I used to love to laugh-

          And hear the birds sing in the wind.

     I used to love a lot of things,

Before you came around.

Myself being one,
I soon began to crack at the surface
And couldn't stop chipping away at every thought.
You didn't know me at all,
Yet I let you think you did and blindly loved on
Until I forgot what that meant.
---
You stopped coming around,
But I kept loving on.
Trying to understand every turn I made
Deciphering hidden messages,
I kept on loving.
And soon that love dried away,
Leaving me sleepless questions
Seemingly unanswerable in my insomnia.

               I let you take all my color-

          Vibrancy to me was grey painted dark.

     I used to feel music thump in my gut,

Till soon it was only beating hollow in my chest.

I could hardly breathe
When I realized what you took from me.
I felt gutted and discarded
Because you did it with no thought;
No remorse or even intention.
It was simply your being and you ****** mine right out,
Like a parasite.
---
Manually I put back the contents I had no business returning;
Things that should have never left
I searched for in emptiness.
Finding it was like being treated for a deadly disease
You mysteriously pick-up in a foreign country.

               Only it was your venom-

          Slowly draining from my body.

     My chest cracked as if it were embalmed,

And I found my painful cure.
---
You don't come around any more,
And I'm glad.
Because I can keep on loving
Without peering over my shoulder in fear.
I kept on loving
And the colors came back in faces you only wish would glance your way.
I loved again
So your darting stare could never again pierce me the way it did,
Leaving only slight, discolored wounds
That don't even sting anymore.

               I used to love to feel-

          The way my fingertips tingled from joy.

     So I learned to love you, just to prove

I still felt all the way down to my fingertips.