I stand terrified.
Stone in my shoes.
Face to face with a monster.
The monster itself was crouched squeezing it's knees.
My gaze locked with wide emerald eyes. Staring deep revealing a clearer image.

Words written on every inch of the skin. Nothing bare.
No hint of clean scriptless skin.
Just ink.
The words themselves grotesque.
Deep descriptive fears of one's self.
Words that have been hidden but never forgotten.

Thin limbs.
Simply skin covering bone.
Just a thin barrier keeping the body safe.Fragile bony hands that were bound at the wrist.
Restricted.
Enchained.

The face was the worst.
Dark hollow cheeks.
Pale dry lips cracked from movement.
Dark craters lie under the pits that hold the soul.

I knew that face.
That face was mine.

Why are you so afraid?
Who takes the courage out of us
and leaves empty pages on our doorsteps?

If you'd ask me nicely I gladly lend you my aid
In return just be as good as you allow yourself to be and thus
I promise silently to instead of one I'll make two beds

Inside of these four sides and many scriptless lines
My love's never quite sure how to call itself
I call her by the only name that I know
but know that it's not enough, not quite

If I wouldn't know better I would beg for your trust in these strong-rooted vines
All I want is to let me be me for the sake of myself
And hold closely and in full daylight my beloved stranger, reflected in fresh-fallen snow
For I'd never want to be ashamed of keeping a feeling whole and tight

Please don't ever let me lose my hope in a strangers mind,
it's all I got left in a world full of shallow familiars and quiet pretenders
Don't let me go stray and leave the path less traveled

Let me have
one hand that's tender
that isn't my own
trying hard to hold
on to slippery simplicity

And tell me why
are
you
so
afraid,
heart?

I wander this valley verging on black
And exhausted, I lap the ***** lack.
The question whether I'd be fast or slow.

Often my flesh begs and beckons for flesh,
The same way entrails desire to digest.
Furthermore, even and ever more so
The eye sees a feminine collage and wishes
To take and forget a thousand faces.

But flesh makes no remarks that it wants a heart.
For I do not need love, nor regret, nor
Shattered shards that implore to call for more.
Although sometimes I aspire the pride of two parts,
Since the single must play and pay alone,
A debt of dates not buried like bones.
For I often feel I must play the scriptless part.
So sometimes I wish to play the jester,
And for a soft face to grow lighter.

Yet…
Why reenact what was?
Why phlebotomize my pen?
The call has been made and rejected
With the mentors and the Goddess I have met.
Afterall, the sky was already blue before she left
And now shades have only darkened.
For women excite and ignite the cauldron,
Only to boil the broth, summoning smoke
And conjuring cuneiform from words I thought I knew.
Within darkness previously mentioned
Leviathans slither by lips which whisper.

To fall and collapse
For jokes at her feet.
My pen pressed.
Unable to clear the hourglass sand that dirties
The wind sweeps across the beach.
My pen pressured to leak.

No one told that man, how hard it would be
To let unfurling sapphires become passion. Yet
Everyone knew which way he ought to be in action.
They bought your innards with dinner, they took
The muscles by which morsel and mouthfuls travel
And took your mouth in debt that lasts till death.
While the rain fell like ink on the heartbroken stage,
As my pen wept upon the page.

I know lessons ought to be known with each mistake
But with this heartache, which mistake do I begin with.
Still my pen weeps upon the page.
He cries to speak,
Of a girl who spoke of vulnerability
And thought of Othello till the leaves yellowed
And funnily enough, pierced me.
A story she’d never write for me, for why would she bother?

I now care only for the alarm
And howling, hollering sirens
Of diversions and perversions
And I’m scared only by the harm
That wouldn’t bleed but would imply
My lacerated pen leaks upon the page.  

As a thousand poets pens have bled.
For heroes have fled into stories of old
And all stories told from youth
Say let lingering souls lay low.
Don't dare resurrect this meek creature.
Hasn't he suffered enough?
Don't dare twist via alveolar to say "Hello."
Don't you dare continue this.
For why would we let tongues lick our innards and hollow us.

Yet…
Sometimes on tired nights as I stare above,
Lapping the lonely lack. The void stares back,
As we lock eyes and despise one another.
I wish I could turn my face and see her
Who at least to me, is a precious beauty,
For only a moment sometimes.
I could close my eyes and hold on tightly,
As she folds within these thin arms of mine,
From somnolent nights, till the end of time.