The oxygen tastes so familiar
I’m sure that I've breathed this before
The day trickles in through the curtains
The draft shuffles under the door
The sunlight ambushes my pillow
And forces me further a field
The cat at the door wants his breakfast
The bells of the church are all peeled
But there's little to gain by awakening
To remind me of all that I miss
When I hold you its like you're a statue
And you push me away with a kiss

The cars rattle by on their business
And the postman enrages the dog
The wind asks around for directions
And leaves all the shutters agog
My quilt is beginning to stifle
And my neck, with a threatening creak
Gives a preview of oncoming headaches
In a language too easy to speak
But uncomfortable I persevere
With a risible snore and a hiss
Because soon I'll turn over to face you
And you'll push me away with a kiss

As the sun reaches it zenith & the moon becomes full,
Soldiers are deployed at various point,
Allowing their thought to wander away into ephemeral violence,
Well armed,
Red pointers at human sight,
killing in the pretence of liberation,
Defenceless civilians murdered in sight,

I don't have the adequate vocabulary to constructively & emotionally create that atmosphere,

As a poet they don't mind if I make a sound
But it's a real problem
if I ever get too loud,

It enrages me,
I'm bitterly miffed,
Imagine the agony, stress, depression & tension they are
going through,
Let's be factual,

Their based desire & legitimate purpose is to associate ,affiliate & standardize us as terrorist,

They come in front of our tv & give us speech our forefathers have never heard of,
Humanity in it eternity have been blindfolded & deviated from the truth,

They have  become the fixed &  Luminous center around which innumerable lifestyle revolves,
Civilization will not lead mankind to insanity,

It feels good to be in power ,
But a day will come when they will ponder, reflect & introspect,
but their reflection will be to no avail,

Reflect over what I say,
In silence & tranquillity,

We may be on a Long arduous journey,
But victory is to the oppressed,
Categorically & selectively speaking ,
It will become a practical reality,

Innocent souls are been lost everyday,
In pakistan,Syria,Iraq,Iran
Yet the conference continues,
Killings intensifies,
Women are murdered,
Fathers are slaughtered,
Kids are held captive some rigorously excluded,
Without them labouring humanity searching for peace will perish,


It's a sad time we live in,
Educated leaders with no heart of  human sympathy,
Acting upon their based desires & ego,

You may call this character assassination,
I call it supreme words of justice
Only time will tell who is the true terrorist

there’s this thirst inside of me,

a monster who enrages my insides and tears me apart
once you feed the monster, there’s no stopping me.

I binge.

And after comes the guilt and the shame and there’s no self-control.

the monster inside me was right, so I got up, and flushed almost everything inside me down the rabbit hole.

I knew I shouldn't have done that, but it was better to get rid of the guilt physically than let it rot inside my body more than it already was.

No spring nor summer Beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnall face.
Young beauties force our love, and that’s a ****,
This doth but counsel, yet you cannot ’scape.
If ’twere a shame to love, here ’twere no shame,
Affection here takes Reverence’s name.
Were her first years the Golden Age; that’s true,
But now she’s gold oft tried, and ever new.
That was her torrid and inflaming time,
This is her tolerable Tropique clime.
Fair eyes, who asks more heat than comes from hence,
He in a fever wishes pestilence.
Call not these wrinkles, graves; if graves they were,
They were Love’s graves; for else he is no where.
Yet lies not Love dead here, but here doth sit
Vowed to this trench, like an Anachorit.

