I filled my bullet holes from the inside out
Concrete substitutions for flesh laid by a man of stone
So cold to the touch in the moonlight hours
I almost forget I was ever warm
Perforated to the core of my being
My initial rebuttal to the pain i felt was to harden myself
Teach myself to live with the cold
And look towards the solid shadows I then casted for inspiration to carry on
Fool myself into believing in the wholeness of a broken man
I lived as a creation of my own twisted and transformed imagination day in and day out
Dragging along the heavy weight a shield of hate brought with it
The problem being
Behind that shield I was protected fully from any outside source of grief
But I was trapped as well
A layer of thick rage and apathy deflecting any and all other emotion
A poison that constantly ate at what was left of me
Soon I became too weak to stand
The price you pay for being invincible against all other forces is that you can never stop yourself from dying on the inside
I had built a fortress to no avail
Because I had trapped the evil within myself
On my knees, my body rotting away
What was left of my flesh began to shrink back
The concrete was losing its grip the walls of skin that held them in retreating
The evil had won
Chunks of cement fell to the ground and crumbled
The agony indescribable
I was losing the last ounce of security I had left in this world
I was weak and the heaviness of the shield left when I could no longer hold it
I was defeated
I sat awaiting a death that in my mind was the only thing left assured to me
But it never came
Instead, I saw the sun rise over the horizon
I felt its warm rays on my disfigured flesh
And all around me was illuminated
In the light I saw how horrible what I had done to myself really was
At the price of living I had bought myself immortality
Nothing more than a cruel joke
Night never came again
And eventually I stood up
The light shone through my bullet holes as I did and the last of my disgust for the world was gone
I buried the shield and the crumbled stone deep in the darkness and never went back
Because no matter what may have been in my past, no matter how much blood I had shed, I knew that now I could live,

Truly