Set Me Free, Or Love Me True

Their silence kills what remains. 

Their silence tells me all I need to know, even as they deny the truth. They are no longer sure and now their doubt causes mine. 

 

All hearts are laden with baggage of the past, some pieces are to fresh and too heavy for hearts to overcome. They are to wrapped in bitterness and rage and will punish any that come after until they learn. 

 

Learn that they have to lay down what they knew and thaw their heart, open it not just in thought to what could be. Separate it from the past and from the pain they have suffered. 

 

Learn not to use another human as a stepping stone or temporary distraction for your rage. In that you do them a disservice and add to their baggage by telling them they are not worth anything more than what they can give to you when you call for them. 

 

Their silence kills what remains, like a set of strings pulled to tight, on the brink of breaking. Pulled and pulled while your heart pounds faster until it’s breaking over you. 

 

Waiting for the knife to drop that will wreck it all. A dull blade, already covered in your blood and tears from the attempts it’s made. The strings around your heart, once chains of steel. Now frayed and damaged. Past repair. 

 

This time, this time you give them the knife they need to end it. No more dull swipes of the hand causing jagged cuts. Cuts your salty tears fill up each night so you look whole in the morning light. 

 

No, this time you tell them to cut you deep and let you go. Or stop making you bleed with their selfish attempts to love you. There is too much fire in you to calmly accept a mediocre love. If I burn for them. They should not make me into ashes swept under the rug. 

Too Long

 

Face set in stone
So composed you’d never know.
But look at their eyes and you’ll see a different story unfold

One of grief silenced by others needs.
One of pain bleeding into agony.
A silent scream leashed tight.

Until numbness sets in and they began to change. Not so you’d see or even notice until it was to late.

But slowly, over time, they evolved. They remained to those around them strong, steady and sure. But deep, down inside, they were unraveling.

Unraveling for all the feelings left buried and never expressed. For all the lost words and lost care.

So they picked up a pen and started to write. They bled into the paper what could never be right. Each character written from a cut deep inside, a wound that had went unattended for to long a time.

Until the paper turned red and their face crumpled in tears. Wet trails down their cheeks to the paper below as a silent sob escaped. Their fingers turned white from being clenched into fists.

Tomorrow would be a new day and the tears would be gone. But tonight the moon called and the words bled out with the tears held to long.

Break Me-But I’m Already Broken…

Heart in pieces, pounding like a drum, could feel the pulse, see it under her skin if you looked closely enough.

Mind racing, trying to make sense of it all, to put the words together, but having to remind her lungs to breathe in air and exhale.

Break me again her heart cried. Let them break me again, because you can’t fix this part of you that loves to deeply. Not until you’re broken enough to not come back.

She never learns. Let them break you again until there’s nothing left and you can be reborn from the ashes of what they called love.

Her loyalty knows no boundaries. She will give until there is nothing left. Until her heart washes down the drain of her shower along with her hopes and dreams of what could have been.

Break me now her heart cried so that I don’t have to wonder when I will suffer later. When it will all burn and the scars inflicted will never heal.

Her heart whispered back, they cannot break what has already been broken. Your tears have blinded you. Look at the blood on your hands. No amount of needle and thread will repair the damage done here.

The pieces are already gone. The damage in place. They rest in another’s hands, carelessly held or tossed away and you will have to scorch your surface and rebuild your walls. You cannot break what is already shattered.

What Am I?

Ignorance is rarely bliss when it comes to matters of the heart and emotions are involved, it’s usually painful in the end.

Feelings can be like a persistent, never ending ocean wave that crashes over you, again and again. Causing you to feel like you’re drowning.

Your brain creates rational logic as quickly as your lungs force out the sobs that choke you and the tears fall from your eyes. 

You know you won’t always feel this way, but the hammer to your skull and the fist clutching your heart speak different tunes.

You know the reasons behind the actions, but you still feel the pain of the inaction and seemingly empty words.

Your body detaches from itself, becomes a shell. The pain is there but it becomes dull, abstract, as if someone else suffers it even as your hands cover your face or clutch your sides in an effort to comfort what cannot be comforted.

Am I a human being?

Or am I a wind up toy?

Am I an active partner?

Or am I there to stroke your ego?

Am I a treasured friend?

Or am I your entertainment?