And here, till hers, which must be his death, come,
He doth not dig a grave, but build a tomb.
Here dwells he, though he sojourn ev’ry where,
In progress, yet his standing house is here.
Here, where still evening is; not noon, nor night;
Where no voluptuousness, yet all delight
In all her words, unto all hearers fit,
You may at revels, you at counsel, sit.
This is Love’s timber, youth his under-wood;
There he, as wine in June enrages blood,
Which then comes seasonabliest, when our taste
And appetite to other things is past.
Xerxes’ strange Lydian love, the Platane tree,
Was loved for age, none being so large as she,
Or else because, being young, nature did bless
Her youth with age’s glory, Barrenness.
If we love things long sought, Age is a thing
Which we are fifty years in compassing;
If transitory things, which soon decay,
Age must be loveliest at the latest day.
But name not winter-faces, whose skin’s slack;
Lank, as an unthrift’s purse; but a soul’s sack;
Whose eyes seek light within, for all here’s shade;
Whose mouths are holes, rather worn out than made;
Whose every tooth to a several place is gone,
To vex their souls at Resurrection;
Name not these living deaths-heads unto me,
For these, not ancient, but antique be.
I hate extremes; yet I had rather stay
With tombs than cradles, to wear out a day.
Since such love’s natural lation is, may still
My love descend, and journey down the hill,
Not panting after growing beauties so,
I shall ebb out with them, who homeward go.

By: Cedric McClester

Of course, it enrages
To see children in cages
At impressionable ages
In various stages
Whose parents seek asylum
In the land of the free
But wind up separated
Due to his policy

Zero tolerance
Is what it’s been named
But it’s his cruelty
That must be blamed
How many immigrants
Does he have to defamed
Before we start to hate
The ones that he has shamed

He’s a demigod
Make no mistake about it
And so, it’s very hard
For me to ever doubt it
He lacks empathy
For other people who
Come from other countries
And have a different hue

Some call him a racist
Though, I don’t make that claim
However, the true case is
He has earned that name
I judge him by his actions
Which are there to see
Whether  or not he’s a racist
Is a matter of degree








Cedric McClester, Copyrighr © 2018,  All rights reserved.

I see you, I feel you and I hear you
I know the travails you’ve been through
Always there, never looked at
Rarely at peace,  mostly in combat
You fight to hold on and fight to let go
The person you love most may become a foe
Once you’re wounded it lasts a lifetime
Yet the executors never deem it a crime
Its the heart that has to go through it all
And at the end of the day, has to stand tall
I say the heart is a wild creature
It is its own master and its own teacher
And our ribs are its disdainful cage
One that in no way soothes, only enrages
The heart would consider beating the cage down
But it knows if it escapes in blood you would drown

To Whom It May Concern,

Silently I cry while she slaps and slurs her words.
You foolish child, you're no woman at all.
You're nothing but absurd.
You've called me names, you've bruised my entire being.
I was waiting for something to show me what you're meaning.
Why do you hate me? All I ever did was try! I try to take care of whom we love but still you're not there!
I'm fed up, I've had enough. You push me once more again.
I look your way and firmly say, if you hit, I will defend.
The power in your eyes enrages, the lioness has left her cage.
Your tearing and you're striving to tear this look right off my face.
It says " I will not lose, I will not give in."
And battles your folly pride.
I'll keep my face steady, even when the tears start to stream.
And even when you're sober, this look will remain.

It is the look of broken souls, crushed by lies & deceit.
Never have I turned away before, but today I am not the same.

Sincerely,
I've run out of cheeks.

Enrages silence combs through bleak feeble hair strands.
Frore weather fidgets through thick coat threads,
Licking flesh;
Penetrating bones with piercing, ridged fangs.

Mere rustles scream.

Breath escaping from lips so close
In rhythm and tone, they seem to be harmonic.
Limbs erode from manipulative
Promises of divinity.

Forceful whirlwinds of mania
Sweeps across raw, exposed fervor.
Eternally caught in tremors of avidity.

We lavish in our intertwined fantasia.

