Sit me down and tell me
who it is you want me to be.
I won’t disappoint.
If there’s anything I’m good at
it’s Pretending.
So good am I, in fact, that I forget
it isn’t me.
Because I am whoever I need to be.
A chameleon in clothing,
a precious piece of soul that you can mold.
I prefer this.
If I don’t like myself, how could anyone else?
So I remain ever-changing
fitting in the only way I know how.

Reflexively, i shut down
as trauma floods my mind.

What a ridiculous reason to cry,
what a childish fault.

One word.
Just
"Yep."
and my world crashes around me.

**** you, Lucy.
You'll never know what a decade old sentence can do.

My psyche shatters

and i fold inside myself
and my words are silenced
(but my Thoughts are not)
and my eyes are wet
and i am torn to pieces

as rough hands work to fit me back into my mold.

I sit, alone, through the days and nights, accompanied only by
the beating of my heart; that
r h y t h m
which is the only consistency we have to cherish.
The routines we build for ourselves breed change.
Nothing is steadfast.

As humans, we were made to falter.
We wish and fight and dream,
yet fall short of our own expectations.
What Great Being decided it was a good idea to grant the human race
Autonomy?

Can you feel my pain?
The constant need to tear myself apart?
The intensity with which I loathe myself?
Can you see what is eating me alive?
The tears behind my bright eyes?
The darkness in which I hide my inner self?

Masks for every occasion.
A constant scene
in which I play limitless characters...
portray a plethora of emotions.
The curtain will someday close,
though not many even know it's open.

Freedom is what I long for.
A place and time where I can be my true self.
A person who understands who I am,
and is not afraid.
Perhaps freedom comes in the form of death.
Til I try I'll never know.

Here I go again;
putting you to the forefront of my mind.
pushing these words back and back, endlessly
...simply because you opened your eyes.
is beauty more important than art?

If we taught tolerance instead of fear,
how many lives would we have spared this year?

If we taught acceptance instead of hate,
if we taught kids to commiserate,
to see what others have on their plate,
that would make America great.

Insomnia leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
How is it that I am tired to the core
and sleep evades me another night?

The sun rises, as do I.

What we have become is
'easier than'

Easier than fighting,
easier than being alone,
easier than starting fresh with someone new.

What if the only reason we're seeing this through
is some twisted form of convenience?
Some roundabout portrayal of what's easier than
staying home alone in our rooms.
Months and Years of preparation, dashed in an instant
through a letter, one Form or another.

We keep trying to pick up the pieces
because it's easier than looking into each others' eyes
and admitting we just don't work anymore,
if we ever worked in the first place.
The longer I stay in this dark place
the less likely the latter seems, if I'm honest.
I want this to happen.
It'd be easier than being without you.
Would it?
Would it really?
Or would it just be easier than starting over?

greet me with your bitterness
ill greet you with my sorrow
and as our dreadful love doth bloom
so shall it die tomorrow

This screen, bright with frustration, draws-
with careful precision-
the shape of your face.
It must grow tired, as I do,
of creating this image.
How can I know that you are real
when I have never touched your face?
Bitterness for a system long corrupt grows within me.
I am full to bursting with love and fury.

These complications breed more dissatisfaction.
Afraid of travel, afraid of people.
Stuck in a seemingly unending loop of legality
for crimes forgiven long ago.
How many moons more must I wait
to hold your hand in mine?
Eight years.

Long, empty time laughs cruelly at our labors
as we struggle to hold together a friendship
(now a bloomed and wilting relationship)
that we once held above all else.
My love for you is unending, a thing of faerie tale,
but I find my patience lacking.
I have waited and I have yearned for you.
I have tried, to no avail, to leave you behind me-
instead, I was greeted with the haunting realization that
nothing compares to you.
No man, no woman, no circle of peers,
can provide for me the things you offer.
I know you feel the same,
though a mix of dread and delusion prevent you from showing me
in the way I need so desperately to be shown.
I know that you, too, feel this pain.

Seamless, ceaseless pixels bring me your countenance,
now weathered with sadness and age.
Once upon a time, I thanked them.
Now, I throw curse upon curse;
hurling all my animosity at those things that carry you to me
in the only form I've ever known.
"I've been living so long with my pictures of you that
I almost believe that the pictures are all I can feel."

