Painting

Lifetimes are paintings

And sometimes I feel like my scenery was chosen for me
That these colors swirled into a battlefield before I was done cleaning my brushes
And mixing my colors
Imagining a life that I knew I could have
... if I just reached far enough
Kept my arms open wide enough to suffer the pain and catch the love

Because they're never too far apart

I knew my life wasn't going to be easy
That no one was going to give me anything
That like everything else my love would be found dodging bullets
And that the most important relationships would be lived stepping over landmines

Because someone taught me to distrust everyone
Before I realized it and there were moments when that felt like a fortress
Like the only protection in my painting

But now
It pisses me off

I have been fighting for a lifetime
I am hiding behind things too tired to think of offense
I'll settle for this hole
Where I tried to dig enough space to heal from the last bullet

War is confliction

It is uniform and chaos and freezing between episodes of being trigger happy
It is fear and panic and unbreakable bonds

And I am all these things

I am uniform
I am fear and panic and unbreakable bonds
I am excitement and laughs because I might be dead by the morning
I am love and hope even when that mostly looks like devistation
I am bullets and knives and trying not to break

I am so many jagged edges that everyone who gets close to me snags their life
Or gets a wound that may never heal
I am sharing my shards under pretty dresses and flitatious smiles

I am still hoping to throw this all away and paint a new life.