I fought for the confidence
To say I like who I am

To believe that I am worth the war
And I am proud of this victory
Above any other

Nobody want their life to fall to pieces
But if the space wasn't cleared
Where would you build
The person you want to become?

I love the flaws on my body
Freckles, scars, and stretch marks
And wrinkles are my favorite
Some are from frowns
And many more from grins
I love them all because
I never thought I'd have any of them

I never thought
I'd make it this far

But I did
So I'll add
And add

Until my collection of stories
Marks me
From head to foot

And then I think
I'll tell all my children
How wonderful wrinkles are

Be careful where you choose
To spend your effort

Because the efforts of
A billion celestial beings
Still burn in our skies
Centuries after they have gone silent

And you, you are no less
Incredible to behold

I'm so glad God
Didn't give me what I wanted

Because what I wanted
Was so much less than He gave me

Because I never could have imagined
Someone as wonderful as you

So I thank God that you
Were the miracle that I needed

In all that is worth seeking
I've never sought for greek love
For they warn of the heart as
They warn of Tartarus

The price of you grew
But at first it was only a little drama
I can still hear the Fates' laugh
As I pulled out my drachmas

But I didn't mind
Because we were an epic
Of laughter and adventure
Of struggles and magic

Oh but this is Greek love
And I didn't know it
But you were Pandora and her box
You opened it and wreaked havoc

Suddenly I was Atlas
Holding up my world and yours
In endless pain
I was Prometheus, empty at the core

You flew for the sun
Believing yourself Pegasus, not Icarus
When you began to plummet
I dove after you fearless

You fell far under the world
Surrounded by mistakes egregious
I chased you to Hades but tell me
Am I Hercules or Theseus?

Once I wondered if I show give my poems to those whom they are about

To show them the pain that leak out of my pen in between the anger and regret

I wondered if giving them my anguish cloaked in paper would free me

Would the ink from the page seep into their fingers and stain them, like they did me

And I want it; I want it like broken glass shards want to cut, to give the pain away

As if additional pain ever made a glass cup whole again, able to be filled again

But then I remembered that I was the victim not perpetrator and I never will be like them

So I will show my pain to the world not in vengeance but anonymity

Your mind is an artisan of words,

Infusing the mundane with fantasy

Crafting dreams to reality



So pick it up like a pen

And write yourself a better story

What is a perfect storm?
Something beautiful? Something wonderful?
Something tragic? Something terrible?

Do you wish it had never wreaked havoc?
Do you wish sometimes it would come back?
Was the magic worth the madness?

I wonder and wonder and wonder
When you left, If you were worth
The world you tore asunder.

Have you ever fit a *****
Only to find it tweaked?
Have you ever replaced a door hinge
Only to find the new one squeaked?
Or fixed a concern with another?
Because I'm afraid, right now, that's me.

I filled my head with helium
And it keeps trying to float away.
My hands shiver as if cold
On this warm and sunny day.
My heart kicked up its tempo
Though my body only sways.

I think might be dying,
At the very least I'm green.
How long can it freeze my brain,
Clogging up my blood stream?
Until finally I wonder how much
Is too much when taking in caffeine?

Tell me again
Where I am safe again
The house I'm within?
In the crowd of a million?
Anywhere the sun is shinin'?

Do you really believe this?
Because I really believed this
'Til I met those who readily dismiss
The rules on which we subsist
Who turn safety into an abyss

Because that's the thing about being safe,
We aren't the only ones who get a say
And it's not hard for another to take it away

I blend in
I bloom by the wall
I fade into the background
At the edge of where the spotlight falls

Enough light to survive
To be seen by some eyes
Who stop and care for a moment
But only give out goodbyes

I'm not flashy
Not fabulous
But still worth seeing
And knowing I promise

I have good to give
Maybe unconventionally strong
I'm just afraid that to be known
Means also to be stepped on

I wish I were an evergreen
My faith never withering
My hope bright and alive
With needles stretching heaven ward

Instead I am deciduous
Fleeting, changing, temperamental
So affected by the world
So changed by my environment

Bursting forth in green and flower
In beautiful spiritual moments
Shriveling in the cold bitterness
Of sin's frigid wind

