Paper Cuts

I found this poem among my non-posted items from back in the day. So, I wrote this several years ago. Because of the overflow of memories that came back to me when I read it, I decided to post it in all of it's glorious vulgarity.
I'm slightly amazed at how different life is now.



Those words came out of my mouth a thousand times
A thousand fucking times
And you still can’t hear me

Get the hell
Away
From
Me

There it is
Spelled out

Not that it matters much to me…
Anymore…

You heard me
Oh you heard me
10 minutes before you said
“It’s alright baby, I love you”

Loved me?
You covet the virgin you took from me

You ripped my favorite pair of panties…
Ass hole

It’s possible that I don’t hate men
I hate you
And the voices of women abused
Cry out in my head
Begging for justice

They follow me on the streets
Tape on their mouths
Begging me to use my voice

Maybe the next voice will cry out
Cry for them
Cry for me

My only regret in life is my… silence

I should have stolen the breath right out of your lungs
The skin should have disappeared from my fucking knuckles after you checked my wrist

Slit my wrist for you?

You’re not worth a fucking paper cut

Drown in your unworthiness
And let you’re conscious suck the life right out of you
I hope to never see you...

Never again

But if I do
Lift your wrists
I want to see the damage
That life has done to you

Slipping Away

Can I pull you from that mind
The mind that holds you so tightly
Locked up in it's prison
Staring blindly from behind cages

I may be selfish
Or I may be a hero
Depending on how we paint it today

I wish to take you
And shove you into your potential
The potential that I predestined for you
The second we met

Slightly pushy
Like a dreamy mother
Or the controlling fist of a husband
Painted like a friend
I am a friend

It's best
Don't you know
That I always know what's best

It is best that I keep projecting
My fear onto you

I fear your mind
Taking you from me day by day
You're slipping through my finger

You're the best friend I ever had

Don't you see
That I want to keep you away from your thoughts
Keep you here with me

Stranger's Bed part 3

It runs deep
The feeling of having been here before
And I have
My memory serves me well
Imprinted permanently
When I fell to my knees
And swore that if God would save me
I never be here again
Again
I am here again

For the first time
Regret runs so deeply
That I can not see life outside of me
Not for this moment

Sex for less

She thought of the situation
As little consequence
She had sex for less
For love

Where was the point?
Hidden under stained sheets
And futures that traded themselves in
Daily

She fears falling in love
The same way that she fears death
A trapped
Uncontrolled feeling
A good 200 miles per hour
Right down a mountain side
And no rails would save this time
It's a hopeless abandon

A life gone wrong too soon
Too late
Too much of everything
Except what she needed

Take a Chance on Me

I remember an affection
That I often threw in your general direction
And then

I remember a liking
When you weren't talking

Because I already endured two years of you chatting away
While I sat there wishing that I could hear something
And wondering why my time is an easy target
To be wasted

I wouldn't say that you disgust me
But my pity for you ran out
Four hand fulls of nothing ago

I am trying to put my finger on it
But placing it is hard
Blindfolded with nothing to go on

If...
I had to say something to try and justify my current feelings

I would probably choose your selfishness
Or wait...
It could be the way that you talk yourself up
Like you're not human just like us
You always wanted to be ... different

Or maybe I am slightly shallow
And easily bored just like my mother told me
Maybe it's just the way you walk... so slowly
Or the way you sit
And everything in me wants to push you slightly
And see if your paper thin image falls apart

Then try to say that this all has nothing to do
With you calling me out
For disapproving of my own social drinking
(I never said that I don't contradict myself)

Maybe
I just woke up and realized
That I wasted my time
Just as much as you

And I need someone a little wild like me
A little fun like me
Looking at life
In all of it's short longings
And ready to take a few chances

Take a chance on me

Eternity

I never lost the drive

Everyday I want God more than life
More than anything
I beg to see Him
Beg for more

I have never forgotten

Where I came from
The places I know
The things I have seen

I remember deeply

Like sucking the breath out of me
I remember
Every face
And almost every name
As if the cry of desperation marked my life
Forever
And I would never have it any other way

I wish to move

That God would pour direction into my life
And let me overflow into the streets
Leading me
Leading me always

I have said it before
More times than I can count
I have said it
And I will say it again

Everyday waking up
To the sweet silence
Knowing that my first Love
Is so near to me
In my breath
In my dreams

The best of all feelings
Something I never knew to hope for
I never knew to feel

But now know
That I will feel it for eternity
Eternity starts today
With You
With me

To Wonder

I have wondered

The feeling after taking a breath
And never taking another

An under-reported feeling
Bring them back and ask
What it feels like to die
To take death over fighting
And loose the desire to keep breathing

I have seen the dying
I have heard what it feels like
Knowing that death is around the corner
And life is behind you
Everything you know
Forever lies in the past

Yet the feeling
The lack of feeling
Lack of breathing
The moment of exodus

I am left to wonder
Left to beg for another profession
Another road
A large dose of denial
Or a prescription for anti-depressants

Wondering
I know the feeling

My Garden

You are a flower
Planted in front of the tree
Referenced as light

Stuck in soil
Very to near to my conception
And my tomb stone
Near to me

I can never be quite sure
As to why you exist in a space
That makes up my story
But ever so often
You are slightly pretty
A painful sort of beautiful

I wonder if this was orchestrated
If the conductor of my garden
Wanted you here
Making music with your pedals
Playing softly in my ear

It is a mystery to me
As is all else

This garden was planted for more than me
Slightly more that my bent tree
Trying so desperately
To grow a little more straight
A little more tall
With a slight wind of acting
Like I know what I am doing

I still wonder
How you made it into the scene

Closer to my tomb than my conception

Maybe in everything
There is a least a little speck
Of meaning

Sorts

The way the mind goes
Back and forth
My own version of rapid cycling
A manic state of sorts

A depression faded

The need to keep going

Settling

I can not breathe

And life is uncertain
A dream that is faded

I should have written it down when I woke up
Because I'm reaching

Into the distance
And trying to go back to sleep
Trying to believe

That life is not a series of vivid dreams
Before we wake to a reality
That commands us to settle

I'm tired of settling

Supposed to Be

It was the way that he looked at her
Something about the way that I set the scene from there
Knowing that they were meant to be
In the sweet untainted thought of a four year old
It had to be
Love has to be

Things never seem to turn out the way I think they will
But can I believe that everything worked out of the best?
Not with me
Everything turned out conveniently
Maybe what is now was never a love thing
It is the product of circumstances
It could have been anyone

I wonder if they're still in love
If this will be the last time that they look at chances gone by
And say what we want to believe

"I guess that everything worked out the way it was supposed to be."

Existing

I love you like life is never ending
Like nothing will ever take you away from me

Maybe there is a part of me
That remembers you holding me
When I was a helpless baby

And all of me feels the love
That is never ending

Death can't break us
It will just be another part of existing
In love

Little Finger Tips

Paint swirls like soft finger tips
The fingers of children
Enmeshed in life
And the inability to see past a moment
Yet cherishing the moment
With all the colors of their tiny fingers

The world seems brighter

Yet I have a thing for dull colors

And the children seem foreign to me
Aliens from some other planet
That is not quite as practical as me

So impractical

Inviting me into their world
Painted with colors from their finger tips
And figments of active little imaginations
Asking me to sit down

And... sometimes I sit down

Try to find something familiar
Something that the buried child in me
Can try to understand

And then for a brief moment
It makes sense

We are to be like little children

The world is so much brighter
It doesn't have to be

Practical

Uselss

Are you wounded?

