Ever stop to wonder if maybe the boy who cried wolf was telling the truth all along?

He pulled on their sleeves, day after day, year after year,
incessant, eyes wide and innocent with fear
Please, oh god, the wolf is coming!
He crouches down, arms flung over his head
Insufficient protection for what he knows is to come
They barely spare him an eye roll
Get up! Everyone knows you're nothing but a liar.

The problem was not with the boy
The boy had the problem
And he is not the one to blame
Blame it on the people who didn't care enough to look beyond the surface

The wolf, the boy moans

It's chasing him in his head
Just because they can't see it doesn't mean it's not there
to him
He shakes in terror, whimpering
The wolf, he's here

And what of the boy's sister?
She too is being hunted by the wolf behind her eyes
But always she's been told
Don't be like your brother, don't tell tall tales
See this is why children should be seen and not heard

So she's learned to bite her tongue
instead of screaming when she sees the wolf's ****** teeth appear
She's learned how to close her eyes, but not sleep
because she know the wolf waits for her there

And when the wolf finally stops taunting her and comes for doomsday,
she will never give a cry for help

because she knows no one would listen to her anyway.

Pushing, pushing,
I don't know why I'm pushing,
Driving, driving,
to find an unknown place.

Climbing, climbing,
don't know why I'm just climbing,
striving, striving,
I'm starting to feel peace.

Sometimes I feel like my face is cracking apart
and that the pieces will just fall away into my hands
like plaster that has tried to stay a wall for much too long

and then everyone will see the stars that pulse against my skull
and then everyone will see what I really am
Because that's me in there, right?

*Everything I am is written in the storms of electricity dancing behind my eyes

I remember being cuddled up next to you on the green coach
I'd say it was about a year ago by now
and I asked you, out of the blue and from the sky,
whether or not you were happy.

I kept worrying at your answers like they were a string of beads
a necklace with a special charm hidden on its strand
searching for the round, warm bead of truth

But when I found it, it was not how I expected it to be
instead, I catch my fingers on jagged edges and a black rusted coat
Of course I'm not happy
you finally snap
I have no life, caring for all of you

I lifted that charm and chain off your shoulders and put it around my neck

You sagged, as if you hadn't realized how much
effort it had taken to hold up all that weight
because who would've thought it would take so much out of you
to cover up just one grain of the truth?

You asked me then
as a common courtesy
a return of a favor
out of the correct assumption that the asker always wants what they're asking for

Are you happy?
you ask

I say of course
and I'm a better liar than you are
or maybe you don't see that
people wear necklaces on their chests, the way I see it
so you don't push like I did

Or maybe the truth is you don't really want to know.
That seems about ugly enough, hurts just enough when you catch your fingers on it.

Not too much hurt though,
I understand you
for who in their right mind, would want to take the chains of someone else's pain?

You don't really want to know what's in my head.
I don't really want you to know what's in my head.
I tuck my necklace chain deep under my shirt, so deep under, that it melds through my chest, and you would have to stop my heart and cut me open to get it out.

I am going to open the blinds today.

the strings bite back on my hands
desperately trying to shudder back to their place
as the harbinger of black holes
they clatter viciously and
i feel myself losing grip

but i will not let them win.  

i tug and tie them to the glimmer of a silver hook
and gnaw at it though they do
there is no way for them to break through.

i let myself rise to the light
the world a precious prism
that the blinds have held hostage from me.

i revel in the moment
the fleeting glory of owning my own soul
but i know nothing lasts forever.

A cold wind pushes into my room.
The blinds whisper behind its cover, biding their time for revenge.

It's no fun to play games
with someone who expected to win
especially when someone else
gets clever and
for the first time
the reigning champion tastes the fear
of what it is to lose.