If I am trapped in my nature
Bound by my genetics
Then let me at least fulfill
The measure of my creation

Let my springs be eye-catching
So others can see Thee in me
Let my summers be long
Leaves wide as I soak in the Son

Let my autumns be short
And let my sins fall fast
Let my winters be teachers
Help me to prepare and endure them well

Until I stand before thee
Full of good fruit
Until I can spring up into everlasting life
Purified and made perfect by You

He takes my hand,
I feel and I don't
I feel pressure and warmth
Not the butterflies or glow

He is trustworthy
I let him in and I don't
I open my soul because he'll respect it
But I'm on edge in case he won't

We talk like time is expendable
I get lost in him and I don't
Because it's so easy to let go
But I've lived all this before

And I know that something is wrong
But don't know what it is because

My heart feels numb
My head feels hollow
I hold back like everything depends on it
I lead, too afraid to follow

Because my last flame was so bright
That it ended with me burned
I hope I'm still just healing
Scars fading into lessons learned

And if that is not the case
Then the damage is deeper
Than skin, tissue, or bone
Making every sensation cheaper

That means it's down to the nerve
And my heart will never quite feel
That I'll never be the same
Because nerve damage doesn't heal

"Home again home again
My my it's been a while"
My old demon sneers
With his sickening smile

"Hope you didn't dream
I'd never come back"
He scowls and snarls
"You're not lucky 'nough for that"

I shiver in shock
Then shatter and shrink
I thought I was free
The only thing I can think

"You aren't free at all
Never were, never will be"
He says, his shadow surrounding
"Never enough to beat me"

Deep in my darkening mind
A little light doesn't give in
Stalwart and small, it says
Not by much but we're stronger than then

The little candle isn't enough
To dispel my old demon
But enough to build myself on
A hope to believe in

You'll never see tomorrow's sunrise.
Were you afraid it wouldn't come?

Was the darkness too empty?  
Or the night too long?
Was last night for you this lonely?

Would this horizon have made you smile?
Or one more worry for the list?

Were the demands on you too great?
Was there a tipping point I missed?
Or something that could've made you stay?

You changed the climate

With just a passing compliment,

You were the rain,

That fell on an arid desert plain

Your kindness fell on me

And it no longer hurt to breathe

I want you to be my forever
But I don't need you to be

And of course it will break my heart
If you decide to leave

But it will not break my soul
This will not be the end of my story

And with all that said and true
I can feel the dread fill my body

That something I can't change
Will make you unable to love me

That I'll lose out on a future with you
Because I am sick and there is no remedy

God said, I need your hope to be stronger

I thought, He wants me to believe in this relationship harder and longer.

I knew I was wrong when He said walk away.
Now I know, he meant believe you can get through the grey.

He meant, believe you can love again and that I have a better match

But I don't think I'll succeed,
I think I'm burned out at last.

Warning:

Crossing a writer's path
Means becoming part of their world
It means being apart of their words

Maybe as a muse
Maybe as a shade
Maybe as the home
We return to everyday

We do not forget
So rest assured sure, for better or worse
You are somewhere
In all the words we've written

You watch for shooting stars
You look so hard
That the stars seem to shift

Once, twice, thrice,
You see their tails from the periphery
Till you turn and nothing's there

Maybe you imagined them
Per chance they were never even there
Probably just a trick of the light

Then a bright one streaks across the sky
And you know the others with fiction
Now that you've seen the real thing

This is how shooting stars
Are like true love.

Here I am again
Hiding from the world again
Watching Joy smile in the distance
While Empty keeps me company

Far away Life laughs on
Would I be safe with her?
From Pain who follows me
Where Anger is a stranger

I've seen people abandon Sadness
And cross to the other side
Where Greener tends his grass
I watch start to end and still can't comprehend

Did Chance teach them how?
Was it Faith who boosted them over?
I'll bet it was Love who held off Fear
If I listen close, maybe one day, I'll hear Hope

You look great!
You lost a little weight
Even prettier than before
Don't hold out on us anymore

What is your secret?