You threw your body onto the ground
You look wounded
And I'm not sure if I'm helping or hurting
But I can't lay there with you

I stayed there for so long
That the cement became a part of my face
And the only thing in my world was the feeling of being little spoon
While your over sized arm lay around my waste

It took too long for me to realize
That every time that I wanted to rise and be part of the world
Your grip grew tighter

Big spoon was only getting bigger
Engulfing me with one large ... scoop

I do not blaim you. No, I am sad for you. Sad that the cement is still so much a part of you. Knowing that the world could use what you have to offer, but you throw yourself on the ground. In fear of being claimed for your flaws in an already imperfect world.

I can lay with you no more
Helping no longer seems reasonable
It is useless to offer a hand to a willing victim of the ground

It seems useless

Wonder in Bits and Moments

I told you that things would be wonderful

A little girl
And I knew
Things would be wonderful

Those fields had to look just like the rest of the world
And I could have laid in those flowers
For hours
Never wondering who made them
Or from where they came
All I needed to know
Was that they were all around me

They could have been made just for those hours
Where they were my only dancing partners
And I didn't think that I would ever feel alone again

I knew
The world was made for wonder

It was in my eyes
In my dance
In my dress
And the wind that kept me spinning
In everything

There is wonder in everything

And I see it
I see it now

It is a blessing more so than a curse
To fall in love with everything around me
And live with with a broken heart
When I leave one field for another

It teaches me to hope
To pray
To see wonder
In everything

And fall in love again and again
An abandon to be in love with everyone
And every bit and moment of creation
To live loving
I always wondered if it would be as wonderful as I thought

Always Tomorrow

I may have run out of words today

Out of inspiration

A desire to break out of four walls

And be in the world

In the moment

I might have lost it

It may have been somewhere between the frustration

Somewhere in the middle of the fourth moment

That anger got the best of me again

Inside of the rude remarks that roll around in my brain

After something so "obviously" ridiculous is spoken

It could have been 2 hours of sleep

Or walking by my Bible this morning

Because I woke up late

"Somehow" my alarm got turned off

It could have been a number of things

Maybe I'll put my finger on it

Tomorrow

Marriage

A series of compromises
In the name of love
And in the blind faith
That being together
Might prove to be better than being alone

Looks like marriage

The Story

Your ashes fell like stars
In front of my eyes
Landing at my feet
And burning again
Until nothing was left
But me

I knew from the second that I saw you
You'd be a part of my story

It

It seems that sometimes
The hardest thing is coming out from under the cloak of denial

Stop lying to myself
And say it

It

Coming from my thoughts
And spilling onto the innocent

Does God love me all the same?
If I decide to be sad for a minute

Does He look at me with the same grace?
When I admit disappointment

Is He offended by my complaints?
Looking at all that He has given me
Just to hear me speak of feeling
Let
Down
Feeling like a child
Who loved as lost
Beyond her years
Past her maturity

I feel consumed
Breathing in the fumes of my depravity
Walking in a world
That isn't fair
And never was supposed to be

If these tears cover the page
Will my thoughts fall away?

Or when my pen stops
And my fingers stop clicking away
At each letter
Will I finally fall to my knees
And beg that Goes doesn't take another from me
Beg for this broken heart to find rest on this earth

Beg with all of the humility I can muster up
With all of the passion that hides behind
Being appropriate
With everything I have

All that can't bear the death
Can't take another goodbye
Not always finding the meaning

All in me
That finds this world to be so

Temporary

Heaven to Me

I need heaven like my soul needs to be set free
The taste of something sweet

This world tastes bitter
Lay screaming
From the salt in my wounds
Ripping away my skin
Leaving me exposed
Naked and ashamed

I desire to dwell in Your land forever
Take the world from me
Take the thoughts of people
From my brain
Set me free

Let me be free
With a mind that knows of nothing
Nothing but Your glory

Speak to me
Of life everlasting
The person you created me to be
Create me
Clean
Bring heaven to me

As if this world
Never touched me

Future Daughter

Dress up your dolls
Play house
And dream

I wish I could tell you
That life will always look the same as it does
When you're 2 or 3
There is nothing to look back on
And everything to look forward to

Play hide and seek
When it's still the only thing
To fill your day
Between milk and cookies

Dream all that you can
And hold them in your heart
For the days when you have an Egypt to look back on
And you're in the desert

I wish that I could tell you
That life will always look like forts in the back yard
And climbing trees

But, baby
There is a day when you will exist
When you will grow up
Have your first broken heart
And the only thing that I will be able to do
Is stroke your hair while you cry
Trying to convince you that you will love again
No matter how little you believe me...

There will be a day

And all I have to say is..

Enjoy your moments
Every little day
As long as they seem
When so few are behind you

Dreams of the land of promise
That is only ahead
And never fear the desert
Because the Lord holds
And I will hold you too
I will hold you too

Trip With Me

I look through my memory
The only one that I have
Biased it may be
But you swirl like a dream

You're thousands of shades of blue
And it's a brown out
So remind me

You wanted everything
And I was up for the taking
So you took
And you took
And you took
From me

You made me feel like I was somewhere else
People like you don't happen
Where I grew up

You were my favorite
My acid
Sitting in my spinal column

And sometimes
Sometimes
I turn the wrong way
And your swirling colors come back to me
With one swift crack of my back
Your acid takes me
Again

And the memories flood in
Just a little trip...

The only way you ever seemed
Sucking me into your fantasy
Dressing me up like your mistress
And putting too much makeup on me
So no one would know
That your children were older
Older
Than me

Playing dress up with me

Like it wasn't weird that you were 23 years my senior
And I was barely 17
Because it was a trip
A drug
A dream
And when you told me that I should be happy

I was
For brief moments between the frightening faces
And the walls caving in on me

You flooded me like a dream
And when I woke up months later
It was the trip that never happened
And forever changed me

The thing I don't talk about
But it finds me

When I'm walking down the street
And an older man
With all the sophistication and worldliness of his years
Stares at me
With the same sly smile that you wore
Everyday

And my stomach drops
With the strange feeling of
I must know you from somewhere

Did you ever take a trip with me?

Lyrics and Stuff

I've always had a profound respect for people who can give voices to the elephants in the room, if you will. The things we all think about, but never really talk about. When someone is bold enough to go down that road and name it, speak of it, I'm always left feelings connected to people again. We're all in it together. It's a good feeling.

I was listening to this song with my brother this weekend while on a skiing trip. I decided to share, this song speaks to me, encourages me to speak and be bold, and not feel ashamed of having... natural thoughts.

