I can't sleep on my back
As you've whipped it raw
And before you left
You told me
If I told your wife
If I told my mother
You'd **** me

Mommy, Mommy
I'd like to die
I can't sleep on my back
All I ever do is cry

Because everything hurts
When Father hits me hard
And when you leave for work
Help is much too far

So I take the beatings
And wait for the end
I treat others how I'm treated;
I wait with knife in hand

He enters with a hammer
You're asleep in your room
The knife is in my waistband
Someone will die soon

I run to your room
And I wake you, yelling
And you hold him back
For the first time since this began

And we leave two days later
Never to see him again.

This isn't what you wished
Upon that small baby
This isn't what you wished

This isn't the head you kissed
The head of that baby
This isn't what you kissed

This isn't what you held
The weight of that baby
This isn't what you held

This isn't what you smelled
The scent of that baby
This isn't what you smelled

This isn't what you felt
Felt for that baby
This isn't what you felt.

This isn't how it was supposed to be
This isn't what you imagined
This isn't what you meant me to see
The isn't what you'd bargained

This isn't the life you choose to live
This isn't the trust you chose to give
This isn't the love you once entrusted
This isn't the marriage to which you'd come in

This isn't the daughter you once knew
This isn't the love you walked into
This isn't the hope you'd had before
This isn't the love in fairytale's lore

This isn't at all what you expected
This isn't at all what you should have collected
This isn't the right end for an angel
This isn't, as it seems, quite so fatal

But this is me
Imperfect glory
Oh, this is me
With a sad, sad story

This is me
Timeless and dying
This is me
The blood I'm crying

This is me
The failure's jive
This is me
The end of a life

This is me
On sanity's cliff
This is me
Ready to drift

This is me
Desperate and wanting
This is me
Pretending and flaunting

Yes, this is me
Your youngest daughter
And it's not at all what you wanted
My dearest mother

This is me
The smoke, the pain
This is me
For loss, for gain

This is me
This is that baby
This is me
Now a young lady

This is me
Looking for love
This is me
Small and starstruck

This is me
On the wrong path
This is me
Treading on broken glass

This is me
Begging for help
This is me
****** to hell

This is me
Waiting to be saved
This is me
Turning away

This is me
Nearing Death's door
This is me
Saying I can take no more

This is me
With smoke in my lungs
This is me
Absorbing the sun

This is me
With knife in hand
This is me
Enjoying the land

This is me
Pleasing those men
This is me
Washing my hands

And this isn't what you wanted
And this is why you cry
And this isn't what I expected
And this is why I wish to die

Oh, this is why my mind is unclean
This is why you weep
This is why we couldn't foresee
And this is why I can't sleep

This is why the night is frightening
This is the absence of hope
Yet this is why we live
And this is why we cope

And this isn't life
This is unidentified
And this isn't strife
This is why we live and die

Maybe this is a maybe
Maybe this is uncertainty
Maybe this is a per say
Maybe this is you, is me

Yes, maybe this is human
Though this is inhumane
Maybe this is *******
And cannot be contained

Maybe maybe is uncertainty
Maybe maybe is insanity
Maybe maybe is a waste of hope
Maybe maybe is the knife at our throats

This is me
With a ring on my finger
This is me
With a kiss on my lips

This is me
With a love that lingers
This is me
With a sway to my hips

This is my reflection
So pretty, so ugly
This is my reflection
So imperfect, so me

This is life
Tiring and refreshing
This is time
A burden unrelenting

These are my friends
My children, my life
These are my friends
So perfect, so right

And this is pain
And this is gain
And this is love
And this is hate
And this is trust
And this is my place

But first
Foremost

This is me.

I remember the last time we talked
My voice trembled like a violin string
As always my mouth was numb and locked
And the phrases I couldn't utter seemed to boil and sting
I watched distraught words float by on the breeze
As I desperately tried explaining to you,
With embarrassment and unease
All we could and should be, all I dreamed and knew
Tried weaving a future from a tangled past.
I saw you through curtains of heavy fog
Your eyes bleary and glassed
I stuttered and muttered and wept and I couldn't
And I knew that I wouldn't
Give words to the ineffable mess in my brain.
I looked up, the mist breathed slowly
You walked away like a slow and silent midnight train
The sun was shining through the clouds, golden and holy
As the white haze of things unsaid weighed upon the rolling hills

The pursuit of perfection has always confused me
Everyone striving to become more than themselves
And while this sounds very noble
It really boils down to
"Enough is never Enough"
Because in this endless race to become everything
We forget what it was like when we were something
So we trudge forward ignorant of our passing joys
Only aware of our seemingly constant suffering
And suddenly, without warning
We find ourselves lacking in what matters most
Too often we find ourselves hating, loathing, depressed
Because we realized we failed to achieve what we sought
When really all we ever needed
Was to look inside ourselves
And discover that it is not our weaknesses that made us imperfect
But that our broken bits and flaws
Made us into something
More