You told me once
that I was air to you.

Fooled by ecstasy,
I thought you meant,
without me,
you would drown.

Unblinded by years
I know now.

All you meant was
without air,
You no longer walk around
consumed by fire.

Reflection

There is a stranger in the mirror.
We've met, yes. 
But only in nightmares.

It stares, unblinking.
I smile. It doesn't.

It is me, I know.
The me of the nights
terror claims as its own.

A pleading heart
A shattered mirror
It survives, still.

A thousand splintered strangers
All spilling
far too familiar blood
from their knuckles,
Finally smiling.

Safe in your apathy,
I doubt you'll ever know,
The scars you leave behind,
Deep on my soul they go.

My life you claim for free,
My dreams you race to take,
This nightmare I endure,
Even though I'm wide awake.

Frozen smiles in picture frames,
Cameras capture an eternal lie,
Photographs won't ever show,
Any of my desperate cries.

You'll never know how it feels,
To have to learn to hate,
The one you thought was yours,
I'll learn to call  it fate.

I will be held together,
Through guts and will,forever,
All of your careful cracks,
Will not undo me ever.

You chip away at nothing,
There's nothing left to break,
Why do you say you're winning,
If there's nothing left to take.

Revel in your victory now,
Until the day your soul screams,
Forgiveness will be sought then,
By you who took my dreams.

Or open your eyes and see,
What it is you do to me.

That the brightest eyes you ever did see?
Look closer, just a while,
See how they share a face?
With the saddest, broken smile.

Epitaphs.
For the words
I smothered 
into oblivion.
When I left them
Unspoken.

Feelings.
I understand 
in ways
you never will. 

Understanding.
I feel
in ways
you will never
fathom.

Heartbeats.
Forming speech.
Slow, rhythmic.
Dense, heavy.
And sometimes,
in places we deny,
furious, desperate,
afraid.

And so,I write.

In my writing,
they bleed through
the yet undiscovered cracks
into existence,
and live.

No one ever tells you
It's quite so red
That crimson stream.

It's sudden, really.
You needn't go as deep 
as you think.

Almost as if it's been waiting
Pulsing
Flowing
For this moment of escape.

It flows.
Freely
Joyfully
Let loose at last,
A red river of pain
and relief.

Relief.
That the noises of the world
And the louder ones in your head
Didn't win.

Relief.
That you didn't wait
Like a stubborn child
To fight another day.

But most of all,
Relief.
That the sin of you living
Will no longer be borne
By the sin of you not dying.