I'm gonna miss you
I'm gonna miss you
When you're gone
She says, I love you
I'm gonna miss you
And your songs

And I said, please
Don't talk about the end
Don't talk about how
Every living thing goes away
She said, friend

All along I thought
I was learning how to take
How to bend not how to break
How to live not how to cry
But really
I've been learning how to die
I've been learning how to die

Hey everyone
I've got nowhere to go
The grave is lazing me
He takes our body slow

And I said, please
Don't talk about the end
Don't talk about how
Every living thing goes away
I said, friend,
All along I thought
I was learning how to take

How to bend not how to break
How to live not how to cry
But really
I've been learning how to die
I've been learning how to die
Die, die
I've been learning how to die
I've been learning how to die

Learning How to Die
Jon Foreman

Dressing Differently

It was kindness with a rosy complexion
Love in a button up blue dress
With a humble sash tied gently at the hips
Passion wore red heels
And lovely decided to wear curls

It seemed appropriate

Day to Day Thing

The memories rushed in like a tidal wave

Four days ago didn't seem so different from five years

Fifteen years old and I swore that I would wear black for the rest of my life
Not in a statement
But in a declaration that in mourning
I would never find another for me

He was perfect to a 14 year old girl
And his laughed lived in my brain
Bouncing from side to side
As the days
Rolled on
Never ending and never forgiving

Grief is a burden of this world
And it never gets easier

We live with the burns
And we soothe them with love
It's a day to day thing

Life and Death

Like the back of my hand

You'll think about him
Everyday

And after time...
Much time
And many moments
When the tears settle in the back of the throat
And joke the life out of you
As if Life has not been lost enough times...

You'll forget to remember him
For one day you will forget to remember

And guilt will set in
Eating you alive
As if you just killed him all over again

And forgotten...
Forgot to remember
Forgot to love
To keep him alive in your heart and mind

And it settles in
He's dead

Like the back of my hand
I know it well

Life and death
And all the moments in between

Punch Lines

I remember
Like a burning
And a small reflection

A love
If anything
It was a love

It burned
It soothed
Moving slowly
And all around me

Your face was that of brilliant colors
And vibrant things
Laughing like everything in life were a joke
And you merely existed to catch the punch lines

Four Months

I wonder if you're in heaven
If you're full grown
If you know that for four months
You had all the love in the world

Shade of Blue

Miles away
Forever amounts of miles
And years that add up to more than a lifetime

Back so far
That it stretches the boundaries of my memory
To see your face

The moments that you collide with my brain
Seem like dreams
And I find myself sitting in a blistering silence
Wondering if you ever happened to me

Couldn't find you if I wanted to
And never would I try

But today...

Right now or either 10 (our favorite number) moments ago
I knew that we must both be outside
Looking at the same sky
Because it's your favorite shade of blue

I Need

I wish to take my life and put in a box. Wrap it up, tie a ribbon tight, and give it away. Give it to You.

There are moments becoming more frequent as if they are every moment.. that I wish to stop speaking. I wish to stop moving. I desire stillness... becoming more in tune with everything and listening. I want to hear You speak. Words that I should say, and every move that I should make. I need it. Coming from the one who "never needed anything." I need You. Your words and thoughts beckon me into a deep overwhelming sense of belonging. That is what I need.

Some days I want to remember what it felt like to be a child. What does it feel like? I can't remember... And You called me to be childlike. I wish to remember what that feels like. To be humbled in the vastness of space. Sitting in wonder of all that is before me. I desire to be the child that I see. Searching for the child in me...

Believing like miracles...

Asking like questions are all that is left...

A Burning

It was all the time
All
The
Time

The time grew longer
And it grew...
Less often

The instances so infrequent
That remembering that they happen
Became the new hardest part

But...
It happens

And when it does I feel the same way
Wondering how I forgot that I could feel the same way

Like my breath drops out of my lungs

Like my heart tears one jagged edge at a time

A memory

One word

One never

An intermittent burning

Write It Down

Is there anything left to be written?
Has it all been said?

My perspective is not that different
And my God remains the same

They always said I reached too high
Too far

But I would like to sing a new song
Write a new letter

I wish to describe my God in ways that have yet to be written
And yet to be read

To capture a moment in everything that is holy
Everything that is beautiful
To throw it all onto a page
And read it with tears
Take all the emotions that I can muster up
And throw them into a verse
About my Savior

Tell the world how good He is to me
That I have something to live for now
And there is no doubt in my mind
That I would not have survived
Without Him
That I still have no life sustaining abilities on my own

I depend on Him completely
And I need to write it perfectly
I need to see it on paper
And then say it out loud

I am desperate to let it out
Into a world everything is "take it or leave it"
And they do with it as they please
But I need to let it out of me

A way to describe the love that we feel
The love that moves through my bones and my cells
And flows into the world
Where I know that Love will save us all

Salvation is here
Just open your eyes

Love of My Life

The search was put in me
From infancy
I wondered about my origin

I have sought
Wrestled my demon
Taking swords to hearts
And left my marks as I willed

I have loved and lost
Stood over coffins and breathed in death
As it if were natural
Like it was supposed to happen

I have cried on shoulders
And been a shoulder to cry on

I have looked for meaning in everything
And I have deemed things meaningless
Feeling nothing

I have lived
Young and full of life
Love
Promise
And I have lived

I have seen people starving
Mothers holding their children so tightly
Wrapped up in blankets and tucked into their chests
Like life depended on it
And life did depend on it
Weeping
And sorrow
I know the eyes of a childless mother
I have stared into the soul
Of a beaten girl
A girl ripped from the outside in and then the inside out
Leaving a shell of a person
I know these things

Next to me

I have seen children play
They smile like the sun was placed in their eyes
Asking them to light up the world
I have seen birth
The moment when a woman becomes a mother
I know
I see

I have rejoiced with them
I have bled with them

And now...

I wish to see clearly

To see a good God in all these things

That in suffering
In life and death
In joy
There is a good gracious God behind everything
Weeping and laughing
Loving and mourning

A God who feels

And origin
Meaning
Purpose

I see them in everything
In my pain
In my gratitude

Looking at them like flowers that bloom
In my room
On the floor
Sprouting through the wood
Greeting me at the door
And whispering so softly
"Do not be afraid"

In a world with much to fear
There is a good God
My origin
My purpose
Hope of life with beginning and no ending
A future

And my prayer will remain the same
That God be with me
In me
Through me

That when I stand over my next coffin
When I see the next woman weeping
Children with no home
Strung out with no hope
There is a light
Drawing us all in
Connecting us in our love
In our sorrow
The deepest parts
That only God will ever know

We are together
Under a shield of grace
Stretching to the sky
Fear is not our master

Fear no longer takes my life

I found a love in Christ
The Love of my life

Show Me Love

I will save the love that I know
And put it in my pocket
For different days

I will put it in the ground and make it grow
Wide and spread out
Like shade for a rainy day

It covers like a blanket in the winter
Soothes like a shoulder to cry on

Love
Take me away
And make me whole
Make me see
That there's more to know
To hold
Grow

Time

You asked me if I was waiting on time

As if time were a person
Someone to arrive
Go out with me for a laugh and a few drinks

Time, I'm waiting

For what time is supposed to be
And praying that I know what time should look like

When I'm supposed to leave

Break Me

Take a pen
And cross out my thoughts

Take away all that are not
Holy

Take my voice
And make me mute
If I can not speak
Things that are lovely

Break me
But build me again
And again
And again

I'm getting used to living with this broken heart
But if I had to ask once more

I would ask for someone to love
Somewhere to rest
A solace until I am free

Me

You called me wild
Said that I could never be tamed

And I believed you

I settled down with polite jokes
And silent smiles

I put on my floral print dress
And fell plain

I was everything
Everything for something

And now
I wish to be me

I know that you didn't know me when

When I was in middle school
And I looked at myself in the mirror like an alien
Like a curse because surely God didn't love me
If He did
Then why did He give me this face and body?