If I cannot feel your hand, cold in mine-
If I can't smell your hair
or feel your chest drenched with those happy tears of
At Last!,
do you really exist at all?
Mercilessly, cruelly, are we brought before our judge,
The Test of Time.
Eight years; is it wasted?

Pain disfigures into numbness in the silence that screams at me
like so many crazed thoughts.
A heated state cools into quiet resentment.
Regardless of how I feel, how you do,
this night has changed us irreparably.
How can you say these things are equal?
Where do you get off?
Your half-sung apologies fall heavy on deaf ears.

Can you feel me ignoring you?

You think I let you down?
I needed to do something with my hands.
You
have shown to me
the inconsistency of love.

Nothing is unconditional.
If it were, I wouldn't even be here fighting with you.

Those words, also labile,
were the truth in the moment,
regardless of tomorrow.

I may love you,
but I hated you then.

Will life, angry, feel lost?
Rain love.
Stand(ing on the) earth,
sadness eyes.
Beautiful pain-man,
(for you, I) air deep wonder.
(Lost in a) broken time ride.
Storm (on)... Cry, dead heart.
Innocence?
Worth?
Sleep, summer dreams.
(I remain.)

A portal to another world,
glass so thick that I'm unsure I'll ever pass through.
There you dwell, constant and incredible,
so close to me,
so far from you.
This window, often changing,
goes with me on my journeys.
In size and shape it varies-
but you remain
steadfast,
insane,
beautiful.
Still, what I wouldn't give to pass through
that teasing threshold
and into your warm and waiting arms.

You, above all else
are a lesson in fate.
What more evidence do I need than my life with you?
We both took a gamble:
a name,
a notification.
A chat left to chance.
Who could have known you'd be so vital?
You are the air that I breathe,
the quiet whispers in the night time
when everything sleeps but us.
How lucky I am
that the universe brought me you.

Lungs emptied,
I try to cry out but only cry.
My heart beats fitfully,
like a toddler deprived of their favourite toy.
Dread overcomes me,
wholly and completely,
as I realize you aren't coming back.
Heaving sobs will be replaced by
quiet tears,
isolation-
a silent suffering that comes only with time.

I know you have your reasons-
ones I couldn't hope to understand-
but your apparent apathy creates between us a

distance

far greater than any ocean.
It's infuriating.
Whether it's the situation or me not getting my way
I can feel myself slipping
farther
from you and from myself.

A king of reptiles,
a broken man,
your pain created such beauty.
Look at what you've made.
You, yourself, are a master of creation.
The cage that hinders me never held your heart.
Your cage was an empty needle.
Held within, the years we lost with you.
Life and death hold the same meaning.
Can you feel the torment fade
and your blood begin to thicken?
Ride that snake on home, Jim.
Ride that snake on home.

I stand on the edge,
enamoured.
The poetry of one long dead
reaching out to me through a wormhole.
Taken too early from a world not ready.
His words reach through my chest,
into my soul, pulling out the deepest pains
and the brightest days;
Pulling me deep into the Earth
to hear it's silent song.

Exposed and unafraid,
I lie alone in this sea
creating waves of my own volition.
My creature comforts are forgotten here,
except for the ever-diminishing cover of the bubbles.
A porcelain deep
made only for me.
Here I lie, planning a life I'll likely never see.
Love unending,
wealth immeasurable,
a life worth living.
As the ocean's hue begins to change (red and furious)
a final thought crashes to the beaches of my mind-
-I want to live.

Stop me if you've heard this before
but I feel this feeling fleeting,
running opposite me
to lands unknown
where lost dreams go to die.
Why are words so fickle? Leaving at the lightest touch,
the barest hint of anything new.
A world, undiscovered,
lies within a place I can reach only when I am most bare.
My purest form of self,
mewling and screaming,
pulls from me this insatiable insanity.
Yet with the slightest digression my sleeves roll themselves down
and it's gone again.
I am lost into reality like some suited being,
honking at the other monkeys in futile attempts to make up for lost time.
Was it worth it?
Is that loss of captivation worth an ounce of conversation?
Bring me back to that place.
I want to feel the pen warming between my fingers again.
That smooth ink feel on dead, life-giving friends.
Is this the closest I can get to holiness?