I am not the sum of what you make me. I am many things to many people. Rarely am I seen for what I am. If I am me: Then what are you?

Wings

I know you don’t know how much it means to me. The moments where you let me, be me, where I can stretch the wings I’ve had to wrap so tightly around myself.

I know you can’t fathom how it feels when I don’t hold back. When I am not less than to suit another’s needs.

I was learning slowly even before you that I did not need, nor did I desire a cage. Of mine or someone else’s making.

Why should I be less honest or observant? Why should I laugh more quietly, have fewer deep, rambling conversations at ten in the morning as often as I might at midnight? Why should I love less deeply, less freely then in this moment with you?

With you…it’s so different. You cannot see what my shadows hide. You don’t fully realize the pain I harbor and my demons don’t always play nicely with yours.

Yet still you stroke my wings when they are spread wide. Softly caressing the broken feathers and coveting the smooth and supple for yourself. Encouraging them when they falter with a smile or a phrase.

My wings grow ever brighter each day. They have become a shelter rather than the just the entrance to the storm. They can hold their weight and yours when your wings falter too. For I would gladly give my wings to you.

More

They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. Maybe it’s true, maybe it isn’t. 

But it’s true there are some that all you can see is the fractured glass on the verge of shattering. 

Looking into their eyes, you see what cannot fully be given a voice: fear, anxiety, pain, sadness…and so much more. 

You may not know the cause of each, but a part of you, the darker part of you responds to it. Like recognizes like. 

These people appear to fascinate those around them even as they scare them. For many of them are still a kaleidoscope of color more beautiful than words.

They burst with feeling and passion and fight every day whether seen or unseen to live in the moment. To ignore themselves for the sake of others and to survive. 

It’s almost a dance between two parts of a whole person. The side that longs to give in and shut down. And the side that pushes to succeed and thrive. 

And each time the pressure intensifies they feel as if they will break or they cannot sustain any more damage. 

But the cracks fill up with light and color after a time if they allow it. Their strength increases. And they become more:

More beautiful.

More caring. 

More giving. 

More kind. 

More than any mere words could ever describe. They are simply more than the most vivid imagination could picture or what any mother dreams for her child. 

They are a survivor. And you may think what do they have to survive? Their life doesn’t seem that difficult. But everyone has their demons and everyone has suffered loss in some form. 

Some more than others this is true. And each loss, whatever it may be, shapes a person. Their character, their personality, their ability to give and receive love. And they are more because of it. 

Isn’t Real…Part 2

They cannot know the way it feels.
They assume you are disconnected.
That you are numb and have no feelings towards the outside world.

If only…if only I didn’t feel so much.
If only I was more disconnected.
If only at times I was numb rather then just blocking it out.

Instead I deal with words that slice my soul to shreds. That send my mind reeling so fast I cannot scramble up the muddy slope fast enough to withstand it.

Instead I try and retreat into myself, to regroup. To hold off the tears, to lessen the pressure, to avoid another night of pain.

But it isn’t in my nature to run. However ironic it may be that a broken person stands against a wave. That they can let the wave wash over them again and again, still managing to survive.

This is not because I cannot face these issues. It’s because I understand. I understand that those who send the wave are often themselves broken in some way.

That they have not yet learned how to handle this aspect of themselves. They have not learned to let the waves of life, big or small wash over them and still stand.

To push through each fall, no matter how much you have to gasp for breath after it is over. That being broken for a time does not make you weak and it does not mean you will always be broken.

But rather to remember that waves will always come, they will always crash, and you will always be left in the bright, soothing, dawn after the tide rolls out.

Isn’t Real…Part 1

Eyes that bleed silver trails,
Down cheeks flushed high in thought.
Or pale in misery.

Mouth open in a silent scream,
The agony to great to give voice to.
Except when in your head.

Ears ringing like a jackhammer,
But all sound is at once loud and aggressive.
Yet muffled and distant.

Body shaking softly and you can’t decide,
To be still or try and rock the pain away.

Skin feels tight as if stretched thin,
The smallest touch making you jump.
Ready to fight or flee.

The organs inside you appear to have lost all function. Do your lungs still hold air? Is your heart still beating?

Seconds, minutes, hours.
Maybe even days may have passed.
It has no meaning in this state.

Until your mind realizes it is no longer in danger as it thought and gives way to your heart and body again.

This, this is why they cannot know…