You didn't know me when

Never saw how hard it was for me to grow into my skin
To realize that I could speak
And someone might listen
You don't know me

You don't know the day
That I realized people like me this way
With all my crazy
And my perfectly hidden domesticated abilities
My loud laugh
And my silent contemplation
This is the way He made me
Because He loves me

And if tame is what you called being her
Than I'd rather be me

Body of Grace

I wish for grace to become a body
Standing beside me
Disconnected from all that I am thinking

I wish to breathe grace
To speak grace

I long for the mind of Christ
That I would show grace
Even to those seemingly undeserving

To those who have wounded me

Cement

I'm pouring cement over my life

To make sure that you never leave an imprint again
That if you ever try to jump back in
You will find a rude awakening
From concrete meeting your face

And realize that this is how you wanted it to be
This is all you
None of me

Seduce Words

Sit with me
Make music like our hearts beat together
A strange sort of union
A different kind of together

I have thought it a million times
If it has ever crossed me once

And I have yet to find
Why You chose to love
A rebellious child
An unforgiving spite

If I could put the day You found me into words
It would surely burst off of a page
And find it's own way into the world
It would light up the sky with a million stars
That You know so well
A creation/creator

I have words that bust out of my mind
Of the love
The love You gave
And I can not seduce words onto a page
To describe what You gave

That I might be

Your Face

I do not see you the way I used to
I no longer see you for who you are
Or what you mean to me

I see you as the face of all the people who hurt me
The ones who told me to shove injustice under the rug
For the sake of sparing drama
The one's who told me that I was not worth pressing charges
That is how I see you

Your ignorance leaked those words
And what I used to look past

I can't anymore

Because when I see you
I see them

I see everything pressing against me doing the right thing
And isn't life hard enough?
Without your incessant understatements blocking the path

It's your face

It says those words over and over again to me
It's screams vengeance
Regret
Ignorance
It screams
Blowing out my ear drums
Bringing me to my knees
Clasping my ears
Begging it to stop
Begging you to stop telling me

That I am not worth the right thing

Devalued

Say you love me
.. and then I'll tell you my name

I won't be stepping out anymore
Not without watching you walk that plank

See, these things are important to me
I know that it's hard to see
Because they've been spread around like bouncing lies
And thrown about
As if they never came from a real human being

Inhuman?
You do not have to tell me
I've stamped that label in permanent ink on too many things

I am out today
Looking for my humanity on the streets
Searching for my love in the drains
Trying to feel my knees on the concrete and remember
What it feels like to be damaged by a fall
Instead of laughing it off
And crawling back to the same place
To try it again

Devalued...
And I'm still trying to forgive you

Realist

You just look sad to me
Sad as in slightly pathetic

I can't heal you anymore
I won't even try anymore

I am not heartless
I'm a realist
(Which is what all heartless people say)

I'm sorry
That you can't find you way

Lonely

I remembered hearing "She's so lonely that it hurts me, it won't be long."

Right then and there, I vowed that I would never be her.

To 11 years of trying to keep that promise...

Speak to Me

Requested an audience with your darkness
Asked that it come out of guilty solitude
And speak to me

Speak to me
Not through me
Or about me with your own intentions
How to disconnect your feelings

Speak to me
Tell me that you love me
Tell me that you hate me
Just be

For once
Just be

Disappointed

I fear sleep
Like I fear that you were the only one for me

I'm scared to meet anyone
Because I'm afraid to be let down

I wish that you were not such a disappointment

I'm Wrong

Tell her that she should have known
Mom, keep telling her that she's wrong

You're talking to me

Make exclamations about how far removed
This show is from reality

Like you would know anything
About that

Older men would never soil a girl
Who's only aspiration is to graduate high school

No one would ever do that in the real world

Do you want me to agree with you

Fine, she should have known
She should have fought harder
There's no way that IF this really happened
She would feel like she couldn't tell anyone

I give up
You're right mom, I was wrong

And I don't exist
In your reality

Beg Time

I beg time to stop and rewind

I wish that I had loved you more

Realized that you needed it more than I

That I was going to be alright
And you were never going to find your way back home
Back to where I sit waiting

Dreamed To Be

Things looked different somehow
And you looked like perfection in blue and gray

Eyes the fight mine for a place in a heart
All that wants to take me away
And let me rest on life not being as hard as it is today

If I gave you my hand
Would you promise to never let go?
Set dynamite to my walls
And blow them away
Leaving me as expose as I was made to be

In the garden of you and me
And life the way I always dreamed it to be

Float Away

I let you slip through my fingers
Again
And I watched you float away

Knowing that there was nothing I could say
Things would never be the same

Guilty

I pulled the strings of a guilty conscious
Making him realize
That he's not alright
With what he's doing

I found him laying
And then crossed the line
Tempting him to join me
On the other side

I'm sorry
I shouldn't have played a winning hand
On your wide-open circumstance

Love, My Love

Love was a many splendid thing

Love was all that breathed through trees
Catching the life in me
As it flew by too quickly

Hope is where I sit
When I can't remember
The feeling
Can't find the feeling
Lost in my own feelings

Punctured veins dripping life
From the tree of love
From me

Stretched out on a gurney
With my love laying next to me
Hooked up to machines
Pulling the life out of us
Sucking the soul out of a body
And leaving up sitting
Staring as if we can not remember the other's name

I don't know you anymore
Love, my love
I can not see you anymore
Love, my love

I think
As if you were a dream
Blurry
Leaving me wondering
If it ever happened
If I ever had something good
That slipped out of my fingers
Dragging me back into the street
Where I stand alone
Fighting life alone
Holding love alone

Being the one who everyone else can depend on

The lonely rock

The hollow standing place

The blood drained lifeless puppet
Begging for my strings to be pulled

Again

Pack your bags
I don't mind if you take my pride with you anymore

I suppose that we're miles away
From where we were
When you loved me

Sometimes I wish I had the courage to run again
Never look back
And never wonder how things could have been

I wish I could let you go
Or dance with you again

Ashes

I died
Was cremated
And kept the ashes

As if I could bring them back
Or as if I would ever want to

An unnatural attachment
To my depravity
A disbelieving
Believing that I needed a backup
Just in case I couldn't keep up

I pray for a strong wind
To carry my ashes away
The sin of holding on
Believing that I could hold God in one hand
And my former life in other

Today I chose
To grab onto God with both hands
And never look back into the wind
Never wish that my ashes would fall back at my feet
And breathe death back into a body

I am for You
Not against You

Clean Me

The hands
Dripping sin
Breathed into me
And soaking through me

I beg for forgiveness again
I plead love
I ask for mercy

Cleanse me
Feeling like I did the day You found me
Face in the dirt
Barely breathing through my mud clogged pipes

Wash the blood from my hands

Get it away from me
I can not bear the sight of it anymore

Breathing through my pores
Through my bones
Through my joints

Living on Your life support

Plan B

When plan A fails it's fairly simple to run to the store, and for the right price, go with Plan B.