To write from the heart is difficult
Expressing the emotions you feel
Telling of the love that blesses
And keeps you going strong

Of the love that tore you apart
And ripped out your very soul
Leaving you on the ground, bleeding
That is another kind of love, it hurts

Of the happiness that you feel
For the friends, you love to make smile
Making them laugh with a word or two
Sharing the merriment deep inside

Of the anger that grips, that enrages you
Sharing the fury that blows like the wind
Building up, roaring like a hurricane
Because this rage, in words, is released

That is the heart talking, in so many ways
So much to share, to express to the world
Some may hide from the reflection of your words
But you need to speak, to let that heart beat free

Now the head, it takes over, giving out reason
Sometimes it shows logic in so many ways
Afraid to see beyond those emotions shared
When imagination is shown in so many ways

The head and the heart fight with confliction
Never agreeing on what the other thinks
Yes, we are all guilty of going with the head
When we should feel what is in our heart

An exit is sought, yet not to be found.

Defeat overwhelms me,
my mind  I cannot escape,
my anger spoken through actions,
my nerves are restless with adrenaline.

Jealousy uncleanly tears apart my soul.

I pray that I am deceived by these images,
for my sanity cannot afford this breakdown,
Have I not suffered enough already?

One simple glance at your smile,
enrages my soul with heat waves of anger,
This fusion inside of me is burning-
hotter than the depths of hell.

My urges become more tempting and irresistible.

What you value the most, would give me great pleasures to rip away,
for the passion of anger I hold, is beyond itself.

What appears through my words; is happiness,
but I've merely fooled you, as I am a master of deception-
my heart cries in pain.

*I am consumed by anger

For what reason should I give a ****
Should I tell you what has been on my mind
For what reason should I listen to you
When you ignore everything I say

You play this game that manipulates my life
Then want to get mad at me when my life finally crumbles
When I finally become depressed because my mind can't handle the torture
For what reason do you pretend to give two ***** about me

You make me sick and tired of being alive
Because every thought in my head is that of you telling me I can't
And I know can't but I still try to thrive
Only to dive six feet deeper into the solid ground

I've gone so far down now that I can feel the firey pitts of hell burn my *** to ashes
And it hurts but I cannot cry because I still fear what you think of me
So I pretend not to give a **** when a **** is all I have to give
Because the ***** been burned long before I got to this point

So I laugh knowing that the blood of ******* would spued out my mouth
But just like everything else you ignore that as well
And it enrages me until the point the light in my life ceased to exist
So I end up sitting alone in another lonely night

Can't you open your eyes for not five second
Just see my true sorrow that I don't even hide
Hear my cries of me begging please notice please notice
Please notice me I beg thee

I've become so weak I crawl instead of walking
I'm too tired to eat,Too hungry to sleep
I just don't know what to do anymore
Yet there you are turning your back to as you always have

So why should I give a **** anymore
Though everything is on my mind
Why should I listen these days
When these days are the ones that have finally broken me

I don't care anymore
I can't care anymore
I'm done for
Goodbye world

The News is basically that overplayed radio single you hate hearing.
Most of the time, it just annoys.
Most of the time, it just enrages.

I wish that i could stop dreaming because in the end my friend i wake up screaming. Blind and unseeing i arise, wide eyed with my voice flying from my throat. you all know that i have nightmares, or if u dont you dont care. Scribbles from my pen reveal that to feel one must live and to live one must lie awake at night, free to think with insanity flowing through his veins. Attacking sanity because sanity is a cage that enrages me.  The thinker , the feeler, the hoper, the dreamer. In all sanity one is far from reality. A wise man once said to me "things are not what they seem". The silent are screaming the dreaming are waking, the  fallen are flying, the living are dying, and still we cant see that we are blind to the truth. I was blind to the truth but now death is dead to me.

