Are you afraid now? Is that where you went?
Don't make me into something soft.
If you stay
You will see my innocence
You will see my devotion and my weakness.
I will cry in your arms.
I need you to know that when I show you that part of me
I am giving you a gift.
I need you to know that I don't need protecting.
If I love you
It will not be for shielding me from the world.
I have stood all alone against the most violent of storms
Years and years of pain making my skin thick and weathered
Frustration at my own frailty
Sharpening the edges of me.
I need you to know that I am both.
That in order for the girl you may someday love to exist
Sweet and lonely
There must be a side like this,
Bitter, hard, angry.
I need you to know that that side is why I have lived long enough to know you.
I need you to feel the tragedy and the joy that live in it.
I use it to live,
I burn it as fuel
On days when I can feel the coldness creeping into my soul, slowing everything down.
Rage is active.
Pain is passive.
Underneath I am still sweet, and sad, and tired
I promise.
But none of that burns well, you see?
None of that will push me through long months of empty space.
And who can I rely on
If not me?
Nobody
Has ever stayed long enough.
I just can't take the chance, not yet.
And so
I am a creative person.
I found a way to survive.
I always find a way.
And it may not be pretty
It may not be comforting
It may even be
Horrifying,
But it's the reason you can sit here and read my poetry
My words that transport you-
Because I
Am still alive to write it.