A nice fix for an uncertain future
But a poor substitute for a past

Pen

I tried to silence my pen
For the sake of a few scattered feelings
Or social etiquette

I tried to say that I couldn't find my own feelings
But they were there staring me in the face
As I continued
To look
At
My
Feet

For a thousands swirls of the same light
I wish that I would have found myself with yours

And now
I'm not sure if I want you
Or just want to stop feeling rejected

I can not say if I wounded you
With my indifference
That I faked

But I feel wounded
Down to the depths of my sutured heart
Wondering
Always
Wondering
Why

The timing always seems to be off
It's always off

And we could talk about anything
I loved your voice like I love the rain
A comforting sort of feeling

I wonder
Will we ever know what happened?

Or will we lie
For the sake of hiding our shame
Under layers of clothing

Doesn't always have to end...

Every time it happens
Months after the last episode
Or like the last time
Two years after I have ventured down that road

There's a part of me that hopes
Small hopes
Or what first appeared as an adolescent diving-head-first-without-looking
It's still there
And it surprises me every time

Whether it be the child or the hopeless romantic who I hide under sarcasm at dinner for the sake of a backwards sly smile there after right before I take a sip of my wine and wait for the laugh...

Something
Someone
Some alter ego
Some true identity

Hopes

That this is my fairytale
The one who always wants to work it out
For the sake of never being able to imagine waking up to another face in his life
My time
When I've paid my debt with enough broken hearts

To believe
That not everything that has a start
Has an ending

Habit

I have a habit
A long history, if you will
Of being with boys
Who make a habit of fighting for their pride
Before they ever fight for me

Am I drawn to it?

Or is it just what always finds a way
Into my life.

Brick Walls

The bed is cold in the middle
The bed is unworn in the middle
As plump and upright as the day that the mattress was bought

No one rolls to the middle, no one makes love in the middle, two people living together on opposite sides of the bed, opposite sides of the house, opposite sides of life.
They can hardly remember the days of laying in endless fields as if love were never ending. The first dance, it gets hard to remember when you find yourselves so scared of confrontation that lack of communication has sprout bitterness 10 feet high and 5 feet thick... brick.

Sometimes she wishes that they had talked out the first fight. She wishes that she hadn't just walked away all of those night. She wishes that she had not let fight after fight, miss-communication after miss-communication pour dirt over the fire of their love and take away what she believed was never ending... what should be never ending...

Leave

Once I wanted to be a part of your world

But your world holds no place for me

You've conveniently created a comfy space for one and the imprint looks just like you. I'm not in love with you, but once upon a time I wanted to be. I've let it leak into my life. I've let the selfish disregard for anyone but yourself come over into my world and consume it like poisonous fumes roaming about taking who they please.

Leave,

Let me stay where you found me

Bleeding.

Young

Sometimes I fear this all fading
I fear forgetting
The friends
Sitting in chocolate bars in downtown
In our 20's experiencing life
For what always seems like the first time

I wonder if you will all remember me
If some part of me will be left
On your life

I wonder if we will think of these times
When we are about to die

If I will always go home on these nights
Sitting in the condo alone
Wondering why I didn't get carded on the way home
Did I grow up?
When no one was looking
Am I really on my own as much as I think?

Will someone come home and save me from myself
My slightly tipsy self
Sitting at my computer
Waiting

Wondering if I'll ever have another to wait for
Who will greet me at the door
While I can hear his work shoes
Landing on the floor
From a mile away

I wonder about a good many thing
The mind of a young girl about to venture out into a life of careers
Hoping that she will forever live in these things

Away

I adore you.

As fireworks, oceans, mountains... streams...

Would it be awful of me, if for a few quick moments I wanted to believe that this is just how things are supposed to be.

If I asked for wings would that be too much?
The moment when my world burst into flames and I landed flat footed on earth again and found it hard to dream again.

Can I fly?

To a perfect place where this moment will last for days and days...
Take me away.

He Meant to Say

"It gets better"
He said it in his calm collected voice
The voice that he uses
When he wants me to think
He knows

But how could he
He's never been here
Never did that
And knows less than nothing
Then sits around selfishly wondering
Why I no longer feel obligated to tell him anything

"I don't know"
That's what he should have said
And it would have sufficed
It might have even eased the pain
The truth has an odd way of setting people free

But even lies
As believable as they may be
Unnamed for what they are
Still sting
Make me realize
I don't trust him

I almost trust him as little
As he trusts himself

It's raining
Like it does all the nights
That I am without him
And I used to think
That nature was acting out my own pain

But now I think
That it shines on dark days
And the rain is here to wash it all away
Reminding me
That sometimes in the midst of it all
There is still something to be said
For doing the right thing

"I'm sorry"
With the most sincere of tones

That's what the real version of him meant to say

Yeah, that's what he meant to say

The Blood of a Father

I wrote this poem about a year ago. I never posted it because of it's personal nature, however, I feel the need to be bold of late.

The first taste of death
Left none unscathed
Taking small pieces of us all
One by one
The blood of a father
Reeked havoc on the pride of a son
To be a man too soon
With no one to show him the way

That blood flowed through the hall
Soaking down to the floor boards
And no one knew
The same blood would destroy the innocence
Of a girl too young to know
A lovely girl
The moment of being out of control
Everything out of control
Left a little girl with wide open hands
Watching life seep through the cracks
And it left a boy to his own mind
Creating a world
Where he could control
Everything

It's the death
That the dead never wished upon anyone
The very exiting of one world
Destroying everything they loved
(And more that he only met once)

Once was enough
That blood on the floor was enough
To bond people
Possibly to death
Where no attachment should have existed
An unnatural union
And the sympathy for the son
Would be the very undoing

Of a little girl
A very little girl

Fool for You

There was a desire
For sweet words
In the form of cursive letters
Written to me
About all the things you love about me
With a calm affection
And a firm desire
To let me know
That it was only ever me
Only me

Now, I bleed your misery
And the lack of words
That you couldn't ever really give me
Sit with me
Like a rock
Crushing my ribs
And making my breaths
More difficult than they should be

I remember the first time you called me "baby"
It was like there was no one in the world
But the two of us
And the adolescent feelings of first love
Returned to me
After
Believing that I was broken
That I couldn't feel anything
They all came back to me
Like it was the first time
And my jaded heart
Was warm again

It was beautiful

Three moments after you talked about my picture, sitting on your desk and your daydreams about me... I felt my heart skip a beat and it hurt like coming back to feeling. Coming back to feeling... feeling... feeling you feeling me...

