It seems all anyone wants to do these days is save me.
Why am I so determined to refuse that hand?
Maybe I want to drown, maybe I want to forget the sounds, the pressure, let the water build up in my ears in the most painful, blissful silence. Maybe it’d be nice to forget how to breathe, to forget… everything.

But my daddy, in all his infinite fatherly wisdom, once told me, “Suicide is for the weak.”

He never expected the strongest of us all to fall victim to it.

And what if those are the only two things keeping me anchored to this world? My competitive spirit and my fear of disappointing my loved ones?

Violet, this is a poem about you. For once. And I know you’re sure I’ve written plenty, but in all honesty those were about me, and my vision of you. Though in all practicality that’s all this one is, too.

You’re irresistible, as I’m sure you know, though there’s a chance you don’t understand why. You look at yourself, and you wonder where we find the diamond in the rough that is your existence. As much as I’d love to clear that up for you, that wouldn’t be any fun, plus, this is a poem about you, so using my knowledge would be cheating. People love you, Violet. More than you understand. And you love them. But that’s when things take a turn for the worse, isn’t it?

"Don’t love someone like me, I only know how to leave."

You are an understanding person. You’ve walked upon eggshells for much of your life, suffered through the kind of hardships many don’t understand. You’ve questioned things that make up the very core of your existence. You experience these things and search for any kind of sympathy or empathy, and when you find it, you emulate it. You’ve received kindness from people who don’t understand, and it’s gifted you with the ability to deliver kindness to those whom you don’t understand.

"I do not condescend what I cannot comprehend"

You are a poet, a wordsmith, a fighter…Though I doubt you’d admit it. You’re an artist in every sense of the word, and you find true beauty in places where most people don’t bother to go past skin deep. You have a unique vision of the world, and you are fully capable of expressing it. You possess tools most only dream of, but you tend to refuse to believe in them.

"I am not a writer"
"But, you have a lot to say"

Listen, Violet, our story is a tragedy. I don’t see any other possible outcome. I don’t know…how self aware you are, though I’m scared to ask. We have much in common, however, we also have much to learn from each other, through whatever we become. I don’t plan on departing any time soon.

"I doubt it’s me you write about, yet I find myself in every word"

I just want to write poetry on your back while you sleep
For that’s the only way I can show my love
I want to lift you above the lies that society implies
And steal away the tears of ink you weep

Hundreds of times with thousands of words I have tried to pin down my love
For you
For her
For this
But the words wrap themselves around the needle and up my arm and back out my mouth again, a vomitous, recycled, insincere love.

I want to love you. I want you to love me. I know you shouldn’t. You don’t even want to.

You’ve never laid a hand on me.

Wouldn’t dream of it, in actuality. You’re far too kind for that. But you’ve left more bruises on this tarnished soul than an elementary student should ever be able to count, a mere child playing this game you’ve created where the rules are yours and the pieces are yours and the turn is yours and, ultimately, the victory will always be yours. A shattered facade I spend every one of your twelve-hour shifts trying to slowly piece back together before your put-off panic goes against it’s nature of setting in and explodes into an agonizing glare that sends the shrapnel of my heart into those I love, including you, my flesh and blood. And I pick the pieces out of your steel skin with a practiced precision while you sleep, and once you’re complete I assemble the puzzle of my old rusty smile and take my turn in the game you’ve already won. We’ve created a game of tortured smiles and hordes of denial, a game fought with words so sharp they catch in our teeth and destroy their very creators faster than a small town dream crumbles under the weight of reality. Not all games are a battle that has to be won. And we both know no one told us this was going to be fun, but you need a stiff upper lip, and to tighten your grip on reality, on the fact that we don’t have dream salaries, on the truth behind the false hope of dependency, because it seems you think we’ll never be here for you, even though we always are.

I can’t leave. There’s still to many words on this angelically anchored mind that are still chained to times long since set in sepia. Words carry too much weight for me to accept my fate at my own hand, when the warmth of a pen moving faster than my mind feels so much better than the cold steel of a trigger.
Ironic, how ink is heavier than sorrow.

Her footsteps send echos down a long, lonely path
A path well trodden, one better left forgotten
Just like she feels sometimes

Forgotten

Sometimes she feels as if she is just a sum of the things people believe she represents, but she is
So
Much
More

Her mind is full of the echos of the footsteps we’ve left there
Words that sting at the scars from her past,
Small acts that threaten to tear the threads that keep her mind intact, because she is

Intact.

Very together, very proper, always the mother and never the daughter
The hero of the beaten and self ****** because she sees herself in us

She is self ******.

Her footsteps send echos down a long, lonely path.

She says,

"Dance like no one’s watching"

But I can see into her mind, see the divine lines deep behind her eyes, and I can tell that she believes.

She believes there’s always someone watching. Someone for whom you must do your very best, for he’ll accept nothing less. And what stress. What pressure, how does she ever keep it together?

The longest strides are always one step short.