I'm not perfect.
I never pretended to be an angel.
I won't lie to you,
But I won't change again.

I hope you'll accept me,
For everything that I am,
Because I'm not going through again
What I've dealt with before...

I want to love you;
Love you like I've never loved another soul,
But I can't if you can't love me,
For my past and what it's made me.

I don't want to change my memories;
My experiences,
Or my reality.
I can only accept the past,
Accept what I've done.

I hope you'll love me;
Love me for everything that is me.

I feel the lines on my skin
Raised and starkly white
And I feel the memory of the pain
From those many lost fights

I hear the voices inside my head
That murmur those bleak thoughts
And choose against what they tell me
Instead of adding to the awful spots

Sometimes I am stronger and I believe I will stay true.
Sometimes I don't win the fight but I believe I'll be better for you.

Hopefully one day it'll be something I'll never think about again,
But until that day I'll battle the thoughts and voices in my head.

War is so romantic,
Don't you think?
The women swooning for the strong men,
The uniforms and stubborn stances.
Their confidence in the rightness of their ways,
Turns the hearts of ladies soft.
The young eyes and naïveté of those lily white boy soldiers who believe in their invincibility,
Is so appealing to the women on the sidelines

The day dreams of nursing the men back to health,
And having one fall deep, deep in love with you.
Their nurse, caretaker as you have become
Appeals to that hopeless romantic..

But what happens when they return?
The innocence gone,
A haunted look in the beautiful broken eyes.
When their bodies are shaken-
And their minds aren't quite right.
Who has the strength to cradle their fragile forms,
And stand there beside them in the night?
To hush them when they cry at the horrors they have seen.

So many hundreds of thousands of wars;
Where the boys come back as shattered men,
Where they come back without their friends
And they can't quite cope with their new reality.

Yes there is romanticism in war,
But when does it stop being a novel
And start identifying as a horror story?

I feel so numb without you here
When I watch you leave it's as if my feelings disappear
I'll drink to take the edge off this lonely numbness I feel
But it won't stop me missing you
Not even a little bit
Not here in this place, without you.

Sometimes I wish someone would **** me
So I didn't think of killing myself
So I wouldn't hurt so many people
So I could just stop breathing now

Sometimes I wish I would die
Of natural or unnatural causes
So that this life could be over in a good place
And I wouldn't have to slide back down again

Sometimes I pray for that black winged angel
To swoop down on me and steal my breath
To **** the light right out of my eyes
And take me out of this place
That steals all of my soul anyway

Sometimes I wish I would let go
And end up surrounded by the dark
So I could sleep
And never open my eyes to the world again.

How do I know how to cope with these feelings inside of me
When I know you could tear me apart
Rip all the seams from their repaired origins
And watch as the bottom falls out again
My heart can't handle
One more fracture
It'll end me
Finish all the things they've started
I need you to need me
Not leave me.

I wish the words would come to me
as easily as they used to,
but I fear that I need some kind of
dissatisfaction
to expel the words in my mind correctly
so how do I express
what I truly hold dear to me?
In the cold night with these blankets wrapped around me,
I hold your memory closer
and pray for you to come home
because that word is the strongest expletive I can think of
and it took you from me.
I'm defenseless,
restless,
and I don't know how to protect you from so far away.