I wish I thought people all did what I do,
I wish I thought they all noticed.
I wish I thought they all had such a wonder for humanity in someone they love.
But I don't.
I've seen proof that I am rather alone, just here,
Rather unique where I am in life.
I don't think she can find your soul.
I don't think she would love what I would.
Mostly because people just don't.
My special talent, my dubious gift,
Is to see all the terrible moments of a person's mind and heart
And love them like they're salvation.
I see beauty as a full package thing.
I love one thing, I love it all.
I love your little petty rivalries and your scars and your self destruction
Your insecurity and your ugliness
I love your carelessness and your lack of self control.
I love all the terrible things you've done,
No matter how much destruction they've caused.
I love it all as much as I love your triumphs.
It is my talent, love.
To love.
And I just don't think it comes around often,
Offered like a tribute.
Nobody wants the cost of giving a love like that,
Except me, it seems.
That is why
I just don't think she can dig down and find everything you hate in yourself
And love it like it's perfect
Without trying to fix it.

I don't think he can see your soul.
I think you picked him so he wouldn't
Because you tired of my love
Terrifying and deep
When you hated all the things I loved you for.
I understand, love,
But he doesn't want to see your mind and heart,
He doesn't want to find it all so he can love it all.

I don't think he can find your soul.
I don't think she can find your soul.
I can.
And I won't hate
A thing I see on the way.

I want your flaws tattooed on my skin
Carved into my ribs
Hard and sharp
So that I might love them from the inside.
Scary, isn't it?
I want to know you like I know myself
So that I might forgive you for every single thing
You can't forgive yourself for
And love you for every mistake
You hate yourself for
And need you for every reason
You ever thought you were useless.
I want to give that to you.
And call me crazy
If I think
That's not a really common feeling to have for somebody.

We don't fear the dark.
We don't even fear what's in the dark.
We fear
What is in us
When it gets dark.
That is why I prefer to sleep in the sun
In the light,
The further away you get
The clearer your image becomes
When the day ends.
You
Are in me when it gets dark
And I don't
Sleep.

In the mirror my skin is white
White.
Like snow, like clouds, like ashes.
Pure and milky, porcelain and unblemished, pale and alabaster:
White.
Such a pride, such a power.
My skin is white, but my soul is not.
In the mirror, wide dark eyes in a pale face.
They are ashamed.
I look at them, study them, wondering:
Am I?
Could I?
ARE we who we were?
We, who beat down the broken, scorned the helpless,
Yoked our workhorses to the plows of liberty.
We who doled out lashes and harsh words.
We who stood idly by, apathetic and indifferent.
The blood that courses under my white skin, almost translucent, showing blue veins- that is the blood of generations.
It IS we, is it not? Us.
We killed them, we used them.
Doubt blooms, full and supple, spreading inside of me as I stare at myself.
We'd all love to think we are above cruelty,
but could I be so blind?
Could these eyes have looked the other way as another person was wronged, broken, chained?
Could this heart have made excuses, hidden behind "God", hardened against empathy?
Could these pale hands have lashed an ebony back, in another life, another world?
All for what?
A color, a heritage.
Could these ears have heard the songs, assumed the meaning, mistook the words?
Sing of a brother beaten, of a child sold away, of a way out.
Where is the land of "liberty"?
Could these lips have uttered insults and racial slurs, at people who were not people, about lives that were not lived?
What right have I to think I would be different?
In the mirror, I see not just myself, but all of us.
I see the privileged whites, men ruled by avarice, women corseted by tradition, fooled into believing that they were always right.
That WE were.
I look at us, and I do not see white.
I see souls, stained red with black blood.
And I see tears on an alabaster cheek in the mirror.

