She's laying alone again.
No one's holding her hand again.
She's crying silently again.

Nothing ever changes. ?She's always going to feel alone.?No one's going to care or notice because she always hides her feelings with a fake smile. She's learned that no one will care unless she's pretty or dying. No one wants a depressed, self destructive mess of a teenage girl. She has so much potential but she just can't see it. She can't see just how much she means to others.

She's terrified. Her mind scaring her more and more with every passing second. Nobody has ever been able to understand the small girl with dulling green eyes. She never let anyone close enough to understand because she didn't want to scare them away or end up hurting them. She wouldn't dare inflict this type of pain and torture upon another soul.

So she laid alone in the dark of night, closing her eyes as her demons took ahold of her mind loud and clear. They made her do things that she wouldn't ever want to do to herself. But as long as it shut them up for a while, then she would do it. Just a distraction. She told herself daily that it wouldn't always be this way but she honestly never allowed herself to believe that repeated, unbelievable statement.  She barely believed a single word anyone said. The voices told her not to believe anything accept them.

Day in and day out she suffers in silence. She takes out their pain and anger on herself. She skips meals, over-exercises, and beats herself up daily so no one else has to. She can't help it, it's the easiest way to distract herself and stop the demons if only for a second.

She'll be okay one day. It may not be for a few years but she'll be alright. But for now, she hides behind fake smiles and long sleeves, crying in the lonely space of her dark bedroom.

We used "I love you" like a heartbeat.
Hoping that saying it
would make us feel something .
Hoping that our midnight whispers
would make it real.
I've since discovered
that you're nothing
but a broken mirror.
Now I'm bleeding out.

You better be careful
You better beware
For these demons tormenting my thoughts
Taking over my sanity

For I have been broken so long
Unwilling to be helped
I pushed everyone so far
These demons were my only friend

Soothing me with hisses of critique
The lashes from fork-pointed tongues
Were the only reassurance I was alive

The sweet numbing was all I could feel
It was all that I deserved
Feeding my insecurities

Beware
For I am of no need to be helped
There is no need to rescue me
I'm not your ******* princess to be saved

I still hear them hiss
Beware
These demons don't like you

even the rain can do good things
just as much as the sun can cause destruction

even the pain can teach lessons
just as much as happiness breaks a person

When we kiss
It's like the whole world
Stands still,
And time it's like it doesn't exist
When I'm with you
I could ever get enough of you
You've got me hooked on you
Your in my veins running through my bloodstream.

When the shock brings you back from the dead
and when you can't stand me anymore
when you scream you hate me and don't want to do this anymore
remember days like today
remember how we didn't worry
how we were happy
that although we can't be close
we can still be close
that even though we can't be happy
we can try
remember when you heart stops
that we knew this was coming
and then we did everything we could

As you jump
From the ledge
Let it play
In your head
Over and over
'Till your skull
Meets the cement

It is a measure of time's passage. An ancient way intertwining all cultures, and yet this time the changing is different. The leaves cycle colors and fall from the branches. I heard the chainsaws the other day, and thought that they were trimming the bare branches back for next year.

I was wrong.

They had cut down the entire tree.

It made sense.

All last winter, I heard it scrape against the building during stormy nights. My modern utility agrees but the monkey is lost with old rhythms cut from the base, and looking out a reflecting window gives no sense of where the time is going.

I know that we are flesh and blood;
We're bound terrestrials.
There is not a hint nor thought
In me, celestial.
And yet the final day they found
You were ephemeral,
I raised my eyes towards the skies
And sought the aerials.
I hoped the blessed, holy book
In truth, was literal.
The yearning, needing wanting hole
Was raw and pitiful.
In vain I combed the cobalt spans
For proof reciprocal
Of an eternal, lasting love
From the ethereal.
My opulence in obstinence
Brought truth from empty skies
The swirling air, the ash and dust
Is only where you fly.
There is no golden field of wheat
And barley where we'll meet
There is no paradise where I
Will once more hear you speak.
The last known home where you reside
Exists in no known creed
You live now in the dreams and thoughts.
That bring you back to me.

The colds coming so is the snow. For sure I'll take the winters snow just not the winter cold. Winter cold blows.

I’m no author, novelist or poet.
I’m just Me,
And don’t I know it.
I don’t need to be classified,
As long as I’m writing, I’m satisfied.

Typing out words, line by line,
I don’t care if they don’t rhyme.
I don’t care if my verses don’t scan:
I’m not always an Iambic Man.

I just say what I gotta say,
I’m not worried about any pay.
Words come to me without much bidding,
The world of its evils I hope to be ridding.

I love to spread lots and lots of Love,
Bringing peace to all like a messenger dove.
Things of beauty bring joy, John Keats rightly said,
To make us sleep easy when we go to bed.

So I’ll paint what I paint,
And sing what I sing,
Just letting those words
Do their magical thing.

Paul Butters