I'm too nice. It makes you feel bad. It makes you feel mean. It makes you uncomfortable, being silent when I reach out.
Reasons to leave.
I'm too attentive. You can always be sure I'll try my hardest for you. Buy you little things. Bring flowers. It's boring. You know it shouldn't be but somehow it's just too predictable. Somehow you wish you wondered if I'd stay, and every day I reassure you that I will.
Reasons to leave.
I'm too in love. My love for you makes you feel guilty, as if you can never match it. My sensitivity to your desires makes me sensitive to your dissatisfactions, and although you know it shouldn't, it irritates you that you can hurt me. It makes you feel uncomfortably inadequate again. You remind yourself that love is not a contest between lovers to be the most devoted, nor to be the least injured, and so you've neither lost nor won, but still you have a sense of both, an unsettling sense of both.
Reasons to leave.
Your discomfort leads you to anger. You lash out, ashamed even as you do, and my forgiveness enrages you. You want me to hate you. Want me to react as you would if you were abused. Wish you weren't the abuser. Wonder how you became so. Hate me for bringing it out in you, for before you met my soft, pliant love, my understanding heart, my forgiving mind, you never wanted to strike anything lovely with the flat of your hand to watch the welt rise, a satisfying flaw.
Reasons to leave.
Who are you becoming? Who have you become? It can't be you who is wrong, not when you've only been reacting. I've laid myself down. That must be it. I have goaded and invited you. I've tricked you into hurting me and then shed tears as if I didn't know it'd sting, and yet I refuse to fight you. It must be because I can't. If I could, it would mean that you were attacking someone who meant you no harm, only love, only LOVE! No, no it must be that I have no fangs of my own, only guises. It must be that the only way I can hurt you is to lower you, to make you hurt me and then feel the guilt of it, to turn you against yourself. I have engineered this. You won't be tricked by me! You will keep on until I admit I planned to control you.
Reasons to leave.
It has been too long. Something is amiss. By your estimations, I should have folded by now- confessed that I was never nice, only weak. Repented. Explained that I tempted your cruelty in order to make you loathe yourself. Apologized. Begged. But it has been too long, and I am still forgiving, I am still hurt but not vicious. You decide I need to understand I've done wrong. Apologize, you say.
Reasons to leave.
I do. I am sorry. And you find that the sorrier I am, the angrier you are. The more I tell you you are right, the more you want me to tell you you're wrong. To fight. To be cruel. Untoward. Wrong. You want me to fight so that I will prove I am like you, show my colors. After all, I made you this way. I must be as you are to have brought such venom out in you with such skill. I apologize again. I beg. And you find that the begging makes you want to hurt me, sink a knife between my ribs to watch me squirm the way you're squirming, spitted on the notion that perhaps, just maybe, I was never cunning or sneaky, never manipulative, never trying to take you down... The growing, sickening feeling that maybe I was telling the truth, maybe I loved you, love you. Maybe I really just wanted to bring you flowers.
Reasons to leave.
And now you can't look at me. You wish beyond anything you have ever wished before that you still believed me underhanded. But the part of you that respects me is growing, that understands me, and with it grows a horror that you have acted on a false certainty. And now even as you realize that, you realize that if you apologize, I will forgive you. And if I forgive you, you will hate me for it. And if you hate me for it, you will no longer have any excuse outside the boundaries of yourself. If you hate me for it this time, it will be from a dark, ugly thing inside you. Something you will have to be responsible for.
Reasons to leave.
Because if you never acknowledge it, never apologize, I can never forgive you truly, right? And if I can't, then you can't hate me, and you can't have been so wrong. And so you don't. And for a while it seems to work. But then you realize that somehow, I am not holding you responsible for your cruelties. Nobody is. You've not acknowledged them, and I've found some infuriating way to ignore them and love you past them. And you realize it's not fair. You need it to be fair. It's maddening. It makes no sense.
Reasons to leave.
And now you understand that there is only one way to escape the torture of being forgiven for something awful that you never even apologized for, having sidestepped so many imaginary snares that you've tangled yourself up in your own assumptions and insecurities.
And so
You leave.

My soul lies parched from the sun
My tears are carried by the rain
My angers enrages the rivers
Which flow to the oceans again.

