To open their eyes
It's not disguised

Facts not opinion
Never marked as a minion

Stories broad and deep
For all my readers to keep

Cities abroad to discover
No room for a lover

Satisfied to raise
Even a bit of malaise

Another feature completed
Silence defeated

Penned with delight
Now it lives in plain sight

She sleeps on a bed of roses and finds a new way to lie each day, forever changing poses.
The thorns may sting but if she continues to sing she would never feel a thing.
The world she knows only grows while she dwells in the shelves and the roses.
She sings to an empty audience and feels so very seen.
The battles fought are all for naught if she can’t be the queen.
The chips aren’t just for poker, and hair ties aren’t simple or plain.
She left it all to answer the call and run until she can feel sane.

Find me a frame
To capture the moments in my brain
Now I write you ballads and sing the refrains
The stories are all that remain

She sleeps on a bed above the abyss, thinking that you couldn’t possibly miss
The cries for a reprise and the screams for a different scene.
The moments when you saw it too.
She jokes and sings and always brings a new punchline at the end of the fight.
The masks she wears are how she bears the pain that’s already set in.
The light has left her long ago and she’s acting as if she can possibly win.
She took a chance to flee from romance and flirt with the dancers in her mind.

Find me a note
To summon from deep in my throat
Now I write you ballads and sing the refrains
The stories are all that remain

i think what i'm trying to say is that
i wanna know what hand you write with.
that's what i'm interested in,
right, left, maybe even ambidextrous—
show me your birthmarks, and the
little scar you got when you were a kid.
there's a story in your body, on your skin,
and i want to listen to you tell it,
running my fingertips across your freckles
as if i were blind.

An itchy spider lives in me,
right underneath my second skin.

She's waited, tense, expectantly for something dangerous
to finally draw towards her its claws and scratch straight down her spine.

Her fangs have naught to bite upon, so I must feed her well enough
on nerves, dry skin, and fingernails and songs about a violent sea.

If she dies, I might turn to stone;
an itchy spider lives in me.

Darling, do not tell me that you are more beautiful with those drawings on your skin.
You've convinced yourself that they mean so much to you, and no one can even begin to understand, but I want you to know that the real beauty of an individual is more than simply skin deep.
That is why the ink on your skin does not impress me.
Everyone has stories and scars —I just choose not to wear mine on the outside.

Photographs tell our story
About good times and days of glory
Of relationships that didn't last
They're like a time machine to our past

They're the memories of places we've been
And gives us a chance to visit them again
They'll show our kids who haven't a clue
That we were young once too