Homecoming

I've come knocking at last
You always said I would
I've given it all up for you
Guess I always knew I could

Held on for quite the while
Watched every day go by
And all my hopes and dreams
Let them all slowly die

Still didn't come seeking you
Maybe I was under a spell
Afraid of what everyone says
Told me I'd go to hell

Put up my soul for sale
Painted on a desperate smile
Listened to that beating heart
Which kept count of every mile

Told myself I could live
That a broken heart still beat
And I still had discarded crumbs
Of leftover love to eat

It took all your cruelty
Every last shred you had
I could have still stayed on
If you hadn't tried so hard

You meant to get to me
Hoped I would write these lines
You played it like a game
You pushed me so many times

Broke me at last, you did
I reach for release at last
And you get to say you won
I am now part of the past

And so I've come knocking, friend
Do take me under your dome
Oh death, please open up
And let me into your home.

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.