In the darkness within the light
I cry.
This shield from the world smells of you.
I can feel you there,
From miles away,
Staring at me.
You wonder why this is happening,
Wonder why I’m sad.
I’m not sad, I’m angry.
I’m angry at him for trying to stay,
I’m angry at you for causing this pain.
I’m angry at everyone I’ve ever known.
I hate my parents for breathing life into a soul that should have been
Extinguished.
More than that, I’m angry with myself.
Why do I allow myself to make these decisions?
Whose idea was it to give me power over myself?
Free will? It’s a prison.
I want nothing but to be rid of it.
Please, let me sleep.
I only want to sleep.
Yet I continue to breathe you in.
You are sodden with my sadness, I am broken again.

He says I smell like rain,
so to complement me he smells of
freshly washed stone.
Dust rising in the air,
sometime in April,
when my showers have cleansed him.
We are not the same person.
He is grounded,
I live in the air
'til I come crashing to the ground,
where he waits for me.
They say water will break earth.
He's broken me instead,
in the most beautiful way,
and together we will create mountains;
Unscalable and true,
Deep and ancient and wise.
And when we are dead
we will stand monumented.
Our journey through life,
when he was rough
and I was a storm
of fury and form,
and you will remember us.

Desperately clinging to innocence long past
in hopes that you can hold to some inkling of it,
no matter how far gone.
You can move forward
with that same youthful exuberance
in a body well older;
pray to your god that it lives on inside you
as it tries,
with an unfailing knack,
to leave you in this world's dust.,
Maturity dragging you- kicking and screaming- all the way.

Sometimes on days like these
I watch rain wash my skin like whispers
and it reminds me of you.
I remember when you taught me that the drops
splattering on your windshield like screams
(making it impossible to see
the impatient bloodlights in front of us)
were beautiful.
I couldn't hear you at first
from the ear-beating whip of your wipers.
Then with just one smooth, ink-like movement,
you silenced them...
and I sat in
serenity,
amazement,
as your eyes lit the falling tears on the
slowly diminishing glass-metal frame
that swathed us.
I forget when it disappeared...
but before I had the chance
to fashion your visage in my brain,
I was sitting naked in the rain,
letting you wash my skin
while you murmured sunlight in my ear.

Innocence fades quickly
in the light of a newly developed maturity.
The world is no longer magnificent,
in fact, it's cruel.
Suddenly, protection that you took
so obliviously for granted,
leaves you in a cold reality,
that you shall be protected no longer.
As they watch the childlike curiosity leave your eyes,
replaced by the daily drone of
Bills,
Jobs,
Heartbreak...
Your parents wonder if they made the mistake
That they swore they never would.

A deal with the devil.
What have I walked into?
I gave myself,
Gladly,
To be part of something horrid.
A silver tongue, an angry rod.
A wise man, a dear friend,
Once spoke of a ‘little death’.
The death of a personality,
Your personality.
Mine.
Have I lost myself?
Would I know if I had?
Could I escape this hellish ride?
Pull myself up by my boot straps
Give myself a good smack and run,
Recklessly yet with intention,
Into the arms of a man who may not even know me?
Will he know if I am the woman that he fell in love with?
I can only hope that
After all of this
He will still want me.
What have I become?

Freedom is a mask.
We don both it and our colors,
oblivious to the snickers of our peers.
Like religion, patriotism separates us further.
How can one believe in a system
so corrupt?
Powerless yet powerful, we must stand,
lest another civil war commence.
Together, hand in hand, we
will create a new life for us all.

Thoughts of you crackle in my mind,
a roaring fireplace of emotions.
affection,
peace,
care,
love.
Those things which border on obsession
weigh heavily on me
in the best way.
I am pleasantly drunk on dreams.
of what we'll do,
of who we'll be,
of starting anew,
of what you are to me.
You are a thing of beauty.
Those who could gaze upon you and walk away
know nothing of love.
How could they?

Sometimes I feel as if I'm
drinking the blood of the innocent.
Taking their pleasures,
vicariously,
and hoarding them within my blackened heart.
Do I steal my happiness from those who truly deserve it?

Tragedy seeps through me;
through my cracks
like sun-scorched earth.
Baked and hardened to the point of breaking,
but I do not break.
Instead my sadness spills
filtered,
recycled,
over you.
Will these tales help you cope?
Your body and mind parched for understanding,
I shall become your storm cloud;
though mine are not the harsh and angry storms you've known,
but a gentle summer rain.
I am the storm you stand in,
neck craning upward,
eyes closed and smile fresh on your lips.
Let my pain cleanse yours,
and when your sadness seeps into the earth,
then shall I take it in.