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Annie Nov 2013
People always clap for the wrong reasons,
And the best at ****** are those who preach against it.  
Evil is not intrinsic. It’s fashioned.  
I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves.  
There’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out.  
I talk to God but the sky is empty;
This love is silent.  
It’s exponentially bigger than you think;
It’s what you feel, but can’t articulate out loud.  

Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle.  
And neither the angels in the heaven above nor the demons down under the sea
Or the ghosts inside of me
Ever told me that grief felt so like fear.  
It’s easier to floss with barbed wire than
Admit that we love evil too well to give it up.  
Youth is a blunder, old age a regret;
But you cannot find peace by avoiding life.  

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
To struggle against this stupidity,  
I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.  
The troublemakers are just a handful,  
And if our times are difficult and perplexing,
We become what we think.
The earth has music for those who listen;
There are times when the wolves are silent and the moon is howling.  
Nature is a haunted house—but Art—
Is not a thing, it is a way;
A parasitic on life.  
It is easy to fool the eye,
But art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.  
We are killing a part of our souls
Every whisper of every waking hour,
And none of it seems real to me,
But everyone’s to blame.
This is a cento, so the lines were all taken from different sources and authors.
Annie Nov 2013
I'm tired of feeling alone every time I
open my eyes and overwhelmingly
lonely whenever I close them. I blink
in the hope that happiness might come
in the millisecond between the two but
it never does and I'm left with something
stronger than disappointment.
Annie Nov 2013
This time last year I choked on every
breath I tried to take and I broke down
at every other 2 a.m. that came along.
Nights were the only time my eyes were
dry because I didn't want to cry at the
hospital. That would be too cliche
and too much for you to take.

You were supposed to die that night,
nobody expected you to live a couple
more hours and now it's been over a year.

You scared us again that December.
I didn't go to my soccer tournament
because I was too emotionally unstable
and I was sure you were going to die.
You didn't.

You were still in the hospital in January
and now you were hallucinating.
A man died in the room next door and I was
convinced that was a sign that you were next.
I'll never forget the screams of his family.
I prepared myself for that to be us.
It hasn't happened yet.

You got back your remission, but you
lost your ability to walk. You have
become the ever present voice in my ear
and your eyes beg me to save you from
your own personal hell.

But I can't save you. I've tried.
I've spent countless nights thinking about
what I could do better and what I had
already done wrong, but the lack of sleep
never inspired any solutions.

I'm sorry that I'm not your hero.
I'm sorry that he couldn't be your savior.
I'm sorry he couldn't even keep himself afloat.
But most of all,
I'm sorry that I'm waiting for you to die.
Annie Oct 2013
only the good die young so i know i've got some time to ****
Annie Oct 2013
I can tell by your laugh that you've never known grief;
you've never had thoughts that follow you endlessly,
you've never hurt so much that you don't hurt at all.

I can tell by your laugh that you've never been lost
and you've never endured loss.
Nightmares have never kept you from breathing
and you've never feared life.

I can tell by your laugh that you still fear death,
you still fear the unknown.
Your eyes aren't weighed down with experience yet
and your smile is genuine every single time.

I can tell by your laugh that nothing haunts you.
I can tell by your laugh that you're still alive.
Annie Oct 2013
Your smile still reaches your eyes,
and the corners never try to drag you down.
You walk with a confidence I never had,
a piercing glare that dares me to give in to you.

Do you know how lucky you are?
To have happy thoughts more than those filled with grief?
Have you ever known pain?
I hope you never do; I never want to see
the happiness leak from your body.

I think I'm drawn to you because you're everything
I never allowed myself to be.
Maybe what I've gone through has been worth
it if you never have to suffer the same.

Stay young.
Stay happy.
Annie Sep 2013
I've lived for 1,485 days
without hearing your laugh,
and now I find it hard to
smile even once a day.

It's been 2,138,400 minutes since
I've had insignificant conversation
with you, and I struggle to
make small talk lately.

I've gone 128,304,000 seconds without
a shared glance across the room
and I don't remember the last time
I looked someone in the eyes.
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