Sweet
Out of sorts and adoring
All the things that love was meant to be

Older now
Than when you first saw me

Walking into that room like a foreign country
I wonder if you remember
The way my face looked
When I first look at you
With a sly curiosity



Was I just a warm body in the end?
A body to fill the void
Of a little boy
Who never had anyone to talk to

I believe
That this was the only thing I meant to you

It helps when the sun falls
And I remember sitting on my balcony
Speaking about things
From a heart
That longed to escape the shadows
Of abuse

And it starts to hurt

And now
When I think about missing you
I close my eyes
And do my best to remember
That I never meant anything to you
I was a warm body
Another girl
Who played the fool
For a broken heart

I was a fool for you

"Tomorrow I'll know if the silver in your eyes/Crossing down on your cheek/And tomorrow I'll know by the rubies in your voice/They've been calling your name to me lately/You have been one of them waiting/I have been one of them falling/Down below/so tell me you're always my only/Never look down mother maple/If I go/Never look down if I go"
The Pilgriming Vine
Basia Bulat

Dance With Me

Looking out standing
On top of the roof
The city lights swirl
All around me in every direction
Beaming down on me
From impossibly tall building
Defying gravity
One metal scrap at a time

I twirl
Like a little girl
In floral print dresses
And a matching bow

This is where I belong
I want to experience everything
Being lit by the lights that I see
And breaking from the cement block
On which I am standing

There are things going on
I can feel it
In one of those buildings
A man is on his knee
Pledging eternal love
Love everlasting
There are people making memories
That build a lifetime

It makes me want to climb
To the top of one of those buildings
And have one rare night
Where I kick off my underground dancing shoes
Put on a pair of heels
And my little black dress that I've been saving for years

Reaching the top
To find flowers waiting for me
Held by gentleman
In a pressed tuxedo
And a nervous smile
Fading into a grown sort of confidence

Take me to the tallest building
Call me "Baby"
And hold me
Teach me a new kind of dancing
Tango with me
Set a woman free

Shadows

I saw it like I saw everything
That looked just like those nights
Just like those days
Inevitable
And moving slowly
Outside of my body

The darkness walked in on me again
A wave of dark seduction
That I know like the back of my hand

There were two this time
Like shadows cast over the room
And all of a sudden
I become aware of my curves
And ashamed

I pulled up my shirt
And made sure that my pants
Were tied as tight as I could
Maybe a string could keep someone out of my pants
For once

You won't get me
And I know no one will protect me
So let me be

Let me be
Because I swore once upon a time
That I would never scream
Never again
The death curdling sound of innocence being stolen
Again

Not again
Never again

I've seen the same scene
Over and over again
Just different people
And another place

Don't take this away
I know deep down
That I have to deserve more
Then torn clothes
And broken dreams

Don't take that away from me

But the scene played out
Perfectly

My only defense was the death grip
Of my thighs begging not to be pulled apart
Again

And pulling my shirt up as quickly as I could
As they were
Taking as they pleased
Like soldiers in a conquered city

And when they finally had enough
I watched them go
Looked back at the fallen city
Left in rubble and ash

That was my shame

My shame

She'll Benefit From Me

In my life
You are now one of them

One of the boys
Who will find a girl he really loves
And never tell her about me

And if your memory
Speaks more quickly than your common sense
You'll cover your tracks
By telling her how much better she is
Than me

But she
A beneficiary of
What may be
The wrong or right
Circumstance

And I was the girl who you just wanted to love
The girl who stuck around too long
To teach you how to grow up

Just so that someone could benefit
From the time that I put in

And it doesn't hurt anymore

Because I won't be her anymore
I can't be her anymore

"The only thing harder than walking away, was realizing that you would never come after me."
unknown

Tired

I desire to express myself
And know that it is alright to feel

Would you let me be tired?
Exhausted
With loving
Doing the right thing
Falling short

It drains me
And I go to sleep
Alone

I still feel like that girl

The easy catch
Cheap date

It gets hard to fight her
When everything in my life
Tells me that she's so near to me

And when I try to require that people do the right thing
In regards to me

They leave

Sometimes
It's exhausting
Being me

Unsaid

Sometimes I think
You will be the last boy to love me

Sometimes
I just think
That this life is not a series of accidents

And there is a reason that you were in my life
So shortly

I just want to talk to you

"The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone."
Harriet Beecher Stowe

Train

I'll call you...
A search engine for a soul mate

Perfect.

This is where I lay

Between finding me

And hoping that someone else will too

It is good to be free
Like sitting in a train station
Alone
For the first time
And asking the train to take me
Anywhere

It is that feeling

Perfectly.

I don't know where this train is taking me
But I believe in bigger things

For a moment... it was mine.

So simple
And full of memories

Seemingly unknowing
Today, I put on the ring you gave me
And looked at it remembering
How much it meant to me

The beauty of 10 short lived days
Of thinking
That things were going to turn out
The way I thought they should be

Silly me

And now...

I wonder if this ring will stay with me

Or if it will get lost in between couch cushions
Behind my dresser
Or in my luggage at the airport

And if it does will someone else pick it up
Without ever knowing
What it meant to me
The moment that it nonchalantly became
Mine

Or if it stays

No matter where I find myself

I will smile through a tear
At the memory

Of love and loss...
But love all the same

Things that could have been
Maybe should have been
But will never be

I wonder if I will feel happy
Or the sting...

Rejection

Either way
I know

That I will keep on living
And keep on loving

Because today is always the day
That things get better

Lion and Gazelle

The predator and the prey
Story as old as time
Old as sin

You the ear I had longed for

The gentle hand that I needed

A safe space
You were safe
So welcoming in all of your ways

It was hard to see your mane
Behind your painted face
And me the gazelle flexing my muscles
Forgetting who I was
Really

I was but a gazelle
A child
In need

You a lion
Prancing around like you loved me

And I could feel you touching me
As if my face were lovely
Stepping slowly
Into my heart

And I believed

Right before you snapped
On top of me
Crushing my face
As if you never saw me

And then when I looked in the mirror
It no longer looked liked me

It looked like my longing

Like you

Feathers

Your words fall like feathers

Touching me lightly
Holding no real meaning
There
But forgotten quickly

Your words mean little to me

What to do.

I have a problem.

I used to post everything. I posted ever bit of dark, sad, hopeful, or happy poetry that flowed out of my brain.

But now I keep it to myself.

I'm not sure if I used to be more honest and more childlike (in a good way). I'm not sure if I am now using my blog, which used to be a place of honest openness, to paint myself in a good light. I believe that the God in me shines just as clearly through my suffering as He does through my victories.

If I really believe that than I feel that this should be an honest expression of myself. It should serve the same purpose that it had in the beginning.

Tea Please

It would seem
That I always get caught up in things
Again

Somewhere between all my cups of tea
And the seat that I had been sitting on
For eight hours straight in the same coffee shop

I took a good look at myself
And things were tangled back up

I feel differently
Not like the take my breath away
I need you sort of way

But more so "If this is what you want... okay."

It's the pacifist in me

Or the part that knows

That everyday you beg for me to act this way

I'm winning.

This is the realm that I did not want to enter

These were the tangled

INeedtosortthisout

Sort of thoughts
That I did not want to have to sort through

The deeper
More malicious motives
That I'm doing my best to stay away from

But sometimes I running out of places in my head
To fit all of the excuses
And I'm asking for more room
So, I'm throwing out files by the dozen

I'm out of room
And out of tea
Disaster

I'll just take some black tea, please

These excuses are overrated

Her Beauty

The last few days I have felt that words are stuck inside of me. I can not empty a racing mind onto paper, because nothing comes out right or nothing comes out at all. It is as if I have lost the ability to know what I am thinking/feeling. Here goes a change of subject and attempt number 1,000.