There is this separation, this... Duality. There is the girl I live inside, who loves you. Who...craves you, like air, like... A beating heart. She would walk through hell for you. She would gaze at you forever. But then sometimes... Sometimes I can rise above that for a moment, and see you as you are. As "only"- only a girl, only a person. Those moments confuse me, make me sad. I don't want them, but I do. If you'll be distant, if you'll leave me behind and...change, become ordinary, grow up and leave your passion behind for something more stable... Then maybe I need that distance, that rising up. That forgetting. But you are the sun and the stars, to me. You are half of my heart. And being away from that, being beyond it, it feels like mourning, like a funeral. That feeling unnerves me, as if it is a tide rising that I can't stop, as if someday you won't matter. That is part of why you matter so much. The closer I get to the day you decide to become ordinary, to the day when a stranger swallows the girl whose face I've traced with my fingers in awe, the more desperately I love you, the parts of you that shine, that are slowly being hidden because you've something more important to be doing. It's a complex fear, like a secret. Like a key you've buried in the garden and every time you walk by, the ground pulls at you, and nobody else even knows. It fogs up my mind, breath on the glass between me and you, and I stop making sense. But... I can SEE you. I can see you forgetting me. And I can't tell if it is my fear drenched mind throwing shadows by candlelight, or if I am losing the only person I ever gave my whole heart to. Not in a sudden, violent way, but in an insidious, eroding way. I want to beg you to tell me it will be okay. That I'm being silly. That you will try as I will try not to drift away. But by now, I'm not even sure I'd be able to believe you if you did.

Those in the cords of my dreamcatcher are the flowers you gave me the week we met, almost two years ago. I keep them there.
I like to think they invite you in.

New pain is always the worst.
The kind you never knew you could feel.
And I watch you stew in it as I did,
But my viciousness came later.
My stone walls,
My excuses.
I had to be kicked for a long time
Like a wounded puppy
Years
In order to gain the fangs I needed to survive
But what that saved me from was turning my bitterness upon others.
Since I learned only in self defense
My kindness remained.
I sacrificed other parts of me-
Oh, too many, I sometimes think,
To avoid giving it up.
But it remained, like a secret candle I held in the core of me
Its pure light peeking through the bars of my ribcage
When my skin stretched over it like bleached canvas.
You...
I am afraid you're not like me.
I'm afraid you will not give up your love
Like I didn't
But neither, perhaps, will you defend your kindness-
You may not have known cruelty for long enough to realize
You need to.
What you need to fight for is not your survival, not your freedom from the tyranny of feeling, not even your choice to love a girl who treats you so cruelly
What you need to be defending with every breath is your decency, and your empathy, and your innate kindness
Because the world does not love kind people.
The world soils them.
And if you are willing to suffer for love but not for kindness,
You will curdle inside like cream left in the sun.
I have been where you are.
I have been hurt by people like her
And by people like you
And what I have found hardest out of all the things I've survived
Was surviving with KINDNESS.

Survive with kindness,
I'm telling you,
Or your work will be
Wasted.

Little moments,
Soft and dizzy.
The touch of your arm round my shoulders.
The perfume of being close to you.
The memory of your hand on the small of my back,
Hot handprint pulling me closer.
The smug smile on full lips,
"I know you want me."
But you can't look away when I dance with her, can you?
Think of me as yours and you will fall to me.
Not so smug, darling:
I am stronger than you.

I would break a thousand mirrors
To draw the dark away from you
Break them with my palms
And grind them to glittering dust between my fingers.
I welcome the shadows with the sacredness of ****** hands.

Let them come.
I am not afraid.
I am ready
For war.

When did I let myself trust
Again?
I thought sure I was just as far away
As ever.
But you never really know something inside out
Until you lose it
And it's the same with people.
You never really know what they truly are
Until you miss whatever that is.
I don't have friends.
I know it looks like I have friends
And a lot of you might even think you are among them
But I don't
I don't have friends.
I stopped talking to my friends.
I stopped way back two years ago,
When I lost everything and nothing could fix it.
And when seeing someone's face who wasn't her didn't hurt me terribly
It was still simply too tiring to have friends at all.
So I stopped talking to them.
Little by little.
They didn't wanna let me go.
Apparently I was pretty great or something.
But they did. They let me go
Because I am great-
At being persistent.
And I persistently pulled away.
And... that was that, really- I didn't have friends.
I had acquaintances.
I had a loose circle of people who I could talk to if I wanted
But who wouldn't miss me all that much if I suddenly bowed out of their lives.
I made a practice of doing just that-
Periodically leaving.
So nobody got used to me enough to like me too much,
Because I didn't have the energy to like them too.
It became that I only gave myself to love,
Not friendship,
Because when I lost love
Even the best of friends became completely invisible to me, hidden behind a haze of pain.
And I figured that must be a sign.
In a lot of ways, I don't do friends.
Or so I thought until today...
But tonight
Tonight I am losing a friend.
She is parting with hugs and promises to keep in touch
And I am sitting on my father's sofa crying
Because I don't remember the last time I cared about anyone I wasn't in love with.
How did I miss this?
When did I start making friends?
How many of them are there?
Will I even know before it's too late?
And why
Do they ever have to leave?

