let me guess we weren't the first
to sneak out here on our own
to "break the ice"
by raising skin to skin
and bone to bone

to tell all your good friends to leave us alone
when you know i'll tell you to leave me alone

god i always liked the flow that went
getting another life to swallow
without needing to pay rent

just another person to know we were just
other people to know

before figuring whether you were
the person to tell me when to come
or the one to tell me when to go

how do we know we know?
when i only try by saying
i'll try to know

but we look towards each other and
invite the other
to come and be the latest reach
for me to refer in relativity
all true all emotion
leech

and if we could just choose the things that run forever
then let it be the golden feeling i found
in the absence of sound

in the absence of speech

if skin was touch and touch was reach
and reach was sin and sin was breach

and if we pretend preach
could and would make it all better

then were you back here
when you finally got it together
put it all together

and when she tried to ask you to come back
why did you go ahead and get her

i can no longer distinguish pain from pleasure;
abuse from affection; contusions from caresses.
embraces could be delivered in tightly-clenched fists;
words of affirmation in abasement; trust in forced hands.
i can't tell the difference between love and hurt;
dark bruises and soft kisses; belittlement and support.

all i am familiar with now is the aftermath -
the tears, the marks, the aches;
hot showers soothing stinging skin, shaky knees and trembling hands;
the nauseating guilt; encapsulating, overwhelming fear

and the sickening inability to just walk away.

When I was ten,
It didn't matter that my legs weren't hairless;
I was just a girl -
It was shameless.

That was the year it all ended,
And suddenly,
I was supposed to be a woman.
Suddenly my legs
And all the spaces in between
Weren't mine, but his.

When I turned fifteen,
I thought he wanted my new hairless legs;
I thought being a woman
Would make him love me
And the woman I was going to be.
But I was a girl.
I was shameless.

And it was easy to pretend I wanted it,
Easy to pretend that I wanted what hurt.
It was easy,
It was shameless,
Until I was crying on the bathroom floor,
Missing a period.

And that was just the thing -
That my own blood was a sin.
I couldn't bleed,
Because being a woman was wrong.
And I thought that's what he wanted,
I thought that's what he wanted all along.

He wanted me to be a woman
When it was his hands on my thighs,
His hands on my waist,
His hands covering my eyes.

He wanted me to be a woman until I was:
Until I had hair on my legs
And all the spaces in between.
And suddenly I was supposed to be ten,
I was supposed to be a girl,
I was supposed to be shameless.

I wasn't a woman;
I was small.
I was young.
And it hurt.

As I near twenty years,
I think of being ten,
I think of being fifteen,
And I feel no different.
I'm still small,
I still curl up on my bedroom floor.
I still have pink walls
And red painted toes
Because I'm a girl,
And that's the worst of it all.

My life was a blur, all the days have gone past,
and I lived with the thought that nothing would last.
I was lost in the dark, finding my way through,
until the day that I met you.

You set my soul on fire, with crimson glow,
and all the light in me continued to flow.
We were a perfect match, and so they would say,
but maybe that's why we burned out, one day.

You planted wings on my heart, and as it set out to fly,
that's when I found out it's all just a lie.
Your lies were bullets, and your mouth was a gun,
and all of it felt like I was too close to the sun.

We were just two different people, nothing more, nothing less,
and maybe you leaving me, is for the best.
You had my heart in your hands, yet you dropped it to the floor,
then you acted like nothing happened, and just closed the door.

At night the bird flew,
Over oceans of trees
Past hills and mountains
Swept by the breeze

He sang an odd song
As he soared through the sky
He woke up the moon
As he passed it by

To where he was headed
The bird did not know
He just knew to sing
When the stars hung low

But the moon knew well
That old avian's course
To sow strange dreams
Without time or source

The moon recalled
When the bird once knew
Of his place in the heavens
Where light once grew

But now the bird simply flies
And sings its strange tune
Through oceans of night
Under the sleeping moon