The despair of life lies before me
And dances beyond my eyes.
“Is there no end to sorrow?”
As I cry out to my God.

The Almighty sends forth an Angel
To this unlikely place
He takes me from the ocean
And spares me from my fate.

The enemy fights long and hard
To defeat this Angel of mine
But through love, hope and grace
This war is won in time.

In the House of David,
The banquet table’s set
Waiting for the Bridegroom
To come and celebrate.

He’s perfect in all His Glory
And takes His rightful place
And grants peace and harmony
To all who bow in grace.

my dad, his rage terrifies me,
the way he treats my mom aggravates me,
his constant neglect enrages me,
he is a workaholic,
sexist,
racist,
homophobic,
narcissistic,
trump supporting,
white man.
with a feminist,
bisexual,
free thinking,
Liberal
Daughter.
who never apologizes for things he does wrong,
never makes time to chat with his daughter,
who never cares,
about anything,
other than,
Himself.

I trip into your path, machinations
of bright smiles and a kindness drawn
only with pleasing you.

The first time we met I dreamt myself
into your bed, sly moves of a body
you did not want to resist.

Eagerly I hover on the edge of your
life, content to steal company whenever
it is permitted.

He is rapture defined, solid substance
with self-abrasive smiles; a keenness
that cuts when I stand too near.

I wonder if he has other girls to
whom he also extends invites,
to accompany him but for awhile.

I wonder if he likes it. And I wonder
of the dwindling kindled hope that
enrages my skin - and his?

Morally dissected,
emotionally conflicted,
courting one dilemma after another,
the writer in me is struggling today

In the anxiety of words failing him,
and in the fear of him failing the words,
a battle wages, enrages,
and as silently as it arrives, it withdraws

And then when one page crumbles after another,
when the mind stutters more,
the ground I had held firm all this while,
resigns, all at once

Maybe this is the best time to write,
to bare the emotions that are grey
and while a part of me longs for you to identify,
a little something, in the vulnerability of an expose,
hopes you never do.

This is the hour meanness bears
Girls marble eyes fatigued by sun-filled play on Summer sunny days.

Black angel of mine, meander near my truth; corral words interchanged between the mortal whims we buried near the sand and stone murals the coastline and ravines overthrew.

Many orchids, chocolate brushing a with death'careless needles- adapted since.
Now I follow you, the boldness of your emerald crown, and the swueakiness amidst your new Keens and their patter on the crackly ground.

A cute exists to cease your pain
It takes the somber in your ails
Then slivers off pieces of your bones.

The downside is you **** all day
Your fury enrages you more.
The three-step antibiotic treatment
Made the sick in you sicker-

Treats meant to wander freely Now we've been in this trapped plainness in trapped family nowhere-land; until so miserable, melancholy, and disappointed

Anger turns to shouting.

when he tells me to stop
i suppose i have to
but he does not control me!
not in any way does that boy control
a **** thing about me

only my heart, as if i would listen to it anyway

when he yells
he does so in whispers, murmurs
when he's ecstatic
his world explodes with sound
so i know when he's quiet
that's when i've ****** up

and oh, i consistently **** up

i hate him
i love him
i detest him
i adore him
then the day ends by the moonlight
and begins anew with the rising sun

i always love him by the time my head crashes against the pillow

his music
my words
his portraits
my photographs
his father
my sister

his heart, my heart, our hearts are basically the same *****

his words
my songs
his photographs
my art
his history
my father

his world, my world, our world is all our own, all alone

his laugh is magic
his logic is constantly flawed
his voice throws me off balance
and his attitude enrages me
god, do i love him
*******, do i hate him

adore, detest, treasure, loathe, who cares? it's all ours

dear, *******, love, *******, sweetheart, idiot

who cares?
it's all ours

Sandbox constructs, talk to me.
Play to me.
Dancing straw, pull on the wind,
give color and shape, give name.
I will be straw too one time, then many times,
and will dance with the straw in the wind.
These are joyful times, all alone, no interference. No you.