I need to unlearn the language of fear
That I have been speaking since birth.
My parents spoke in fear
And I volleyed back insecurities and reassurances in equal measure.
And when I turned away to meet the world
I spoke to it in my native tongue
And oh,
It spoke back.
But I need to unlearn this language.
I need to let go of my understanding
Because I don't really understand.
I'm only afraid I do.
I'm more afraid that I know what will happen
Than I am that I don't.
So what good are these strangled words
Gasped out like a dying man's last breath?
When I know that this breath is not my last
When I know that this veil of mistrust has darkened my view of the whole world
And made it untrue.
If I seek truth
If I seek truth out of the fear that I will be attacked by it if I don't find it first
I have failed,
I am failing,
Because I am not finding what is true,
I am finding what I'm scared will be.
Teach me to walk again.
Teach me new words.
Teach me to sing.
Teach me to breathe.
I don't want this doubt anymore.
Doubt doesn't make you the wiser one,
The prepared, ready-for-anything, jaded winner.
It makes you hurt.
It makes you hurt before you hurt.
I am done with doubt.
And I will fight
To force it to be done with me, as well.

The ends justify the means, then, darling?
**** the bird and insist it never could sing?
Force the truth to hide and it simply goes away?
Demand fresh blood in sacrifice every day to pay?
Piling posies in the pockets of the putrid dead
Covers up the rot and lets you turn your pretty head.
But underneath the folly is the same
That forced the crying loss to change its name.
You always speak of what you don't deserve
But yet expect each whim to end up served,
If you close your eyes and witness shallowly
You are content that there's no more to see.
But underneath you must have felt the shame
The barbed and anguished playing of your game:
Just because you forced someone to lie
Doesn't mean you've won and changed the sky.
It is the same as it has always been.
Even if you conquer, you don't win.

I don't have hope.
I don't do hope.
I have calm. Calm is better.
I have a knowledge from somewhere in my bones that it will be okay.
That even if everything I've spent all this time worrying about actually happens,
I'll be alright.
It may not be pretty,
And it may not be the happiness I long for,
But whatever happens to me, I know I will survive it.
And that gives the girl who spends much too much time stepping back and giving others what they ask for a peculiar edge:
When everything that I fear has happened,
And I should be broken,
That is always when I stand the tallest, and let pride put steel in my spine.
I don't have a secret weapon,
I am a secret weapon.
Because although I long to be content, I was made to be tested.

And whether I like it or not, I test well.

I think I know why you ran...
I remember sitting at your kitchen table
Confessing how I wanted to see your face
When you are older
When laugh lines have carved it and silver has touched your hair.
And you said
Quietly
That you didn't know if you would live that long.
I understood what you meant
And I took your face in my hands and kissed you
And I never thought to tell you-
I thought you knew-
That I would rather spend a year with you
Than the rest of my life with anyone else.

I think I finally understand.

I'm the part of you you'd love to ****,
And you're the part of me I'd love to die by.
We were a perfect, violent match
For a moment
And that is why although we never touched
Our craving and disgust for one another
Burns us whenever we meet eyes now.

(You're beautiful.)

People are okay with sunsets, and rainstorms, and oceans.
People are not okay with "you are the type of person who first gave people the idea to build temples."
That is how I see you.

