And one day you'll wake up with a heavy weight pressed to your back -
with the sound of rain and someone else's breath keeping you company,
you'll blink away nonexistent tears from your eyes and wonder where you are.

You won't know now but you'll understand later -
this is where you are meant to be.
Meant to be is tucked safe and sound in the arms of your lover -
with rain washing away all of the bad things in the night.
Things that you won't remember when you wake up again in the morning.

But for now -
have the courage to keep sleeping alone -
because there is someone else out there who is fighting to stay strong, too.
Fighting to find their way back to you.

In the land of the dead, there is a little girl who remains bare from the inside out -
a little girl who knows nothing but a black rose that remains gripped in her tiny hand.

A black rose that cuts into her palm and spills blood on the bare ground -
drip, drip, drip - losing something that is already gone.
It's a flower that you can only find in the land of the dead, among spirits that know terrible things yet give black roses to little girls.

The little girl has found herself here - eternally lost and young for only a split second of time - but this can be home.
She has seen terrible things, too -
but there are worse things than finding yourself with a black rose.

There was no time for the heart.
The heart had to be buried somewhere safe and sound, somewhere dark and quiet and possibly unknown even to me...the heart needed to survive.

So it was put in the ground.
And now, it is banging on the door, clawing at its coffin, panicking and screaming to be let out.

It can't breathe. It can't breathe. It can't breathe.

I think there comes a time when -
you know you're exactly where you're meant to be -
but you also know you're needed somewhere else.

A time when you are pulled one way and then the other -
and you won't win. Nobody wins.
It's a time you can't choose -
it chooses you and you cannot do anything except follow it.

You can do nothing except get on your knees and hope it doesn't obliterate you. Please, please, please -
have mercy on me. Spare me.

Our sweet mother, taken away so soon -
gasping for breath as the heavy weight of perfection sat on her chest.
Even in death, she is perfect -
used to her full potential by many men seeking warmth but not love.

No, never love.

These men nestled inside her and made her full - full of life but not the kind that makes you love yourself when looking in the mirror.

The type of life they filled her up with was the kind that nearly killed her in the delivery room - crying out as she was ripped apart and her child was taken by strange hands. Hands of men.

These men ****** her and ****** her and ****** her until the last drop of life she had left disappeared from her eyes.
These men are the ones who look into her coffin and murmur, she was so beautiful.
So perfect.

She died knowing she was not beautiful, could never be beautiful. Beautiful was a word uttered from men's ***** mouths, a word that had been tainted unknowingly.

She died gasping for breath, needing to say those words before she left this world. Needing to say it, needing to say it, needing to say it...
I am not beautiful.

Here lies love,
our mother who will never be beautiful or perfect for as long as I am breathing in this world.
Here lies death,
our real mother who was always more than beautiful. More than perfect.

There's not a single word to describe what she really was. But never beautiful.
No, never perfect.

I've never told anyone that I missed them,
never told anyone that their absence keeps me up at night,
never had the privilege, or perhaps the curse, of experiencing my heart when it's submerged in love and longing.

I guess I've been dipping my toes in the water - too afraid to jump right in. I've never been careless like that.

Love is not a game, not a lake you jump into during the summer when the sun is high in the sky and you're sweating bullets.

Rather, love is that oasis you find after walking one eternal day in the desert of life - the clear water you stumble upon and drink and drink and drink until you're stumbling away with lightheadedness.

Love saves you -
gives you a reason to say I miss you,
I can't sleep when you're not here,
*take my heart with you if you really must leave me.

There is a world where I sit in the back of a bus, going to work -
and another where I sit at a bar on a Friday night -
and another where I sit by a river in the evenings and draw what I see.

In that world, you are the woman who gets on the bus after my stop and sits in the empty seat across from mine -
in that world, you are the young man laughing carelessly on the dance floor with a drink in your hand -
in that world, you are the obscure figure in the distance that drifts by on their boat, feeding ducks and playing a harmonica as the sun goes down.

The me in that world will admire your pretty face from afar, too afraid to say anything -
in that one, I will force myself to stand and ask you for a dance -
in the last one, I will draw you as you pass by, your song leaving me in its wake.

What I'm trying to say is -
I think I got stuck in the world where I haven't met you yet and don't know if I ever will.