Mouse you sneaks in the sandbox,
chews on my straw and nests in my sand.
In possession of some key.

(I want to ask about the key, but I can’t.
I am supposed to be made of straw.)

Perturbed, I chase you out.
My world of sand and straw is too fragile for your beating heart.
It will fall apart, will be rubbed raw and threadbare.
But you sneak in again,
and look at me as if I am not straw,
and the ground as if it is not sand
but solid earth, rich and full.

Clearing the board I start over.
Drive you out
and begin to map out the pattern of this cloth.
Time begins to unspool, following its slow track.
Joyful in this beginning, this gradual awakening.
Patience.
Humility.

I never know when (or if) you’re going to appear.
So often the game plays out without a hitch,
or you appear so late that it makes no difference.
But I hear your heartbeat now: the rapid thudding,
and know you are here.
A mouse nuzzling through the straw,
invading the gentle morning of this world
when all may be ruined, all may be averted.

Bold, undisguised you,
and I, perfect shaft of damp straw;
it does not fool you.
Discovered at the worst moment,
tender and caught.
You, unruffled by the wind, realizing the position you’re in.
Realizing the position I’m in:
holding all the keys but unprepared to use them.

You have your own plans and ideas.
You dance around me,
playing provocateur, trying to make me
show my hand, my key.
I pretend I don’t know what you’re up to.
I hope you lose interest and give up.
Hope a chance wind sweeps you up,
like a great swell from the sea,
and I never see you again.
Hope you suddenly doubt yourself, blinking,
finally convinced by my damp posing,
my mute bafflement and loyalty to the wind
and wonder, isn’t this straw?

Dare I play your game?
Dare I nod to your tune?

I use one of my keys.
Walk through a door that shouldn’t open,
you at my heels, all eager to see backstage,
to see the actor who plays me.

You already know what you have known since you saw my face.
The same face you have seen dancing in and out
of pale replicas of borrowed worlds.

And finally I let you hear from my lips
what you have suspected the whole time.
That I am not the straw or the sand or even the wind.
That I know you aren’t either.
That I know that you know.
That yes, it was a character and it was a role.
That it was a game I play, usually alone.

“It was just for light fun and idle amusement,” I say.
“Nothing was at stake.
So why the sabotage?”

Then, in spite of our twin hearts,
I see how different you are from me.
What calms me enrages you.
What worries me soothes you.
What I call “light fun and idle amusement”
you call “life and death.”
“Everything was at stake,” you say.
You say, “this world is full, full to the brim. People just like you.”

Fool.
Don’t you realize where you are?
Look around, it is a world of sand and straw
blowing in the wind.

In search of distractions from fractured reactions
to viral infections conflicting us all
The beast on my shoulder gets meaner, gets colder
gets thinking of things that could do with a fall
Collapsing contentment and rising resentment
As vicious suspicions maliciously twist
And virally spiral compiling with ire all
the lists of the villains who wouldn’t be missed.
It’s easy, a breeze, to believe this disease
is a key to relieve us of troublesome foes
Let karma disarm those who lead us to harm
in whatever the form that enrages you most
But I can’t let it happen, can’t fall for that pattern
and so I shall seek a superior spell
A quick incantation from nation to nation –
I hope you don’t get it. I hope you stay well.
Though losing my patience in self-isolation
my station is not to condemn or to curse
We’re scared, unprepared, we’re deserving of care
We are all of us human – no better, no worse
It’s easy to send all my prayers to my friends
to extend my concern to my own personnel
but when all’s said and done we are all of us one
and I hope you don’t get it. I hope you stay well.
The bog-rolling, bankrolling blinkered baboons
who believe that their need is more urgent than yours
The greedy, the needy, the selfish, the seedy
who’d climb over corpses to capture the cures
To wish them destruction, distress or dysfunction’s
to sanction the strife that’ll send us to hell
There’s only one thought that can stifle the rot –
I hope you don’t get it. I hope you stay well.
The braggard, the swaggard, the ****-stirring blackguard
who puffs and parades and proclaims it a hoax
However prophetic, profound and poetic
the justice would be if you choked on your jokes
You’re only mistaken, a place often taken
by me and by you and by everyone else
You may be a fool, may be callous and cruel
But I hope you don’t get it. I hope you stay well.
The fashion for passion has stirred us to action
Habitual friction, regrettable, crass
I know that I need just a moment to breathe
my rage can engage when the danger is passed
From Daisy to Doris, from Donald to Boris
we’re part of a chorus for good or for ill
We loathe and we love and we hug and we shove
And I hope you don’t get it. I hope you stay well.