You don't belong somewhere
Average.
You don't belong with someone
Ordinary.
And right now
Your life is grey and white
Not too dark and not too light
But I'm telling you, darling,
Don't let your life be newspaper clippings-
Born, Married, Died-
In cheap grey ink.
When you cut your ties and discover every color of your sunset
You won't have the patience for anything less than breathtaking.
I'm asking you not to have the fear
To settle for less anyhow.
I'm asking you to risk for you
To be selfish
To try the stormy seas instead of sitting in the harbor because
You are not a two car garage with a beige house attached
You're a castle, stained glass windows throwing rainbow cut outs of stars on all the floors.
You are not a November drizzle,
You're a summer hurricane.
Even if you never choose me
I'm begging you not to let your love be mediocre
Not to let your life be.
I'm asking you to go for what you deserve
Instead of what you fall into by accident.
You deserve the moon and the stars,
The sun and the planets.
You deserve the richest, loveliest of lives.
Please
Find your adventures, find your passion.
Just cause it's here
Doesn't mean it's good enough.
Don't let your life be newspaper clippings
In some old scrapbook under a bed.
Don't let yourself get caught in a practical, faded existence
Just because it seems like the safe thing to do.
You are not grey and white,
You are every spectrum, like a prism,
And it would be a crying shame
To let this life
Contain you.

When it comes,
And it always comes,
Do you steel yourself,
Tense up like a coiled spring?
Do you fall to your knees and let it break over your head?
Or do you take a deep, calming breath,
And invite it cordially,
Like a familiar friend you may sit down to tea with?
The answer defines you.

When it comes,
And it always comes scalding,
I level my gaze-

*Hello, old friend. Do you take sugar with your heartache?

I used to be a dried up riverbed.
Desert sand ran in my veins.
I was the wasteland, the dust bowl of my sadness.
And somewhere inside for all those years, the waters rose, the storm brewed.
I never really noticed.
Until one day I cracked down the middle like a clay ***,
And everyone got to see the rainstorm of my tears.
They fell with all the force of a roll of thunder,
And all the searing heat of a lightning strike,
And all the hopeless endless downpour of a monsoon.
They fell and woke me up, and in my anguish little cracks spidered out until I was a web of fissures,
And of a sudden I fell away.
It feels odd to have no shell anymore,
It feels strange to cry in front of strangers when they pry into my heart.
I was never that girl.
I was a desert, dry as bone bleached by the sun, and as hard, and as abused.
And now I am a river, fed by the rain of my troubles drumming on my back, and my feelings show on my face not because I cannot stop them but because I no longer have the will to.
For months I was tired, and when I stopped drowning I realized that there was no going back.
I cannot drag myself to dry land, and so I must learn to swim the waters of myself, however deep, however dark, however painful.
I must learn to hold my breath, and let the tears fall when they will.
I am a river.
Stopping the tears never stops the pain.
This I have learned.

The thing you are searching for
No longer
Exists.

Lean close to me
Brush your fingers along my knee
And
I will whisper in your ear
With my hot breath
All the things I know you'll say someday.
I say
Run
I say
This is no joke
I say
I will be too much for you
I say
You will want me
Gone.
And you lean close to me
Brush your fingers along my knee
And say don't be silly, tell me I'm wrong
But I say
Wait
I say
Give it some time
Someday you will say "You don't see it."
And I will say "No, I saw it first."
I say
Believe me or you will be in far too deep
And you say
You're special
And I say
*You're doomed.

Sometimes, when you are away
I can feel myself shrinking inside.
I don't want it to happen.
I don't like it, or what it means about me.
But it continues anyway.
It's this.... feeling.
Like a flower languishing in a dark closet.
And I hate it.
I don't want to write about it.
I don't want to think about it.
I just want to go to sleep
And only wake up when you're back.
And how useful is that?
But today I slept
18 hours
And I wish I was
Asleep again
And this is why I am hard to love.
I know you being away is not the only reason I feel like this.
I know I feel like this
Because my brain is full of chemicals
Making connections
Which my mind tries to explain.
But on days like this
Days like this that stretch into weeks like this
(Please, not months?)
I reach for you and I wither inside when you are far away
Busy
Distracted
Out
Gone.
Sometimes when you're back
It feels like you're still not
Back.
And so I don't push anymore, on days like this.
But I'm the same person who cried over Skype to you
At Christmastime
Because I needed you to reassure me that you loved me.
It has been so long
And you will get tired of it
And I will still need it.
I still need it.
I still need you.
On days like this I don't tell you anymore
Because you're always so busy
And because I can never tell,
So far away,
If you are going through the motions of loving me.
I let you stay away without telling you it hurts because it would hurt more if you pretended to be here
And maybe that's how it would be, you know?
Maybe you'd be calling it in, talking to me because I begged you to.
And there's never a good time to fall apart on you.
There's never a good time to say that for months I've been feeling sadder and sadder, feeling you slip away because
You feel secure
But you have to know, someday I have to tell you
I don't know what safe means.
And I'm always afraid. It will take
So many years
For me not to be afraid.
And it's not your fault
And it's so much to ask,
But I need you to be here.
And I just...
I wither
When you're not.

