Are these the arms that
So carefully enveloped
My small, sinking shoulders?
My legs must be soldiers
To keep moving
Though my bones are lead
And the pain in my head
Echoes through every cell
That composes this broken body—
This body that is dead.
This body that is not mine.

I am a stranger.

     (Madeline
     Am I in love?

     It's not like they said it would be)

They say it is
What we are made to find,
The reason for human existence.
Is not everything we do
Driven by the mad desire
To feel cared for?

We're chasing a delusion:
Something people tell themselves
To help them fall asleep at night.
We live on children's bedtime stories,
Though we were never children.
Maybe one day we will be

After learning to cry more softly
As not to be made vulnerable
To those who do not wish to hear it,

After learning to stifle those tears
After the nightmares
And the panic attacks,

     (Madeline
     Find me—

    I have lost myself again
     But you seem to know me)

When my world comes crashing down
And my shattered limbs frame
My unevenly bruised skin.

     (Madeline
     Will you hold me again?
     I feel much stronger
     When you are here with me)

     (I've never
     Wanted to forget anything more
     Than I've wanted to forget myself)

I never knew that the drug
I would become addicted to
Would not be painkiller,
Nor antidepressants.

     (I never knew
     It would have soft
     Pale skin and clear
     Bright eyes and a
     Warmth that permeates even my
     Fossilized heart)

I think you should love a girl that writes
Live her many different imagined lives
In her vast collections of created worlds
Find her somewhere buried beneath them all
And when you find her pressed between
Scribbled pages and coffee cups filled with pens
Kiss her ink black fingers
Let them stain your lips so when she looks at you
She won’t forget
You’re the hero her books are about.

Secluded within my quilted cocoon
A mess of white bed sheets - embrace me tight!
Forlorn, humming gloomily to the tune
Of silence in the solitude of night

Oh, how I love to sleep, to dream of light
And monarch wings and fruitful dahlia blooms
Sweet nectar of utopia’s delight
Where melodies of silken harps do croon

But flightless I must nest within this tomb
My heavy heart a hindrance to free flight
Curled up within this embryotic womb
For release, to God my prayers I do recite

Liberated from fettered mortal coil
Which binds us to this weary world of toil
The dewy soil exhales a sweet farewell
Behold, fate is sure – Hark, hear the knell!

O’er gentle trickling brooks that nurture life
On winged faith, depart relentless strife
Effervescent flight among clouds once yearned
A foreign realm, no traveller returns

Dear friend, hear not our mourning far below?
With haloed light your memory bestowed
In shame and sorrow do we all lament
With flowers, tears, and prayers we do repent

Oh, curse the wicked serpent of the blade!
Seductress to the everlasting *****