I'm feeling a little broken recently
My mind is a little too foggy
Like my heart is a little too gray
Like, maybe, this isn't quite right

I'm feeling like I already knew this
That denial is a hell of a thing
It's easy to pretend in the summer
It's easy to forget how bad it can be

There is something to be said about
the false comfort found in warm weather

The sun knows the perfect way to
make the storm clouds seem a little softer
How to make moonlit nights a little less lonely
How to make the future shine a little brighter

But the comfort of summer is fading now
and everything is a daunting shade of grey

I have never been fond of winter
and she has never been kind to me

Here we stand on the cliffs edge
The precipice of destruction, my hand in yours
and yours in his and his wrapped around his bleeding heart
If you fall, I fall
This is where we learn strength and our true will to live
Not some "we can survive this" *******
"We can make it if we just hold on"
No, I want to live
Not passively coast by until the wound is too infected to fight back
I want to fight back
We will turn our backs on the eve of our eternity,
look the monsters in their face and say *******
Swallow their hatred and let it mutate and boil in our guts,
pulling forth a cry so raw and primordial
our ancestors will wake to lend their spirit
Whisper in our ears secrets of war times
long forgotten by everything except the earth
Hope and peace and treaties do not make for a winning team
unless the cause is for everything to stay same
No one listens to a "soft please" or notices a downcast frown
**** them with kindness was a term created to keep us silent
and passive
and our arrows aimed at our own hearts
Bullies have existed since the beginning of time
and three night rebellions will never win our safety back
but neither will silence
And I've seen a lot more come of riots
than from mumbled prayers to gods who might not exist
and wouldn't care anyway
There's a time for revolution - for fighting back
You have to pick your battles in this world, so I'm picking them all
and I say the time is now
If we fall, we fall,
but we will fall with our knuckles bloodied
and band-aids on our hearts
And if we fall, I'm taking some of them with me

The harder you try to pull away,
the tighter I squeeze,
and I swear I don't mean to come off too strong,
but a history of abandonment
and fizzling potential
has left me with constrictor instincts

There is a softness to this stagnation
A familiarity
It's true what they say
about finding comfort in this
It is surprisingly easy to sink in still water
The great lake of potential swallows me up
and some days I can barely keep my nose above water
The rest I spend holding my breath

I once said if I could choose how I would die,
I would choose to drown
Sometimes the threat of the great darkness
looms for so long you forget to fear it
Sometimes you grow accustomed
to the taste of your own waterlogged heart
and the shore lies too far ahead for you to see the lighthouse

And sometimes that bright unknown is what you fear most

This eternal longing for the soft embrace of Rest grows ever-stronger while my will shrinks by every passing infinite moment
I am suspended in place, held aloft by pure stubbornness and not-entirely-honest hope for a better life come next Spring
And to think of what I might miss if I let myself sleep...
Well, that pain nearly overbears the dull ache of existing at all

So here I will remain forever, one foot caught in a trap I set for myself out of fear on my darkest hour and the other foot just barely toeing the border of a daunting place I hope to never set my eyes upon

They say you can't win if you don't play and,
yeah, maybe quitters never win but they never lose either
They simply exist
I simply exist
No playing into societal rules about what makes me acceptable
Don't you want to be pretty? they ask
Don't you want love?
Don't you want to people to like you?
No.
******* and your approval
I like me and like that I quit

One moment you're on your way home, driving a car you just bought two weeks ago and the next you're gasping for air, tearing at a safety feature that now seems to have been created to keep you trapped
The dead hands of despair and terror and loss grip your heart and rip it from its home in your chest
You're out of the car and screaming and a man is asking if you're okay while you're wondering the same about the woman in the other car
He's holding your dog and looking at you rightfully wary
Swears spill from your mouth faster than the blood and you didn't even know you were bleeding and everything is panic and pain and hopelessness because **** there goes everything you've been working for for the last six months
All of your dreams were wrapped up in that car and now that car is wrapped around itself
You wrap up around yourself and the rest of the night is a blur
You let everyone take care if it for you, immediately falling back into a pit of old habits you have been clawing your way out of
The car is in your garage now and your college acceptance letter sits in a box, both collecting dust and pity and your avoidance