I know why I hate you.
I hate you because you think she deserves
A love like yours.
Because you think that you are the best she can do.
I know why I hate you-
For not worshiping her like she ought to be adored.
I think you hate me
Because you know
Underneath
That I love her more,
And you'll never even come close
No matter what you do.
I think it bothers you.
I hope it does.
Maybe it'll make you
Try
To love her
The way she is meant to be loved.

I have nothing I want. But somehow I have everything I want.
I didn't get the girl. I didn't get the part.
It eats me up inside that she ignores me. It levels me that I wasn't good enough.
She's beautiful and it hurts, and sometimes I can't help but remember her tenderness, her hand on my cheek, her smile warming the world, her soft lips,
And her ****** promises that I believed.
Belief is terribly dangerous, and terribly traumatic, even if it only happens for the barest of seconds.
I'd cry about it, but I'm terrible at crying- nothing comes out even when I try.
But...there's this other girl.
I haven't known her long, either,
But the other night we were curled up in bed and suddenly
I started crying,
And I didn't know why but I couldn't stop.
I cried for everything I have lost, and everything I know I am losing.
I can't remember the last time I couldn't stop myself from showing an emotion, and I was truly terrified.
I think it was her hands on me. Her arms around me. Her understanding eyes.
I felt safe to and...
I just broke, and the tears poured out, because I've failed
And it hurts
And it's hurt for years,
And I keep failing,
And I think the reason I fail is that I try so hard, but I try in fear that I will fail for lack of trying.
And she just accepted it all and told me it was alright.
I didn't see the fear in her eyes, I didn't see the need to run from my need.
I saw only the same empathetic, frank calm I know shows in my eyes when I see somebody cry, because I love their truth and I want to know it.
I think that is why it took a very long time for me to regain control of myself.
Even though I've lost,
Even though I am not good enough for the people who decide who sings and who doesn't,
Or the girl who kissed me and then chose to walk away with my heart,
Or frankly, most of the world,
Who would shame me for the shameless way I am forced into love and my inability to shut up about it,
Even though I will keep on failing because I am too scared of regret to try any less than my hardest-
A trying that scares people and loses me things-
Even though, ALL of that... I am good enough for this girl.
That's the thing, see. I have nothing I want.
But when I'm with her I don't care that I have nothing I want.
I don't need it when she's there.
I don't need it all for a while, and I can BREATHE,
And I've never had that.
It's a different love than I've ever experienced. I've never loved someone in a way that hasn't ****** me dry and left me empty.
Sad, but true.
Sometimes I am loved in return for my love, but always it takes from me,
Always
It requires a sacrifice in blood.
This, with her, whatever it is,
It asks nothing.
What it takes is offered, what it gives is wanted,
It is an easy thing.
For 18 years I've needed comfort, and I remember getting it once, ever, before I met this girl.
And now whenever I am brittle and close to despair, I can last until I can see her,
And somehow the pressure lessens when I do.
So, despite all the failures I see coming,
All the falls and the bruises and the crushing disappointments that, let's face it, I set myself up for
By being a patron of a brutal kind of love,
I have discovered that there is a balm, a comfort,
Someone who will give what I need and want what I offer.
And that is, honestly, probably the only reason that I don't feel broken, even after all the things in these past weeks that would have broken me before.
So yeah, it's true.
I have nothing I want.
But I have everything I need,
Everything I always dreamed I'd have but never came close to finding.
Funny, how I always seem to be in the in between. I'm forever in the halfway, if I am happy.
But this is different, still. This is new.
Because when I am with her and I think of all that I've lost and all that I know I am losing by the second,
I can't feel the hurt that comes with it.
It's distant. It's a fact, but it doesn't... MATTER.
And I have never met anybody who can heal me like that,
Ever. And I think she knows that.
And I am honestly excited and inspired to find ways to thank her and give to her.
And for once, I am allowed to be, because I know she will not reject what I give.

