The power of pain remains ungoverned
While the currency of faith slowly bleeds out
Children, transfixed and mesmerized
Watch cannons cauterize our wounds

Mother moon, cresting over hill and lake
Reflections can no longer resist the weight
Arms, vanquished and immobilized
As dawn breaks our last awakening

By splendor's dying light
Treason has spoiled our meager hearts
Eyes, squinted and crestfallen
We are but a fraction of this mutinous crew

For our deaths may be inevitable
And our honor may be unenviable
Betrayal, blinks and relapses
While sword and shield seed the earth

Amounting to more
Than my heart can hold
Stained silver cuts deep
With its poison-steeped blade
And the pen in my hand
Remains bitter cold to the touch

I write my pleas
With ice-coated words
Words that melt swiftly
As they dance upon coals
The embers of a fiery
And deceitful tongue

As I tiptoe along
The edge of the Earth and back
I notice there is scarcely
A whisper in the wind
Imprecise eyes
See only brackish blinks now

Fallen memories
Have piled outside my door
Yet my footprints
Are still sprinkled across the field
And I retreat,
Back to a haven of simple thoughts

I am hallucinating
As I watch pieces of myself chip away
As though I am a sculpture
For winter's amusement
Merely a plaything
Of this everlasting frost

It unsettles me that no one
Not my golden-haired mother
Nor piteous father
Not my third grade teacher
Nor any of my flights of fancy
Ever took the time to explain

That when you paint yourself into a corner

All the colors you carry with you
Along the way
From sunburned pink
To sympathetic yellow
To the grayest of blue skies
Aren't the only things that bleed

My edges are fraying
My colors are running
My shadows are fading
My dreams are fleeting
Yet, despite all I have lost
I shall still wear my sins
As tattoos carved into
Both flesh and brittle bone
Yes, I shall still wear these sins
Because they are mine
And mine alone

I see you glancing at the brush,
But our bristles don't hold paint the way they used to
And for all the folly in our atmosphere, I am sorry
I know I'm the one who exhaled the most

Remember, your father told you,
"We run the most standing still,"
But my stars have remained perpetually frozen
Since my love ceased blushing your alabaster skin

If you cinch the tourniquet too tightly,
To summer's dismay, I may not heal by autumn
And whether you whisper treasons of the universe or not,
My anchor's still aweigh by first light

Broken words taste bitter upon my tongue,
And it's becoming clearer and clearer
That you were my road to Arcadia
But, as I am prone to do, I derailed us both

I see you glancing at the brush,
But our bristles don't hold paint the way they used to
And for this achromatic atmosphere, I am sorry
I know I'm the one in black and white