it's from the dreams that wake me up in cringes
nauseous from the sickening memory’s twinges
that poison the hours of the day with painful fire that singes
that set me off like explosions into my drinking binges

because of winning the debate that sobriety in this miserable place
would be insane trying to heal the strain with grace
my heart's been sewn back into my chest so many times trying to keep pace
with the thick black stitches of self taught renewed hope I hope to replace

just for it to burst or be removed and slit deep at it's throat again
as I slip down another ***** into the ways I try to cope as I’m drained
back into the times I can't escape because they really are the past I can’t feign
and knowing I was cast in a mold and I will never escape my shape or it’s strain

there will be no peace after the things I was told, not with age, no matter how old
not when I accomplish, not when I survive, and not now that my blood has turned cold
because my molested heart is too weak to beat, too scarred to keep a hold
after all the times it trusted, only to be opened from ribbon wrapped packages just to be sold

I keep having to buy myself back from the thrift store of my own life
***** back together all my feeling parts, always trying to justify leaving a wife
so now I kneel, praying on my knees in slobbering tears for the aches to be less rife
begging to forget the loss of a son, willing to cut my flashbacks out with a knife

my new life has somehow begun and their ghosts haunt me unforgivingly
carving slivers off of the inside of my skull, never letting the pressure free
educating me with the lessons of emptiness and cold pains deep as the sea
and always with creeping thoughts of what I'll never regain or again grow to be

and even now with all my new days and change
the life I knew is still estranged
and I live with the truth that the shape of my mould so strange,
my destiny in the shape of my loss, will always remain