Sleep your day away
Sleep your life away.
Lay there, head buried, eyes tight shut
Past the dawn and past the dusk.
Sleep until you feel sick,
Until your pounding, hammering heart is fooled by dreams
And slows.
But every few hours you stir enough, and
SLAM SLAM again against your ribcage.
Sh, little one. This is only a dream.
Go back to sleep and wake in reality.
The light from your windows screaming
"Think you know darkness?
Go looking for it?
I'll show you darkness."
Oh darling, no matter how long you hide
It is not you who controls when your nightmare ends.
Is the dawn near?
Or has the sun only just set?

I am a keeper of secrets.
Having none of my own, I have been given them.
Perhaps the empty space inside my mind
Where they'd reside did they exist
Calls to be filled,
Sends out beams like a lonely lighthouse on cold tumbling grey waves.
Perhaps its siren song draws people closer,
Clustering like gauzy moths around a flame.

That girl there, she is going to die soon.
She smiles and her friends envy her.
They know not that her sun is almost set.
Not a one suspects.
But I know.
Our eyes meet
And for a moment we share a light,
Private and white hot
Like a thread of burning silver stretched between us,
Searing,
Thin as spidersilk but strong.
And then just as quickly it is broken and there's nothing once again.

That one there thinks she's already dead, inside.
She smiles and the circle of people that hover about her like a halo
Ripples with laughter.
They do not suspect.
But I know.
I catch her eye and see the hopelessness,
Smile at her and she smiles back.
But even I cannot tell if it is real.

I am a keeper of terrible secrets.

A bit off the heel and a bit off the toe,
It won't hurt very much, and they're pretty, you know.
I've got the perfect pair of shoes for you,
All you need is some fitting- an inch off or two.
A slice of skin here and a little blood there,
These are the most beautiful shoes you could wear.
Let you go? Heavens no!
I admire you so
With your perfect physique
And your delicate feet.
Oh it's only a smidgen, a droplet of blood!
Come now dear, no one's fond of a stick in the mud.
Come- rush to the ball and we'll all have such fun!
On second thought, maybe you, ah... shouldn't run...
It's worth it, though, isn't it? These beautiful shoes.
And darling, they look so exquisite on you.
There now, not so bad, and they fit perfectly,
All you needed was just a little surgery.
Now let's off to the ball and you'll dance all night long.
No silly, don't cry, you've got it all wrong!
I told you- you're beautiful just how you are,
Now come on and stop whining, you don't have to walk far.
But you see, there's no daughter, or stepmom, or shoes.
There's none of those things- there is me and there's you.
And you've got this idea of what I'm s'posed to be,
And as hard as I try, I'm not her, love, I'm me.
I'm afraid that no matter how much pain I bear,
I just don't fit in the shoes you are making me wear.

A kiss is like a conversation. It can be as short and sweet as hello, or goodbye. It can be a long argument full of anger. It can be a soft whisper of comfort, or a sharp demand. It can be shouted like a joyful whoop, or murmured like a private confession. Kisses are much simpler than words. We need less to say what we mean.
A kiss can say, I missed you, I need you, I adore you.
It can say you hurt me, I hate you, I forgive you.
It can say don't leave me, I'm sorry, please console me.
It can say come here, I can't live another moment without you next to me, breathing is not important.
A kiss can say things for which there simply aren't translations, for no words encompass the meanings.
And let me tell you one thing. When a woman kisses you, she is always saying something. You have to hear her, you have to listen, else how will you know what you've just said back?

