I'm Stripping Myself Bare For This One. Every Layer That I Meant To Impress, Down To My Bones. The Collection I've Come To Keep Is Now Not My Own.
I Am Now Pages.
Letters.
Ink.
Paper.
Charcoal.
And Pencil Lead.
This Is About What It Means To Give Up,
To Give In,
To Be Empty,
To Be Lonely,
To Be Fragile,
And Broken.
Every Story A Letter Carved In Your Skin, Something To Take With You, The Lyrics You Wrote Down On Bar Napkins, Book Quotes In The Margins Of Notebook Assignments, Love Letters Folded Into Hearts And Stashed Behind Your Eyelids,
It Isn't Just One Story, Its Every Single One Of Them.
Its Why Daddy Is Never Coming Back, And Why We Run Ourselves Bleeding Into A Tissue Paper'd Sky, Wondering When We'll Hit Home.
Chapter 103, Third Paragraph, Sentence 4
She Uses Rusted Razor Blades To Part The Lines Of Her Skin, Open Up Her Veins, Call It A Donation, But It Wasn't For The Collection Plate On Sunday. She Was Trying To Trace Deep Enough Into Herself, To The Point Where She Could Differentiate Between The Surface, And What Part Of Her Makes Her Human.
She Never Got An Answer.
Chapter 1, First Paragraph, Sentence 3
He Can't Pull His Body Out Of Bed In The Morning. No Matter How Many Hours He Sleeps, Its Never Enough. He's Spent Too Many Hours Connecting The Constellation Patterns In The Ceiling Above His Bed, Now He Can't Remember What The Real Stars Look Like, And He's Not Sure We Wants To Any More. Every Morning It's Like Gravity Is Working A Double Shift Making It Next To Impossible To Lift Himself Off The Mattress, He's Tired Of All This Pillow Talk, His Vocal Cords, Folded Line Over Line, And Left Out To Dry.
Hes Always So Tired.
Chapter 214, Last Paragraph, Last Sentence,
She's Bent Over Porcelain Coffins, Emptying Herself Out, Setting Her Esophagus On Fire. Someone Once Told Her Beauty Is Pain, So She's Hell Bent On Smiling Until It Hurts. Determining Her Self Worth In Calories And Pages Of Magazines Stapled Into Her Skin, She'll Only Be Happy When- She'll Only Be Happy If – She'll Only Be Happy When – It's A Never Ending List Of Self Proclaimed Requirements, And She's Never Been Good At Following Any Rules, Except For This One.
She Hates Herself.
Chapter 48, 4th Paragraph, Sentence 6
He Keeps A Bottle Of Absolute Under His Bed, And It's Why Everything Else Means Absolutely Nothing. He's An Engagement Ring Resting At The Bottom Of A Lake For One Too Many Sleepless Summers. Worthlessly Drunk On His Own Sorrow. Some Days Its The Only Thing He Thinks About, Pushing Himself Into The Only Kind Of Darkness He Can Dream In Anymore.
He Can't Remember If Its Worth It.
Chapter 17, 7th Paragraph, Sentence 2
She Can't Stop Giving Herself Away. So Many Hands To Hold Her Already Bruised Flesh, They Call Her Baby, Sweetie, Honey, Love, But None Of Them Stay Around Long Enough For Any Of Those To Stick. She's A Notch In The Bedpost, Face Down In The Mattress, And Sometimes She Doesn't Even Know Their Names. She's The Raven Haired Beauty From The Wrong Side Of The Tracks, And She's Told Herself Its Worth It, Because It's Twenty Minutes Someone's Arms Are Around Her.
She Lets Them Use Her.
This Is The End To Every Book You've Ever Read.
This Is Our Body's Last Stand To A War We've Been Fighting In Our Bones.
We're Asking Every Part Ourselves Why We're Here.
We're Running Out Into The Storm. One Made Of Words, And Weapons, And Sorry Stained Goodbyes. Paperback Regret, Prolog Pretenses, Epilog Broke Back Empathy.
We've Got Jaws Bared Tight. Asking The God Our Parents Pray To, To Give Us All The Answers To All The Questions That Keep Us Awake At Night.
So Here We Are. So Here I Am, Afraid of My Shadow At Seven, Afraid Of Myself At Seventeen.
Afraid Of What I Could Do To Myself.
Afraid Of What My Fingertips Might Feel Like, Turning The Last Page.
But I Always Do, Don't I?
We Always Do, Don't We?
Because We're All Just A Bunch of Self-Destructive ************* Aren't We?
So This Is Why.
She, He, We & I Are Why.
This Story Is Why.
If Someone Ever Wrote Us into A Support Group, We'd Heal Her Wounds. Not With Bandages Or Stitches, But With Soft Words And Ribbons Around All Her Old Scars. We'd Shake The Dust Off Of His Bones, And Pull Him So Far Out Of Himself, He'd Be New Again, More Alive, More Awake Than He Had Ever Been, We'd Tell Her She Was Pretty, Beautiful, Stunning, Cover Her in Copper And Sunlight, Tell Her She Didn't Need Anything Except The Skin She Was In, And That Would Be Enough. We'd Empty His Veins Of The Alcohol Poisoning His Blood, And Tell Him Life Is So Much Better When You Can Remember It, We'd Hold Her, How We Should, And Promise Not To Let Go, Hold Her So Tightly It Hurts, And Remind Her How To Love The Right Way.
And There Would Be That Storm. Brewing Inside All Of Us.
And We'd Go Back.
Go Back To The Pressed Flowers We Had Kept Between Encyclopedia Pages.
And We'd Feel The Thunder.
And See The Lightning.
We'd Be Held Tight In Book Jackets, And Leather Bound Binding,
And We'd Promise Each Other Not To Let Go.