Nothing
enrages me
or engages me
quite as much as
you two
I suspect
you feel the same way
too

I converse with my conscience,
In somehow finding ways to captivate you,
To surrender you with my love,
A cage which bounds entry of any other, just you and me,

Your way of talking,
Your way of preaching,
Addicting and alluring me by weakening the chains around my hearts,
Star strucking me everywhere,

It now feels like amnesia,
Now that you restricted yourself from me,
Banishing all sorts of entry in my heart,
But still I have that special slot left for you and only you,

Its like i'm being dragged in the Egyptian era,
Where I i'm Cleopatra,
Or being offered a role in Shakespeare play,
Where I play Juliet and you my Romeo,

It was technically not love at first sight,
It was more of an appeal,
A disease a virus,
That infected me thats what I forsee,

Like Jane Austin's novel,
You as Mr Darcy and I as Ms Elizabeth,
Or it feels like being in the Victorian era,
Where you play Troilus and I play Cressada,

My historical insight,
Enrages my thoughts,
Comparing our lives in accord to them,
Our love so beautiful that will always remain.

Minute by minute I fall in love,
Limiting myself,
And restricting my heart for only you,
Your love at extreme diffuses my soul,
The ash n flame of our relationship enrages,
As time passes the candles of my past-
Which were once bright,
Die,
My past now lucid and dark doesn't haunt me,
Because by your side I feel more alive,
The enchant and charisma in our love strengthens our bond.

I used to cry myself to sleep
Used to lay there with endless scary dreams
Used to wonder why it happened
Had I done something wrong?

Now I laugh
I laugh at your name
I laugh at the idea of you having control
But I still hurt.

You know longer have a grip on my life
A hand on my shoulder leading me in every wrong direction
I no longer let you win
But still I’m angry

I grimace at a raised hand
Remembering how you hit me.
I shake at a loud voice
Remembering how you would cuss

I can’t wear turtlenecks or button my shirt to the top
Since they remind me of your hands caving in on my neck
I feel as though I’m choking just by the touch of the cloth
It enrages me to allow this but my mind doesn’t give me permission to ignore it.

I’m still hurt
However not by you
I refuse to let you hurt me anymore
Only by the painful memories my mind will not delete from it’s camera roll

I’m still angered
Not by your actions
But from allowing myself to trust someone like you
For going to your house, to laugh and talk

However, the only one talking was you
As you demanded me to do everything to please you
I would beg no and you would grip my neck until my face turned blue
Gasping for air I reluctantly did as I was told, what more could I do?

I don’t allow myself to trust anymore
I don’t let anyone get close
No matter how much I think I know them, do I really?
I don’t allow myself to feel, because that’s the scariest part

Going numb, like how I felt after you completely took advantage of me
Hiding every emotion because crying doesn’t solve anything
Blocking out all sense of feelings because if I don’t have them I can’t be hurt
Making sure I never look weak, like an easy target.

See you hurt me, but you aren’t hurting me
You broke me, but you aren’t breaking me
I’ll be okay
I’m fine

I don’t think I’ve ever told a bigger lie