Her beauty was that of ink stained roses
Grace of a dove
With a broken wing
Temperament of an angry goddess
And hope as a fading dream

A smile awakened with the pain of a thousand broken hearts
Haunting her one at a time
But when she found the courage
To muster up a turn of her lips
It was the beauty of a child
All grown up
And still so young
So cold

She walked
Casting snow from her scarf and coat
And spoke
In the fear of growing old
Alone

Jaded and jinxed
She found pleasure in many obscure things
Away from the people who licked their lips
As they stared and her swaying hips

And then the poor unsuspecting boys who knew not of their own desire
She steered clear
To keep them out of her lair

And she knew not of her beauty
Not of the pearls that were buried
Under her walls that she had been building
Quickly

Not of the lies
That had been melted down
Into the fibers of her being
Blending so perfectly
That she could not see them
They looked the same as her skin
Pale and painfully lovely

She wonders if it was worth it
But only in moments
Where she hides in secret
Keeping all of her thoughts
From the light

She wonders if the beauty is gone forever
If it only awakens with the snow
And flowed away
As the sun flowed over a crippled soul

She prays for her beauty
To return
Without the pain

She longs to feel
Her own beauty
And then turn around

To see it reflect
From the glass window

Of restored dreams

Thunder

I miss you like thunder and lightening.

I long for your voice
Like I long for the ocean
On a cool summer afternoon

I remember your hands
Like I remember to play the piano
Every line
A graceful melody

I drew a line for you
I built a canyon for me
And now I see
That there is no going back
I must leave you where you lay
And live praying that I learned
From our childish mistakes

But I wondered today
Like I have a million times
If you still think about me

And if you do
What do you see?

Confession

They say that confession is good for the soul

So, take this tape off my mouth
And let me set my soul free

Let me tell you
How I still use this body to abuse

The ways that I kept the secrets in between the sheets
And let my body scream "take me"

I told you to stay away from me
Until could name how I was feeling
But I sought vengeance before I realized
That I was angry

There was nothing left to loose
So I murdered you
By not saying "no"

I kept enough guilt for the both of us
And secretly I thought that you
Would take your share of the blame from me

Love

I know more now
Than I did then

That You love me
Like master pieces and pleasant dreams

You care about the little things
Like waking after a full night of sleep

You want to see me live
Instead of waiting for life to begin
Like hovering in purgatory

It's the words that I need. It's the way I speak love... not the way I love You but the way that You have to love me. The way that I believe.

I could swear today that Your breath wakes me and puts me to sleep. It's the glasses that help me see the world.

Love

Always speak to me in love.

Imagine

I could imagine
That your smile
Would make my knees weak
Imagine
That your beauty would allow me to rest
When that is what I so desperately need
You will be in your own
And meet me
At the fence
I will not have to talk you into
Loving me
Or have you scale my walls
We will meet in the middle
Your arms will feel safe
And my life will take on a new adventure
You with me

The only thing
That is lacking

Is that I still have to imagine
All of these things

"Happy is the heart that still feels pain
Darkness drains and light will come again
Swing open your chest and let it in
Just let the love, love, love begin."
"Everybody"
Ingrid Michaelson

Find Yourself

I prefer children now
At least they tend to move forward

Adults take their cemented coping and carry it
And right when you think they are moving forward
It's right back to the start

I get exhausted watching people turn back around
To crawl back in the same holes
That got them in the same old messes
Over and over again

I wish I had a delete button
I could just make people disappear from my life
On days like today
When I just can't take it anymore

I despise the evil in the world
The broken promises
And broken hearts

I don't want you anymore

To turn me into a child in all the worse ways
Wiping away my common sense and experience

I just don't have any more shelf room for you
Just won't fit

Find yourself
Outside of everything you know
Set free what you're supposed to be
And then report to another's heart for duty

And I
Just want to be me


"We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others,
that in the end,
we become disguised to ourselves."
Francois de la Roche Foucald

Promises

Begged the rain to fall on broken promises
Maybe if the drops washed the ink away
I could forget that I broke your heart

Begged the ring to fall in the drain
The memories to bury themselves with a sweet abandon
Begged life to be easier for a little girl
Who signed on the dotted line
Without knowing
That she had no ability to hold up a promise of that magnitude

Do I still?
I beg the question
And I seek the answer

I spend my life protecting people from my body
But what about me?
No one's out to protect me
And I do not know how to protect myself

How do I learn to respect a body that I have despised for so long?
I am learning a hard lesson at the throne
On my own
In secret
Where I am keeping
My heart

All At Once

I should get an award for finding the oddest songs that fit my situations so perfectly or are literally what just came out of my mouth. I find a lot of humor in this gift that I seem to possess.

I swear I said this like 2 weeks ago. Oh my life...


"All At Once"
The Fray

There are certain people you just keep coming back to
She is right in front of you
You begin to wonder could you find a better one
Compared to her now she's in question

And all at once the crowd begins to sing
Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same

Maybe you want her, maybe you need her
Maybe you started to compare to someone not there

Looking for the right one you line up the world to find
Where no questions cross your mind
But she won't keep on waiting for you without a doubt
Much longer for you to sort it out

And all at once the crowd begins to sing
Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same

Maybe you want her, maybe you need her
Maybe you started to compare to someone not there
Maybe you want it, maybe you need it
Maybe it's all you're running from
Perfection will not come

And all at once the crowd begins to sing
Sometimes
We'd never know what's wrong without the pain
Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same

Maybe you want her, maybe you need her
Maybe you've started to compare to someone not there
Maybe you want it, maybe you need it
Maybe it's all you're running from
Perfection will not come

Maybe you want her, maybe you need her
Maybe you had her, maybe you lost her to another
To another

Understanding

I need to study, but I am burnt out. So instead, I have been playing all my songs on shuffle to see if I could dance to all of them. Creativity is blooming or being shot down... I can't decide which. I am currently on "Unforgettable" by Nat King Cole, which is probably why I decided to sit down and write a poem. I am terrible at slow dancing, and it feels even more awkward when I'm doing it by myself.

Anyways, that has nothing to do with this poem. I have just been alone all day and I needed someone to talk to (even if it is just a computer screen).

I want to write of pain
That I can not remember
I want something dark and soulful
Somethings that describes a place I have been
With beautiful metaphors
That bring emotions to life
Jumping off of a page and escaping into the imagination
As if I were understood for a split moment

I want to dream of how things would be in a perfect world
Where I wouldn't always have to love people enough to let go
I would be able to keep what I love
And hold on
While life sweeps my into the whirlwind
That is always coming my way
I want to dream

I want to be on earth
Where I understand a reality
That is so far from how things should be
But never completely keeps me from hope

I want to see God face to face
And tell Him all the ways I want to love Him
And all the ways that I do

I want to laugh and cry in the arms of my Maker
Tell Him how upset it makes me sometimes
That my lessons always end in letting go
But how grateful I am
That joy always finds me on the other side
I have loved and I have lost
But losing has never been so beautiful

Nothing can get me down these days
I have a Lover
And He understands me

Mourning

I have declared today a day of mourning. It is not because anyone died, but just because my life is changing. I feel everything changing, and I feel new dreams coming alive in me. It is probably a good change and I am excited to see what God is going to do in my life, but with all change, things or people get lost in transition and sometimes it is good to just take a minute to properly lament all that is lost.

