So seductive; offering guarantees of hope and happiness yet allows you to get lost. Funny right? She says to shut your eyes, gently. Surely it's not your moment right? Surely you will wake up in the arms of the sun; to the songs of the birds you're unsure whether or not you want to understand.

So you close your eyes.

She sneaks up on you and whispers stories into your ears, insinuating visions you can only dream of. A storyteller. She holds your head in the warmth of her promises and the cradle of her lies, weaving stories in the ditch with all the overturned cars on the side of the road. Are they really lies?

And you wake up.

She is something far more different than you could have imagined. She is so far gone; no way to turn back. Wishing the mirror on the wall showed an upside down image so you wouldn't have to relive the torture of seeing yourself. It's astounding really. The wrinkles.

When did they get there?

When did I get here?

The days tie themselves together and throw each other off a cliff. A routine ingrains itself into the corner of your brain that gnaws at every muscle fiber when you miss your favorite TV show; that whispers to you at night and shows you blood stained walls. As over dramatic as it sounds you know what I mean. There's no more. Really. There isn't.

She wakes you up before she takes you. You see her dashing red face looking cold into your eyes, and you wish for more.

But she can't give you any.

Time can only tell.

When I was a little boy, and it was raining, my grandpa and I would go outside and watch from the front porch. One day, it was cold, and it was raining, and he stepped under the water pouring over the edges of the gutters. Afterwards, he made me stand in the freezing downpour.
I remember crying.

That was the first time I remember feeling resentment; the first time I noticed the devil sitting on my shoulder. He spoke in riddles so when I was little, I remember reading an encyclopedia. I would mark the pages with dead colorful leaves I found at school. So when he spoke and I didn't understand I would read until I fell asleep that night. I would stare into his eyes and count back from 10.
And he would skin the sheep.

So now I have dreams of puzzles and I find myself in labyrinths I subconsciously assembled after you said you loved me. I cover myself with a wet blanket and raise the sails, heading for a hazing He felt I deserved. I took the brand the angels gave me and licked the blood off the thousands of knives stuck in the walls. The floors that used to wail have misplaced their voices, or maybe you've missed yourself; there is no lost and found here.
And then he wins.

There's leaves falling all around and a melody floating through the empty feelings your stomach nurtured; the very same feelings you left in the confession booth. Most nights are spent dancing in the dark with shadows conjured in the cauldron the scientist calls home. Watching the clouds in free fall while the circus in the sky puts on a show. Where the elephants whip the acrobats and lions entice children to tiptoe across a lake of ice on stilts, juggling plates and sanity in the same act. Constantly searching for validation in the eyes of the patrons that once held every piece of you along with your calamity and only put you together to ask you a question:

"Are you okay?"

And the trumpets let loose a deafening wail, a silencing monolith separating the thoughtless from the mindless. What side did you fall on? Is there happiness to be had over there? Will I be okay? The strings slither on tightropes as you pedal along a slack line held between the skyscrapers the architect never had the courage to build. Throwing yourself over the edge to land on a tulip petal and still stand tall. Every mistake sends a beanstalk shooting to the moon, and a highway through hell.

So tell me.

Are you okay?

Sometimes, there is no fairy tale ending. Honestly most of the time, there is only a melodramatic soap opera rerun with a white noise background gnawing at your eardrums. The same way your laughter now claws at the back of your throat, and your teeth grind against each other when the sun is out. Sometimes, you can't share your happiness with the person that helped you find it. It was like someone hit a switch and now your thoughts run rampant, searching for a reason why you no longer go for a jog in the morning. Why you sleep in past every alarm you were so careful to set the night before. There's an art form you've mastered in talking yourself out of everything you loved to do. There are long nights you take breaks from howling at the moon to ask yourself if something is wrong with you. Sometimes, and I'm so sorry to say but, you just can't be loved. Sometimes you just aren't good enough. You, alone, a lonely sailboat in the middle of the ocean, so pitiful the waves are meticulous in never letting you capsize. An SOS squeezed out of the last living fibers of a shriveling raisin the mirror reflects back. So you call and leave voicemail after voicemail, leaving out how you didn't get better. How you wished the story didn't have to finish so soon. How you wished for a happier ending.

The human heart is like a dam. A vessel that can only hold so much before breaking. But love finds a way to mend the cracks, and build up like a fortress to hold off anything that threatens the stronghold. And you build. And you grow. You become a dam. And here comes the current rushing straight through like a steam engine; like the ghost of what was once yourself passing through you. A coffee table with white powder that flew across the room in your darkest dream. There's a crack in the mirror on the vanity with the reflection of a dam. A deteriorating version of a dam. Almost like all the construction meant nothing.

You break, the waters rush through and **** the townspeople you have been trying to protect for as long as you could stand on your own.

You come to realize thinking you are strong and being strong are two entirely different universes.

There's a novel inside each and every one of us. A story to be told. A cricket that lived in the library of your imagination. A poet. A narrator. Someone who actually wanted to tell your story. The poet. The poet that always wanted to speak for a change. The very same who was told later. At a different change in scenery. And he waits.

And he waits.

And he waits until finally he can't any longer. A tsunami swells in the pit of his chest that night the poet just wanted to profess everything in the front seat of your car with the stars above us. Smoke tendrils that left your lips and fogged up the window. The same smoke tendrils that made our eyes all glossy. And low. How low that valley of self-detrimental actions to a false pretense that the universe was never going to allow. So instead you let the tsunami take its course out of your eyes in the shower, telling yourself you aren't crying, that the hot water is just a little too much. And the steam rises. And there's a rainbow.

Just like the rainbow I see every time you happen to look my way.

And my love, that smile gets me every time.

But I think the poet inside of us all dies when we realize there can be no sentence to make someone fall in love with you. We read these tall tales of love potions and dragons where the brave, heroic knight dashes in on a gallant black steed and the villains love potion never touched a tongue. And the townsfolk cheer. And the poet is dead. The story ends.

I fell for the way the smoke uncurls. The way it unravels and dances in a montage of swirls. I fell for the way the smoke danced off your lips. And the way there was so much more to you than the movement of your hips. I fell for the lipstick you always wore. And the smile I could hear in your voice when I said I was at the store.

And I saw the way a garden bloomed in you. The way the buds showed all the colors from pink to blue. And I remember looking at you and feeling yellow. And I remember the way my legs all of a sudden felt like jell-o, simply at the sound of your "hello".

And it was you, you were the light that shined so bright. The only detail I care to remember about that night. You were the only shining star in the sky. And I remember thinking, I wouldn't mind being by your side. The girl of my dreams. Had me realizing life wasn't really as it seems. You see, that night I realized just so how hard a person can fall. They say the taller they are, the harder they fall, and I've never been so okay with standing tall.

I never was great at talking about the way I feel. Truth be told, there's just too many scars that time is taking too long to heal. I've been searching for the words to say in books and songs I've never heard about. Trying to keep my heart from bursting out. Of my chest yknow?

The rose that bloomed every time you smiled. The tulips that flourished every time you laughed. The thorns that pricked my fingers every time you cried.

You were a garden that only time could water. The LSD that dropped on the blotters. You were the Lucy that had me feeling wavy. Had me feeling like life was amazing. And thank god for her. Because now I don't feel pain as much as I've been hurt.

But I saw a flower bloom. And I think that the love I felt was true.