To be raised in dysfunction is to expect failure.  
It is to expect every mans words to be rough and spiteful spilling from their lips like venom.  
To be raised in a fantasy is to fear ones own reality.
It is to become acquainted to forms of love being shown as slammed doors and drunken slurs.  
Gas lighting women to wonder if one day they will breathe or step the wrong direction
It is to expect everyone who claims that they "love you" to belittle you  to strip you of your identity and your sanity like ***** clothes tainted by the fumes of their words.  
And in the gaslighting, which burned very bright, you would have enough of a glow to paint the roses red.
Perfectly red, everyday they would have to be red.
Because to be raised by you
Means blood, and we are blood.
But that does not mean, I have to bleed, for you.

I never wanted
To be the girl
Who wanted anything more
Than a friendship
But here I am
Head on the chest
Of nothing less
Than the love
Of my life.

I got your message, Though it was never sent.
I heard it loud and clear.
Your silence cut through me, Sleep Evaded me and I could not tell you.
Tell you the roses that drape across the bed still have thorns.
that possessive wears the mask of a protector.
Teaching yourself to hold onto your protest so that he will still want you.
Confusing Love and Abuse, volunteering for the draft of his war.
Begging to become a causality of the love he claims to feel.
I've seen this, I've written these words once before.

Home is blue, like Ocean waves that crash around me as her eyes trace my silhouette like clockwork.
Home is her story on soft skin like ink on pages, telling strangers about her adventures and the world she wishes she hasn't seen..
Home is Her handprint cemented into the small of my back like it was always meant to be
If home is where the heart is, My home is her.

I want to tell you, How I've lost all respect for you.
How your presence no longer draws my attention you fade into background noise.
I want to tell you that I regret giving you so much of my life, Because you never deserved to know me the way that you did.
I want to tell you how pathetic you are, How your actions will always speak louder than your words.
I'm afraid to let you back in.
I want to drown you in your own self pity, But I know you'd push me under once you realized that dying wouldn't benefit you in anyway.
You've turned into everything you swore you'd never be.
I want to tell you how cold you are, How the bags under your eyes don't impress me.
I want to tell you, You've lost us.

And Yet Still, I Am The Common Denominator

I told her she was beautiful the living embodiment of my poetry, though
I could never make her into a poem, because the words that describe her escape my ink and scurry back into my heart.
I told her that “she” never spoke to me with such elegance, she never gave me poems about love and prosperity.. She spoke to me in rhymes and haikus about brokenness and betrayal.. 
I told her, love.. You are my muse.. And “she” is just a memory.

"To apologize is to admit failure"
My father told me as he left the front door open on his way out.
I never learned make the first move
"Let them come to you"
So you must see my hesitation when it comes to apologizing
Isn't out of ill intent.

The woman with the suitcase walks past bowlegged, She bounces as her violet scarf shuffles around the base of her neck
A mother, I know, Just by the way she holds her coffee with such elegance making sure not a single drop falls onto her non-manicured fingers worn from washing crayon off walls. She walks forward with no worries of whats behind her, a mask to the world but its all too real for her.
We call her Monday.

She let you in, and you sunk your teeth into her veins pulling out every secret and story she had hidden from the world.
She showed you her darkest place and you took her there again.
You held her hand and walked her up the stairs, she saw a future brightly shining just a few stairs higher.
And you tripped her.
You ******* tripped her.
You watched her fall into the place she swore she would never go again and you laughed in her face.
You stuck your greedy little fingers in her battle wounds and you laughed.
How do you live with yourself, how do you sleep at night knowing someone so fragile is debating ending her life over someone who never deserved her.

Where do I go?
What do I tell her?
When my body is physically wrapped in her arms though my mind is somewhere dark, drowning with my own thoughts
Slipping further and further from the surface of reality
Tonight
I put on a mask
tread the water of my thoughts.
And pretend like nothing is better.
Than drowning in substantial agony
With a smile.