Take my hand, darling.
Hold me close.
Not another cut.
Not another dose.

Be my escape,
And I'll be your drug.
The feeling of a high,
Replaced with a hug.

Stay with me,
And promise this:
Every scar
Will be met with a kiss.

Love me tender,
Love me sweet.
And these addictions
We both shall beat.

Loving you,
Loving me.
Day by day,
For once, truly happy.

Once again, I am terrified of how I feel.
These thoughts are foreign to me.
My whole life, I was told it was wrong.
So then why is it in my mind?

I never understood how this worked...
But now I do.
It's just like how it is for everyone else,
Except a little bit switched.

I know I'm not all the way there,
I doubt I ever will be.
But...
I don't know...

I mean...
My best friend,
But is that all that's there?
Or more on my part?

I don't know what's going on.
I'm confused and scared,
Of my family... My church...
Society...

But none of it compares to the fear,
That if it gets out,
She won't understand. Or worse...
That she will feel the same...

What gives a father
The idea
That he has the right
To abide his son?
Hit him?
Hurt him?
Bully him?

Why does he think
That just 'cause he's bigger,
Older
Stronger
He can tear him down?
Break him?
Beat him?

How is he okay
With taunting his own child?
Criticizing him.
Telling him
He'll never be good enough.
A disappointment.
A failure.

I'm stuck in my thoughts
They keep rewinding
A broken record of memories
Forever destroyed
A never ending playlist
None of the good
Only that bad
I want to forget
But this track is stuck on repeat
And there's no un-stucking

And the wind swept them away
All the blue grass
Where we lay and you made secret plans
It swept the memories

I remember to this day
All the others
Love lost maybe buried in a chorus of a song somewhere

Pictures smiling through the rain
Framed to hide the times we struggled but we felt no pain
We felt nothing

And it's the brightest ones that die
Always falling
Slowly becoming something else

I was hoping we'd get through it all

When you entrust someone with something,
anything,
personal...
What hurts most is
When they use that part of you to strike you,
As if it hadn't hurt you enough already.

When you tell a person something,
anything,
personal...
Expecting them to understand and
Help you
What hurts most is
When they hear it all and don't understand

When you are confused about something,
anything
personal...
Confused so much that it hurts,
And you feel like you need to tell someone,
What hurts most is
Holding it in

What has the potential to hurt most is what you decide for yourself.

7am again, but in my room it's still night
light won't come inside
though the sun already shines
in the highest skies
in the highest skies.

Cold again, laying in my bed
I miss your warmth
I miss your hand
I call you and in the quiet air,
I feel your absence in my veins
killing me again
killing me again.

I need you to teach me
how to see the light
shining upon the sea
I need you to tell me
how am I supposed to breathe
when you're not here.

I look around to find your shadow
in every corner of my world
I see only emptiness
a desert for my inner flowers.
Oh, tell me,
where have you gone
where have you gone?

Alone I'm wandering again
these streets of despair
dead people walking around me
and I know, oh, I know
without your air
I'll soon be one of them.

*I need you to teach me
how to see the light
shining upon the sea
I need you to tell me
how am I supposed to breathe
when you're not here