What do I say now?
Diet? Kale instead of cow
Exercise? A little sweat on the brow
Should I share a hard truth or easy lies?

What if I said

Anxiety actually
Destroys my skin, my sleep
The last sheds of my sanity
But hey, at least I'm skinny

I know you had to leave
So thank you for leaving
Pieces of you behind
In everything you loved

I'll seek them like a treasure hunt
And they'll find me when I fall
And they'll make smile with my heart
Until we meet again

Would that I could see the world
Where the wind wields its power

I'd spin with the sprites in the leaves
And sway with the tricksters in the trees

Find friends in the fairies wrecking fences
And follow wisps that whistle from windows

Hitch a ride on a hippogriff in a hurricane
And be blown back home with a history nobody will believe

I love you enough to be honest
Even when it's hardest
And to let you close when I'm weakest
Though I'd rather you not see this
Because you've come and you've stayed
Through the blackest nights
And the longest days

I love you enough to have listened
With judgement suspended
And to push you to grow
And hold you when you're low
I love you enough to see your demons
And not see you differently
Because you really aren't them

I'll love you with my words
Until you believe what you've heard
And when my words aren't up to *****
When they don't say enough
I'll have my actions speak
And pick up the trail
Where my words ceased

I wonder,

For those so talented and so seen

That they seem to stand above and apart

Do you wish the distance between

The world and stars, wasn't quite so far?

You never said I was too much
But you acted like I was

So I curled up to make myself smaller
I pretended I didn't know so I was dumber
I put a break between every action
And my reaction so I could protect myself
And suddenly I was a problem
And the solution was to break me
And really it's not that hard
To destroy something

But no one tells you that breaks make micro fractures
And life's regular wear makes you break even faster

That shrinking meant letting part of you die
So it's slower, it takes longer to again be that high

And by the time you learn that people loved you as you were
You're so far away from the past, you can no longer see her

But if you can get back to the beginning
Where you were incredible
Simply because you were living

All the growth and intelligence
Back to a personality effervescent
You'll be rooted all the more firmly in your present

Because now you'll know that ground lost
Is not progress irredeemable
But a fight that can be won again
And royalty is more that an environment regal

I don't how you traveled the space
That exists between us now
You left no footsteps in your wake
Or maybe your stride was far too great

But we still talk you and I
At a time that others trade for dreams
I tell you of how my days go by
And you show me the stars in your sky

We find ways our nights to fill
You working and listening
While I sit and talk on my window sill
Fighting the exhaustion eating at my will

Because dawn breaks soon
And the day's needs are close
Goodbye until the sky's maroon
I'll miss you today my man in the moon

I used to think the worse thing
Was feeling my mind dying
In the blackness, in the pain
But there's something worse than that bane

It's the shifting gravel below me that begins
   To trickle off the cliff, into the wind
       Knowing that I will follow in stride
         And nothing I can do will turn the tide

I loved you but not like you deserved
So I left, hoping you'd find a girl
who could love you without reserve

Today I met her,

And left happy, confused, and speechless
Because my face broke into a smile
But my heart broke into pieces

I think I would have fallen for you
Even if I were blind

Because your laugh
Makes me grin like a fool

Because even in blackness
Your character would still be visible

I think I would have fallen for you
Even if I were deaf

Because nothing quite steals my breath
Like the way you smile

And nothing quite melts my heart like
Watching you care without a speck of guile

I think I would have fallen for you
Even if you were mute

Because we still would have talked the night away without a single phrase

And been bound together by the adventures
That came along the way

So I don't think there was a way that I wouldn't have ended up right here

Watching you tell me another story
And falling without a moment of fear

You may think what you'd like to think
Choose whatever lens you'd like to view me
Happy, healthy, put-together, carefree
There are only two things that really means
Either you look and don't know how to see
The marks my mind left on my body
Or you are the audience of my scene
You see a dazzling smile, a gleaming sheen
All the pretty lights made for distracting
You view reality in this my crafted dream
So pick the poison that tickles your fancy
My deceit wasn't meant maliciously
Only meant to hide where I'm weak
and I guess it's working
They see only someone succeeding
Not the girl who is sinking