Four years later, and I still sit up in the same bed at night with salt-stained cheeks.
I wonder how many lives have been lost in between these sheets.
how many loves are still embedded in the fibers of the comforter,
how many rib pieces lay stashed in the pillows from those horrible, heavy sobs.

You know the ones,
Where the fire dies in your hot air-balloon lungs, and they collapse in on themselves.
You can’t say anything, or feel anything but the crushing weight of your self inflicted silence.
All you can do is gasp, and gasp, and gasp for breath, but nothing comes out. It never does.
No one ever knows how much your heart bleeds for the people you can’t stand.
You offer them olive branches, while they offer you bile, and spit poison into your eyes with each syllable from their God-forsaken lips.

Do you remember when Jesus loved you?
When His face shined upon you, and He kissed the top of your head telling you that the light you possessed was greater than the shadow it created?
He was right.
But you’re afraid of the dark,
and have to turn on every light in the house just to make it to the bathroom.
So what good are your heroics if you burn yourself from the flame inside you?

You were supposed to be great.
You were one of the chosen ones,
the Lionhearted heroine
with a heart meant to fit inside two people,
but it was stuck in your small frame by mistake.


You can’t dance to a heartbeat that powerful.
Your bones know how to waltz,
but they’re old and tired from the thousands of dances
from the thousands of lives before yours.
You understand, don’t you?
Your hips just don’t curve like they used to.

But when the song ends,
and quarter notes turn into full rests,
maybe then you’ll get some sleep.
We both need it.