If you're not the architect
Then you're the demolisher, right?
But what if you're both?
I'm both.


I will build you up high like the worlds greatest skyscraper
And you'll touch God's face and whisper in his ear
Thanking him.
I'll paint you better than Michelangelo would ever
And I'll only place in your interior
The finest jewels and gems.
But then I'll tear you down,
Smash you with a wrecking ball.
Spend years tearing down every wall
Only to leave you with nothing but a foundation,
A cement bottom and empty wooden posts.

I will destroy you without ever meaning to
Because I'm venomous and unaware of it.
I'll leave golden specks in your mind
But bruises on your soul,
I'll make your heart beat
And then I'll tear it apart.
I'm a playful king cobra and I don't know my own strength,
I'll nibble your ear and then release my kiss of death.
I bet you've always wondered why they name natural disasters after people,
And I swear to god after meeting me you'll know.

like any
narrator,
i'm obsessed
with being
some one
else.

There are ways
To be ready for a death of the soul.
The way you'd write a will
Or take medication to ease the pain.
People to say goodbye to,
Loose ends to tie...
Granted,
It's a little trickier when you know your body will still go on
After you die.
When you know you'll have to leave it and then
Slam back inside
And handle all the damage done in your absence.
But
There are ways.
Silently I tie back my hair.
Pour myself a frosty glass of milk.
I hate milk.
Always have.
I drink the whole thing.
Milk makes it less painful when you get sick.
Whatever I hear from you tonight,
I know I have been terrified long enough,
And there is just no way
I'm gonna keep this food.
Too bad,
I muse,
Rinsing out my glass.
I did love my dinner.
I had hoped we wouldn't meet again.
In the mirror a girl with my face
Raises a debonair eyebrow.
I wish I was as good at brushing this off
As she is.
I remove my earrings.
I put on some comfortable clothes.
It is rather like hearing the warning on the radio
That a hurricane or tsunami is headed your way
And there's not enough time to leave,
Only to prepare.
I am piling sandbags.
I am sealing my windows and doors,
Retreating to the cellar of my soul.
I am
Mechanically,
Numbly
Doing everything I can to minimize the damage,
And prepare to pick up the pieces.
I wonder
What will be salvageable
This time
From the ruins.
I hope the advance notice
Has made a difference
Because the tension of
Waiting for the storm to hit
Just might stop my heart.

My special talent is being tough.
Not being unreachable,
Not being invincible,
Not being unaffected, but taking blows.
It's a dubious gift, to be sure.
But I think I can no longer deny the fact that my biggest strength in this life is my ability to take a hit and come back.
Yes, there are people who don't even feel the blows that life deals out.
And on the other hand, there are those people who fall to their knees and collapse whenever something hurts.
But right in the middle,
Between apathy and fragility,
That is where I live,
And I think it's the hardest place to be.
To brush off attacks is one thing.
To let them reach you and go on through the pain is quite another.
My special talent is SURVIVING.
My therapist says I need to learn how to thrive.
Maybe she's right. But with my life, I've not been allowed the chance.
What I have had some kickass experience with is enduring.
Surviving.
Going on.
Finding something to live for when everything I've lived for in the past has been knocked down like a line of dominoes.
And yeah, my acceptance of pain makes me vulnerable, but I spring back.
I absorb the force of what life throws at me and throw it right back.
I spend the time I need to crying, hurting, fearing.
But I always rise.
Always.
If you decide to edit the cast of my life, I learn to love new people.
If you take my chances from me, I make new ones.
If my dreams are shattered, I create new dreams.
I am not impenetrable.
I am not an island.
People touch my heart,
Leave handprints in wet paint, leave scars, cigarette burns, leave graffiti, but I
Go on.
They do not destroy me.
They can take, but they can never demolish.
My backbone bends in the wind, but it's made of steel, and you'll never break it.
I am tough, it is my special talent.
I fight wars every day that you will never know about.
I rise ****** each morning from battles against dreams of your arms.
And I will tell you this, my darling, my tyrant:
You can conquer, but you'll never win.