It's funny how you meet someone
And suddenly
You like blondes.
I never used to like blondes.
Not particularly.
And suddenly,
I just do.
It's funny
How the imprints of certain souls just
Stay
With you,
Behind your eyes.
How they color the world.
As if the thought
Just bends you toward a stranger
Just the thought
That they look or sound
Or move
Like somebody else,
Somebody
Special.
Why special?
Why her?
Why any of them?
And yet
Even as I try to look elsewhere...
Suddenly
I like blondes.

Your fear
Will not take from me
The joy your words gave.
I have a choice with you
Every time
To let you spoil your own perfection
Or to rise above your backlash
And love you more.
I will always love you more.
That is my gift to you,
And my retribution.

I loved you all very much, you know.
It’s not that I didn’t.
I loved everything, but I think that was my problem.
I’m not sorry that I am here, for it is a release from love.
“To love is to destroy, and to be loved is to be the one destroyed.”
I read that somewhere.
After that- and even before- I felt the burden of the damage I did to everyone I met,
And to myself.
One day, I felt it too much, and all my love soured to hatred.
Then I took the knife and turned my love inward,
And here I am in the dark,
Free and empty.
It is not so bad as you might suppose.

For every love the disillusion comes,
The moment I suddenly realize-
Oh no, I've lied again
And shut my weary eyes.

You hate in me what she couldn't stand,
And I always trusted you.
But in the end I've never known a soul
Who saw me and knew what to do.

You want just what everybody wants-
You want a part of me.
But just a part, a little bit,
To come out and be seen.

But I don't play in parts, my dear,
I don't divide myself.
It's killing me to show you smiles
And pretend I'm always well.

You're just like them! I realize
And oh god, does it sting
To know that all you want from me's
Another nice bright shiny thing.

I always respected you
Both for your pain and for your laughter
But all you ever want from me
Is "Happy ever after".

I've realized and **** me,
For I cannot take it back.
I've realized and now I know
I never had what I now lack.

You'll pout and despair, deny it,
But you've done what they all do.
When I show you storm clouds
You campaign for skies of blue.

I love my darkness, dearly.
Why do you cut it down?
Become my executioner
And banish every frown?

I don't want to smile, some days.
I want to be loved as I am,
Not for the shiny surface
That you constantly demand.

Maybe it's wrong to ask you,
When you've so much else to fight
But god, I just can't always
Flood my darkened soul with light.

I miss my lovely shadows,
My ugliness, my pain.
I miss having someone see them,
Someone else who loves the rain.

Why can't you understand
That your type of pain's not all there is?
Why can't you see I don't want to be saved,
Couldn't stand it being fixed?

I'm not your problem, not your pet,
I don't need your assistance.
Maybe I really push you
To condemn your **** insistence

That I be good and nice and right,
That I smile all the time.
I refuse to lose myself to that.
I will not waste all of that time.

Maybe I really push you
Because you're pushing me.
I force you to see just what you are
And you tell me what to be.

I won't endure it, love, I won't,
I'll keep on showing you my soul.
And maybe it'll hurt you
But you're digging me a hole.

I'll not see my shadowy essence
Buried silent once again.
I'll not reattend the funeral
Of all that I've since been.

You call yourself a shell,
And tell me it's misery.
But look, my love, just look
At what you're forcing me to be.

If you drain me dry of suffering,
And leach away my darkness,
If you hide what makes me special,
Tell me, what will I have left?

Don't make me laugh when I would cry
I can't abide it, dear,
But **** me if I won't be good
And act like I'm all here.

For I love you so much that I'll pretend til
I can't stand it anymore,
Because although I'm prideful
I am giving to the core.

I wonder what's under your skin.
Sometimes
I see the glitter in your eyes
Of hidden things
Like the shine of silver minows in deep water
But then the sun comes out and blinds me
And I've lost the trail
Of that starlight that I know drags its soft fingers through the dark corners of your heart.
I want the long shadows it casts.
I want the  complicated, messy figures it throws up on the cave walls of your soul,
I want their unabashed wildness,
I want the savage way they will never keep still in one form.
I want the way they scare you and the way they thrill you.
We hide
So much in this life.
We hide from the world.
I will show you every edge of me
And I will map your edges
With tender hands and gentle words,
And awe.
I want in
To whatever makes you be.