If to Fear we would succumb,
Nothing then would we become.

It’s true you can’t go home again, no matter what they say,
But the world is out there waiting; who would want to anyway?
There is no glory in the bleached bones of ghosts we leave behind,
So I whistle past the graveyard in that corner of my mind,
Still haunted by the chains that I escaped but couldn’t break,
Before the truth became the only bitter pill I didn’t take,
All it cost me was a life I thought I wanted, another best-laid plan,
And every single thing I ever thought it took to be a man,
Now the path curves to a circle, I come back only to leave,
Progressing towards an ending that I feel but don’t believe,
Maybe someday I’ll learn the difference between loss and letting go,
Ignore signs and highway lines, make footprints in the snow,
But until that day I’ll keep repeating every word I never said,
Only awake inside my dreams, only alive in my own head.

Nice is an icy surface, Kind is the crackle of fire from below
Where there is frozen, stiff, coldness,
There's also a soft pile of snow
Nice wants something from you
Kind wants you to grow
So open your eyes to the person who scolds you
For your every reckless woe
'Cause they are the one who cares
And not the person who never tells you no

-Audrey

I was half-awake when last we spoke,
My veins pumping thumbtacks and smoke,
Twelve hours west, a world apart,
A battleship with broken heart,
You were unbound, an empty page,
The spotlight that burned down the stage,
The calm beneath the raging sea,
Your bottled words now floating free,
But the tide brought with it fear and doubt,
Still I waded in to wait it out,
And watched as you went drifting by,
The last star in my fractured sky,
I said “Do your best to picture me,
Before I was who I claimed to be,”
You told not to dwell on old regrets,
Life marches on, the moon forgets,
And so it did, and so we went,
Losing track of all we meant,
To do or fight or be or say,
Before the weight of time got in our way,
Now your sun sets as my day begins,
But don’t tell me how tomorrow ends,
Just leave me with my windshield glare,
And the last lingering taste of moonlit air,
Still searching for some peace of mind,
In the future that you left behind.

That's what the voices in my head told me every time I set out to make some kind of statement in an antiquated form that would most likely be overlooked by every one of my friends.

But with beer and vanity and pigheaded persistence,
I managed to ignore them.

It's not until you start swimming toward the shallows
that you discover how deep of water you were in.