Projector screens play,
movie reels in sermon preach,
how to breathe

Love will set us free.
Heartstrings strumming songs for you,
angel. Hum with me.

Broken-record words,
twirl in the lobes of a brain.
Don’t play again.

Look me in the eye,
ask if I’m alright.
I might just tell you a lie.

Limp cloth tries to dance our silhouette to life,
White, paper, teeth, famished for ideas of
you & I- in the same sentence.
The light’s glare, that I should look toward
is imprinted in my mind.  There’s a look of
yours I’ve familiarized myself with, it is all-knowing.
You lick your lips as a sign of defeat.
We’re both stalemates to time,
its’ unforgiving mark- bound to be alone.
Always afraid of change, taking place.
Is there redemption? Or are we fated to smother?
Is there a pardon? I’m left here.
Though, the seasons do change, leaves falling,
as our patience wears thin of each other.
Here I am, left to tend
to the non moving skeletons, we both surrendered.

Is there redemption or are we fated to smother?

Wish I knew how to write about happy things,
and everyone I knew didn’t have such troubled heads.
So when, very rarely, I say a prayer-
a part of me knew which part of the fire to put out.
We can hold hands, smoldering the smoke
but we all know-- we are the fire starters.
And these insincere prayers leave us empty,
while making me a liar. Because I don’t believe in
the initiative of a higher power.
And though we are the fire starters,
have been the fire bringers there is
power inside of us to end the fire.
If only close contact could ***** out the flame.
I know the smoke will remain surrounding us,
no matter how tightly we hold one another.

Three long years have passed,
your name no longer inspires
the movement of scars growing
down my thighs. There is no more
wishing it were different.

How could I have known, the type
of person you would be? When you sold me
tragic stories and blown out veins.

Addicted to the addiction of saving
someone from themselves, but who
would dare rescue me? I buried
your memory and in its' place
a garden blooms, every scar fades.

Each day I work toward peace,
forgiving and forgetting your solemn face.

You were in need of a fix,
I had become of your drug of choice,
now-
in learning,
I am the heroine of my own story.