked jumped into the water to become something new.

The world saw nothing but a tangle of wires and a blown out speaker blaring distorted sounds.

You saw promise beyond the coils of crossed cords.  You could reach through the distant disconnect and tune it all back in.

With gentle motions you Opened up the metal shell made to protect the more delicate insides.

There you dared the jungle of electric vines  to put order to this jumble. The strands of disarray combed straight by patient hands.