I love what people
tell me, because I am too
dull to see what's shown.

You say
Get angry.
Well
If I get angrier
It will poison me.
Too loud,
Too much,
Too needy,
Too fragile,
Too raw.
Be quiet,
Be better,
Be reasonable,
Be mature,
Be gracious,
Be
Sorry.
I am so angry that tears do no good.
I am so angry that violence
Does no good.
I am so angry that lungs
Do no good.
If I were to cry enough to match the heat of my rage
I would boil.
If I were to hit as hard as I hurt
I would crack open the earth and crawl inside
Tear out its heart and swallow it
And the pressure of my fury would press it into a pebble.
If I were to scream loud enough to dull my thoughts
The glass would blow out in stabbing shards
From every window and revolving door
And melt in molten pools into the soil.
This body
Is not durable enough
For this soul.
I know it. I have seen.
It is like living in a china doll.
I can break it just by breathing.
How is it that somebody can speak
And a rib snaps?
A decision made
And blood wells?
I am sick
And I cannot tell if my disease is my mind
Or my stupid,
Listless,
Hopelessly inadequate casing.
I burn through it like acid,
And it suffers and complains
And I have grown so **** tired of hearing its
Aches and pains,
Its needs,
Its failings and betrayals.
I have been cruel to it and it has been cruel to me
For we are a poor match
But we are all there is
And all there has ever been
And I beg it to work with me
And it begs me to be different
Just like everybody else does
Just like I
Beg me to be different.
But I'm not.
I am this
And I can't help but think that maybe there is a chance
That I can expand
That I can reach out through these eyes
And touch something.
The world is so delightfully raw
And I can't tell
When I reach for it
If it recoils
Or if I do.
You have told me to be angry.
Has it ever occurred to you
That my vulnerability was learned?
That my weakness was imposed?
That my kindness only exists
Because of how horribly
Horribly angry I am?
If I could emerge from this...thing
I would touch the ground and level every city for a hundred miles
If I could be what I am
I would destroy everything I looked upon
Not through any malice
But through simple release
Because it is my nature, my way.
Earthquakes are not good or evil.
Fire, lightning. They do not discriminate.
They only touch
And things happen.
I could touch
And things would happen.
This body is my restraining order.
My reminder to control myself
My rebuke for my craving to be vast
My constant and insincere apology.
This body and I,
We don't hate one another,
We are just opposites. We are just two things
That destroy each other.
It is so fragile and light
And I watch from inside
Snarling
I watch and people pity me
People abuse me
People underestimate me
People
Force
Me.
I quietly let them condemn me for the covering I wear
Because I know nothing else.
It is an agony, to never be seen.
It is a punishment I have been searching for reasons for.
And yet when the light has touched me, and I have been truth
Whenever I have been witnessed in full
I have been loathed with such vitriolic venom that
My poor little shell quaked
Pale and skittering
My small white hands fluttered like moths immolating themselves in the flames of my heart
Too foolish or too mad
To resist their craving for warmth even when it turns them to ash.
You try it
You try
Taking a risk
When you know that your nine lives are down to one
You try flying
When you've got moth wings and the breath of a phoenix.
There is something
Burning
In here
And I've never wanted anything more than to show it to the world
Except to live
Except to continue
And so I hesitate.
You tell me to be angry.
You don't know what you are speaking to.
I have worn this body not like armor but like glass
And it has carried me like a ticking time bomb
But if I know one thing
And honestly
Just now
I only do
If I know one thing
It is that, like the sun,
Even if I am scalding hot with chaos and held together by fear
Even if I am, after all, untouchable
I will always rise.

