I’ve been fighting battles since the age of eight
(but haven’t we all?)
We’ve been fighting ever since we discovered
that the world has demons with very good disguises.
We’ve been brought down by people who think they
deserve the world;
we’ve been chopped down
until the our roots couldn’t collect water anymore.
We’ve got scars and bruises
that cover our bodies like tattoos,
and they’ll never go away.

It gave us the power to shut our ears when we heard words we didn’t like
and talk back when we and the people we loved needed defending.
We’ve had the world declare war on us
time after time
but god, did we learn to fight back
and we will always fight back.

June of that year
lead to warm summer nights,
and a thousand stars to connect,
but more importantly
it lead to him.
He was the summer rolled up
into tan skin and a white smile,
he was everything I thought I wanted
but worse.
Summer turned to fall
and fall turned to winter,
and with the seasons
we changed.
We fell out of a love
that I never thought
I would have again.

June of this year,
I blossomed from a shell of self destruction
and I stumbled upon you.
You were everything I never knew I needed,
rolled into
a beautiful disguise.
You were a love I never thought I would have,
a person I never thought I would need,
a feeling I never knew I could feel.
You were a love I would
go through hell for
a thousand times over.

You had never been loved properly
and that made you cruel.
You cut people open,
ripped them to shreds,
just trying to find something
to make you feel whole,
to make you feel happy.

You threw yourself into people
so that you didn’t have to deal with yourself,
so that you didn’t have to be alone.
But you took people by the heart
and crushed them
because no one taught you
how to love another human being,

but worse yet
no one taught you how to be loved.

If you stop for too long
you give your past a chance to catch up with you
and it will try eating you alive.
I’ve been moving for so long
that when I stop it hits me like
a tsunami of regret.
It tries to swallow me whole
and take me under.
But the thing about dreadful pasts,
and bitter memories
is that they make you stronger,
better,
faster.
And sometimes
you
can
outrun
them.

Tell me all the thoughts you think
right before you go to bed,
the ones that keep you up
the ones you can’t keep out.
I’ll steal them
-pluck them right from your skull,
and set them right along side mine.
We all have demons,
so show me yours.

Whisper them to me, don’t keep them inside
-I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.
We’ve all got demons
that makes it hard to sleep it night,
that make it hard to eat and breath and think.
But baby, I think we’ve got it made,
I think mine play well with yours.

He would touch my shoulder
and I would cringe away,
he would declare pretty words
and I would remain emotionless.
Because there are some actions in life
that you can not take back,
no matter what you
give,
say,
or do.

There are spaces inside of us
filled with grudges
you can not get rid of,
and there are parts of us
that once they have been scratched,
they can not be polished back to perfection.

Some of us,
have missing pieces
and I’m afraid
my dear,
that I’m missing my will
to forgive.

I want to write about
the one I love,
not the one who left me
high and dry.
You blew cancer into my lungs,
but he pulled the trigger
and I kissed him every day to try and soften the blow.
Now every time my lips touch yours,
I taste blood in my mouth
like a sick reminder of where
my lips used to be placed.

I want to touch you
every day for the rest of my life,
but my hands have been scorched
and burned
from placing them on somebody else.
But the way you touch me
makes me feel as if
all my sins have been erased.

I soon found that
it felt wrong to whisper
I love you
into the midnight air,
because I was so unsure as to who I was talking to
and I wanted you to be the only one
I ever said it to.