He is my stairway to heaven
And shackles to hell.
His arms serve as both a home
And a prison cell.

Have you played hide and seek with death?
It's eery shadows lurking just out of sight.
It's skeleton fingers grazing your spine,
Sending terror into your being.
Just as you think you're winning
It turns out the lights.
And then you will see it's face.

Illness.
Disease.
They walk in your life
with no remorse.
No mercy.
You become familiar with the feeling
The feeling of things inside you
Things you patiently await to be removed.
You didn't notice them before,
But now you know
And they torture you from the inside out.

It still hurts,
Just the way it did when you first left.
But I have come to love that pain.
The pit it forms within my chest.
It's how I know it was real.

I want someone who paints my heart
like an artists paints the sky,
with hidden tales of summer nights
and the soft silence of winter,
every detail intentional and beautiful,
the little imperfections that give it character,
the smudges from the moments of frustration,
the glow of the sun that burned hotter than any flame,
that's how my heart aches to be painted.

When he left I thought he took part of me with him,
but he didn't.
He gave me something no one can take,
he showed me what love is supposed to be like.
I look at our old photos,
I do not cry.
Instead I smile for the good times
and forgive the bad.
No matter how short lived,
he gave me pure happiness.
And one day, I will once again find that.

There comes a moment in your life
When everything good seems to crumble.
Don't run from the pain,
EMBRACE IT.
It means it meant something,
It means you got to feel something worth missing.
It's what shapes you into the person you were meant to become.