Take everything you knew.
Imagine it all as a lie.
What would you do?

Would you shout in anger?
Would you cry in sadness?
Would you delude yourself
to continue believing?

Take everything I am.
Rebuild me as you want.
Am I any better?

Am I whole?
Am I sane?
Am I any more worthy
of love?

Take all your misconceptions.
Tell yourself there are always exceptions.
Do you hold exceptions to your misconceptions of me,
or am I still damaged?

If a woman says
'All I want is a good man',
She's a liar
Or she'd have found me.

I'm not the fool I once was.

'I'll love you if you let me love someone else.'
'I'll love you if you ***** me.'
'I'll love you if we can have a baby first.'
'I'll love you if you have no life outside of mine.'
'I'll love you if you do me a favor...
Or two...
Or twelve...'
'I'll love you if you were more feminine.'
'I'll love you if you can be fine with me sleeping with her.'

No woman simply loves.
There are always extra conditions
Hidden in the fine print of their contracts.
Something to hurt you.
Something to poison.
Something to test you when you don't deserve to be tested.
I feel like a lab rat,
Poked and prodded for far too long,
And no-one on my side without their own agendas.

There goes my mind, snapping like an elastic lifeline
over a sea of daggers.

Waiting on words like waiting on fuses
to be no more, in hopes the explosion won't **** my so-called pride.

...Whatever is left of it.

This isn't the first time.
Knowing my luck, it won't be the last time my hope relied on the sympathies of a bomb.

And wouldn't you know that bombs are unsympathetic?

I'm wasting away here, as I have been for years.
Enduring bombardments with every day, more and more of myself blown away.

I just hope when my day comes, I'm not too damaged.

...If my day comes.

...Will it come?

My heart: already nearly gone.
My face: atrophied to deaden all emotion.

Am I worth anything anymore?

So much blasted away,
day after day,
I only recognize myself
by my scars,
the craters,
like torn earth.

You're everywhere I look now.
Stalking with your eyes,
Your face,
Your voice.

I know she's not you.
But it's so eerie
To meet the same person twice.

In different minds.
In different bodies.

You're just like when we first met.
Now like all those years ago.
Whoever said there's no such thing
As one collective soul?

You hold me in contempt.
Contempt of all the thoughts I've aired
Contempt of all the dreams I've shared
With others.

Not that they shared it in turn with me.
They just took it with a smile and acted as they would
As long as I was of use.

From then on
It was trash to them.
Discarded
Disregarded
Open-hearted wound
Again and again
Torn open
Never hoping it could ever be healed.

No matter how I word it
It seems to make no appeal.
They don't remember a kiss,
They don't remember a word of promise.

Women do what women will.
It makes no sense to me.
They use you for a cheap thrill,
They toss you in the sea.

****'d if you rely or them
****'d if you don't.
If they wish to strangle me,
I guess I'll just nake my throat...

I hold no contempt of you
As you seem to have of me.
I stand firm, like a rock
In spite of your mighty sea.

It's not so much that
I see you raging,
You just strike me as disengaging,
Disillusioned,
Disarranging the concept of friends.
Keeping your distance,
Even if they, too
Only seek your ends.
Spare me of your drama,
But bare me in your pain.

I hold no fault in you,
But I'd hold you in the rain.

What holds you together?
What holds anyone together?
I tell you mine,
You tell me yours.

She fills my ear with sweet nectar
When all I hear is hell.
She holds my hand in brightest light
When darkness takes its spell.

When all the world's against me,
I feel kisses along my neck.
She holds me tight,
Together,
When I'm not more than a wreck.

I feel her lips,
She has no face.
She sets my heart
Right into place.

When all around me give me hell,
I feel her there.

And I call her Angel.