“my hands are blistered
from holding on too tight to
things begging to leave”

You’d destroy me, and I’d let you.

"I got down on my knees because he said I would 
if I loved him. 
And what did I know then? 
when I first betrayed my body. 
Sold it for a kiss and a smile, 
thought to please at any cause, 
left to fight for independence in the backseat of cars.
On stained leather interior dank with the smell of expectations 
I traded integrity for security and called it love, leaving pieces of an empty shell falling behind my mother patting my head and saying 
“What happened to that nice boy you were dating? ”. 
Well, I pushed memories farther down 
buried beneath piercing sunlight, 
dreams my night would come to save 
and prayed 
scraping already skinned knees 
while I cried myself to sleep. 
So I bit the apple in confusion, 
abandoned my innocence 
beneath the tree of knowledge 
and became as bitter as the fruit 
I couldn’t refuse. 
Time and again, 
giving in, 
giving up, 
waiting, 
always wanting something more than pick-up lines, 
promising more than promiscuity, 
clothing myself in false hopes, 
enclosing my weariness in frail arms for years… Cars turning into bars with one lamp, 
and piles of discarded clothing, 
and I heard myself say “no” over and over. 
But he didn’t hear me, 
wouldn’t listen when he called me a “*****”, bringing me down and took the only innocence I had left. 
And I was searching still for purity, 
lurking in hidden corners, 
hips swinging, lips pouting, 
trading and shattered innocence 
for bared and braised and offerings 
I learned how to control 
and three years of vengeance passed 
while I was that woman despised. 
Well, they begged for plastic perfection 
found in the temptation inches from their faces and I could feel the longing, 
the lies when they said “You’re so beautiful” 
And it wasn’t enough
And so he loved music more than me, 
loved work more than me, 
loved money more than me, 
loved her more than me. 
And I loved him more than me. 
And I gave in 
to where I thought love hid; 
to the times I thought it was real. 
We give in to what men want, 
we paint ourselves with what we think are the colors of the rainbow, 
when we’re really cloaked in hips and lips, 
the brutal realities that leave us grasping 
tatters of the illusions of love and longing 
and the shattered threads of innocence. 
Until we wear our own colors 
and part the curtains we draped over our mirrors in mourning 
and look ourselves in and say 
“With you I feel like Isis and I am beautiful”.

Do you wake up in the morning and need help to lift your head?
Do you read obituaries and feel jealous of the dead?
It's like living on a cliffside not knowing when you'll dive.
Do you know, do you know what it's like to die alive?

When the world that once had color fades to white and gray and black.
When tomorrow terrifies you, but you'll die if you look back.
You don't know.
I know you don't know.
You say that you're hurting, it sure doesn't show.
You don't know.
You tell me let go.
And you may say so, but I say you don't know.

The sensation that you're screaming, but you never make a sound.
Or the feeling that you're falling, but you never hit the ground.
It just keeps on rushing at you day by day by day by day.
You don't know, you don't know what it's like to live that way.
Like a refugee, a fugitive, forever on the run.
If it gets me it will **** me, but I don't know what I've done.


-Next To Normal