How can I save everybody else,
when I'm drowning myself?

How many times can one hope to be saved,
After all the descents to the depraved?
How many times succumbed to sinful thought?
How often losing the battles he fought?

How often can he expect salvation,
When choice after choice is to damnation?
How many times can he ignore his guilt,
Atop the foundation of lies he built?

How many chances to apologize?
How much wrong can one man trivialize?
How many times can he find excuses,
For turning others to his own uses?

If he ignores needing introspection,
How can this man still expect redemption?
If one just loved him he knows that he would—
Being loved is all he needs to be good.

I shared myself with you.
Whether you could hear it or not, through every chord I played I screamed and bellowed and sobbed out the story that created the mess I’ve become.
But we created something magnificent together.
My pain was the consistent and simple base.
Your intricate  melody understood and validated every drop of sorrow that hit the keys.
The last 10 years I've been a product of my symptoms.
My instrument rusted scrap metal from the unshed tears of a 5 year old child that never got to grow up.
I wasn’t her today.
In that chapel, improvising and forging music from thin air, I was radiant shining through the trauma of a girl who was too young to know her body wasn’t something to be abused.
You helped me do that.
You knew what I needed without having to communicate.
For those few minutes you knew me like no one else ever could.
Your crescendo set my life into motion, and in a major key.
No one else will ever join me for measure one of this symphony.
We started this piece with a love of music and the lord, and I couldn’t have requested anything better.

You say she needs help
but can't you see that i need to be saved too?

INTERLUDE

“Don’t you ever get tired of being the savior?”
“Because I don’t think anyone will ever love you properly anymore”

PRELUDE

All you ever needed was someone to stop you from being hero.
Someone to tell you to break down and help you not feel hallow.
Who’s here to watch you?
To tell you that “I’m your shoulder to cry on”

Who’s there to protect you.
Guide and wrap you tight in the softest hugs?
To embrace your broken battered soul and help you feel less empty?
Why must your strength force you to pay the price so hefty?

DREAMS

“Give me the chance to not only be your protector but your lover. Let me Take care of you, let me be the one to do all that you have done, I know your soul is broken, that your mindset is shattered. So give yourself to me and gladly allow for my catering”

REALITY

All that should be
Yet here lies my ego. Standing tall, representing pride.
While my soul wilts and my heart darkens to my reality.

“I’m not worth saving”

Poems are like a safety relief valve.

In them we can say
what we would never say aloud.

In them we can
  curse,
    cry,
      love,
        hate,
          destroy,
            and create.

All those feelings and actions
we never show in real.

Poems are like a safety relief valve
and they are saving lives.

The future won't find my love letters
Just texts trapped in old phones
Emails stuck on old hard drives
Maybe a password protected server

My grandchildren won't find our video chats
Even if they were recorded
All I have for them is passwords
Saving my love in clouds

The future won't know the details of how much I loved you

I had to find my healing
So I went back and found you.
Waited for you to call my name
and I'd as If my demons could come too.
Cause they were always the third party
The uninvited crew.
You'd undress me with your smile
and I figured I could stay a while.
In this mess called loving.
Cause it hurt to be out there on my own.
I didn't have a place to call home.
More like the home I had couldn't make room for my demons and me too.
So I found myself coming to you.
Broken and bleeding.
Cut tongue but still pleading.
That maybe you could be my healing.
- K.B.

Both feet on the ledge.
Looking down onto the ground below,
Knowing that one more step could end a life.

I know I will be free from danger,
You will catch me.
I will be saved.

But I took that step and I fell.
I fell, knowing you would be there,  
Knowing I would be unscathed.

I thought I would be free from danger,
You would be there to catch me.
But I wasn’t saved.