It is not your fault, what happened to me.
But this,
This,
You knowing what IS happening to me,
And knowing you can stop it with almost no effort,
And doing nothing, this...
Is.
And I forgive you.
I give myself no other choice, whenever you hurt me.
The only way is to forgive you, to find a way to love you even if you're
Silent,
Or venomous,
Or cowardly.
I never know if you are. I do not let myself find out.
I do not know your flaws,
Because I tell myself that to assume them would be the death of me, by your hand.
So I unfocus my eyes and look at you only through what you show me.
Perhaps you are a coward, afraid of what I am and what we've seen of one another. I wouldn't know it if you were.
Or perhaps you are angry that somebody pulls emotion from you.
Or perhaps you are just cruel.
Or perhaps you are none of this,
And I could not imagine what you are,
And whatever that is
Is right,
And whatever I am
Is wrong.
That is the end I come to.
That is the conclusion I reach, each time, to save you from me.
To save me from hating you, and to save you from losing me, I make you
Right.
I do not know if you have ever been right.
I refuse to know.
It doesn't matter.
You want to be. No... no I don't even think it's that.
I think you want me to be wrong.
Yes, that is it, you want me to be wrong, because I have reached some part of you that you don't enjoy.
You want it desperately, to pretend nothing bad happens, to pretend that the people in your life are
Easy and
Simple,
Unbreakable,
Unbroken,
Uncomplicated.
You want laughter to be the only thing,
But underneath we both know you are too smart not to see that without pain
Joy
Means nothing.
But you want your way.
You want me wrong, and I must want what you want
If you are to keep me.
And so I want to be wrong.
Want to apologize.
I want you to get your venom out at me, so that I may die of it and satisfy you, and have you back again.
Love me, hate me, but get it done.
**** me with one or the other so that I can rise again and love you.
So that I can be your friend and give you what I can.
It is not your fault, how I suffered before.
You knew nothing of it.
You couldn't have known.
You couldn't have fixed it.
But now you do know.
You have known for a long time, what happens to me when you hate me.
How it poisons me.
You have seen.
And so any punishment you hand me now is given without the shield of ignorance,
With full knowledge and intent.
You have watched me dying.
You have tried to save me,
Or to **** me,
And found that the moment is perpetual-
You can do neither.
You have seen the pain, and chosen to extend it, and
I
Forgive
You,
Whatever your reason.
It doesn't matter. It can't matter.
There is only the forgiveness.
You are a religion to me, because the only way I can stand to love you is to worship you.
If I were to see you as a human being, I would be unable to imagine such
Heartlessness and such
Tenderness
Wrapped up in one soul, given to the same person on the whim of the day.
If you were not a god, you would have to be two people:
One to ****** me and one to mourn me.
One to wound me and one to stitch me up.
One to hate me and one to love me.
You have seen. You know.
You know who I am, in full, even if you do not understand it,
And you have claimed you want to help me.
And I have asked you for what I need,
And you have given it inconsistently.
And I have loved you and hated you,
And you have loved me and hated me.
And I have forgiven you.
But you have never forgiven yourself.
And that is the only thing
I cannot do for you.

My entire life
The world has told me
To be satisfied with what I get.
To be quiet.
To be gracious.
And my entire life
I have needed more
Wanted more
Been...
Hungrier
Than anyone else I have ever met.
And the world said
Be satisfied.
And the world said
Be silent.
And so I learned to fit inside it.
I have been taught to need less.
I have been obsessed
With needing less.
The world has said
Be satisfied
Do not demand
And in my quest to please it
The only answer I have found
Is to never be satisfied.
To be quiet
To be hungry
To need, and never ask.
What I get, I rejoice at.
What I am denied, I never covet.
But give me something and ****** it back
And you will find that it was much more important
Than you ever thought.
I have been conditioned
To be silent.
But I have never been
Satisfied.
I need.
And I have never seen my needs met.
And I have learned to live this way
But only barely,
Only by my fingernails.
The world said
The more you need
The less power you will have.
It said
Be satisfied.
Be silent.
Be gracious.
Be
Sorry
For your hunger.
It said
Do not demand
And as hard as I have tried
I have
Failed to obey.

You stab me in the back with a knife,
and I apologize for bleeding on it.