Today I went through many old messages and e-mails. I read things I didn't even remember and some of them were deleted because that needed to be the last time that they were read, and others will be read again so I can remember. Life is always moving so fast that it gets easy to loose things in transition. It gets easy for me to forget where I am from and who got me here. Ultimately Jesus got me where I am today, but He has brought people into my life to lead me here too. It amazes me how well Jesus provides. He knows that we are human and that because He is not with us physically we are physical being and we need people in our lives. There are so many people who have come and gone (and some who are still around) who God used to walk with me, pull me when I needed it, or for me to help up and learn how to really love people for who they are in the process. I feel like I don't always give these people enough credit for the impact that they have had on my life, and I don't always take time to be grateful.

I feel an enormous amount of gratitude right now. I do not feel sad. My heart is just still in remembrance. I miss people and I am not afraid to admit it, but I know that more people are always on their way. It doesn't really matter if things ended badly, we just went separate ways, or they are lifelong, I have learned so much from so many. God has always known who I needed and when I needed them. When I thought I was down and out God always had a bigger plan for me, leading me to Him. God knows that I am human and I need relationships. I need people to laugh with, to cry with, and to share my life with.

I feel people moving out of my life and it pains me. Some of them I thought were life long and others have always been seasonal, but God has truly taught me to love. I used to try to stop loving people so that it would not hurt so bad when they left, but now I know that love is always worth while. Through all this I feel like I have learned to love God so much more and through that love other people and the blessings that they have been in my life.

It's beautiful to grow relationships with people and see all the gifts that God has given them (that if used correctly) make the world a better place. I feel like everywhere I turn I find more amazing people who are being transformed by my loving Father.

I do not know how people live without love. It is liberating to love endlessly, to see all the beauty in people and even to mourn change and loss.

Take My Breath Away

Some need to walk on water
Lay out a fleece
Or put their fingers into His hands and feet

But the only miracle I need to believe
Is to see what God has done in me

I feel older
I feel more complete

I will go places and see bigger and better things
The Lord is doing

I will flatten my heart
And pave a road where there is none to be seen
Because I know where life is taking me
I'm going home
To see my King

I will save this restored body
And this heart filled with dreams
For the one who wants to learn to love
Like Christ has loved me

I will pave a road to my Father
Where my children can follow
And know that this is a safe place to be

I will give all of me

The world is big
And love abounds in the shadows
But I will take it with me
I will never hide Jesus in me
Behind the scars and broken dreams
He is bigger than my failures
Bigger than my disappointments
Greater than all that has hurt me
He is alive in me
Restoring all that was broken
All that was taken

He has made me a person worth loving
A complete person
Worth finding
And when love comes to me
He will love me for my strength
Not because I am fragile
He will never ask me to be less than what I am
He will simply ask for me
The whole version of me
Shining through the darkness
Into a world that looks so beautiful to me

So beautiful

You take my breath away

Painting

The swirling
Of colors bold as day
Take me into a painting
Of many brilliant things
Reminding me that I am living
And my feet are walking slowly
But with direction

The shades blend into a purpose
A final painting
That will hang on the wall of the saints
Looking differently from all the other masterpieces
Sitting in a hall of fame
Glorifying God
One redemption at a time

Take my life
And paint more brilliant things
Letting me sit in wonder at the life I have been given
More vibrant and full of life
Than anything I have ever seen
Illuminating something that is me
But looks so differently than who I thought I would be

I am broken into colors
Like fireworks

I am broken so that I can find restoration
Healing in a painters hand
Rebuilding the scene with every stroke
Keeping me in mind
With every new design

I'm learning to love like red
Have bluish grace
And forgive in green
I am learning many things

Remember Me

Today I want my room
I want my bed
I need my solitude

Today I want to walk around
And be happy that no one knows me
And never give them the chance

I want to walk and talk to myself
About all the things I wish I could say
All the things I think

Today I am happy to be with friends
And then happy to be alone

The feeling still hasn't completely come back
And there may be a part of me that is just concerned
That I'm this happy

But I am not fooled by a cruel reality

I will be nicer than I should
I let down my walls to make other people feel better
About their own insufficiency
That's what I do
I am an honest liar

But I know that my world is moving
I know that the people I thought would always be around
Are going
But I am here
In my same chair
Where I watch people move on
And hope that they remember me
Hope that something about me permanently marked their lives

Because one day we will be on other sides of the world
With lost letters and failed attempts to remember one another
And then our memories will be the only places we can see each other
But it fades
Life happens and we forget what made us this way
We forget the people who witnessed our lives
And made me believe in love again
Made me want to stop hating what can not happen
And dance in the love that God has given me
The only thing I ever needed
And never really wanted

But sometimes it concerns me
Knowing that you won't remember me

And I should step out of the scene completely
But friends have a way of sticking with me
Even when no one else remembers

Blessed Assurance

I have peace
The peace that I prayed for months ago
And it found me when I needed it
Two nights ago
In a dream
A dream of dancing in a fountain
With the moon shining so bright
That it could have swallowed me whole
And I wanted nothing more

I will testify
That the joy of the Lord is my strength

And the strength has made everything look differently
Everything looks like the moon and God is my fountain
Pouring mercy over me

The strength to let go
Of an 18 year old girl
Who wanting nothing more in the world but love
A yearning in her heart
Since she was 16 and that door was opened so prematurely

But love awaits me

And I prayed that things would be different
But I prayed for strength if everything turned out the way
I knew it would
And above all else I prayed for God's will

The difference of two short years in me
I want the will of God
More than love from this earth
I want Jesus more than my next breath
More than the people I love
More than the memories that play over and over in me
I want Him more

"The Lord is near to the brokenhearted"
I found the verse when I was 14 and it stayed with me
It clung to the broken heart of a 14 year old girl
And it has kept me all these years
The Lord is near to me
And even if my heart has been passed out in a crowd of many
My heart has found completion in the Lord
The broken pieces are restored
And every time they look more like Jesus
I have not a complain in the world

This is what I want my life to be
More of Jesus
And less of me

Book

My life is a book
Of endless possibilities
Keeping me guessing

My life is a child
Watching hearts break through windows
And wondering if I would ever feel the same

My life is a love affair
With a God who put stars in the sky
Last night
Just for me

There are dreams that stay with me
Hope that never dies
And I've been given promises
I don't have to question why
Because I know that there is a rainbow
At the end my sorrows

God has given me rain to dance in
With a freedom I always longed for
And sun to lay
With peace

I have days that I could dance away
And nights when I have to tell myself to breathe
I have to remind my heart to beat

I have a God

And I can't image having survived so many broken hearts without Him
Not having nights
When I could talk to Him
And never question His love for me
Never question that He knows me and He wants me
More than anything
More than the breath He breathed into me when I was a baby
And dying

I can not question God's faithfulness
He has shown me mercy
And this broken heart is all I have to give Him
But it's all He's asking for

He calls me beautiful

I do not understand my life
Not today
But God feels me
And He's mending another broken heart
Slowly
But surely

Making me see that He's made me worthy
He has made me holy

He has simply made me
With all the love I have to give

And I will never regret
I will never apologize for being strong or happy
I will never apologize for being me

And I love you
I love you to all the depths of my being
And I have no regrets
Because it's the deepest parts of my soul
Peaking from behind the window
At the broken hearts
I know that love is never a mistake
And now all I can do is love you enough to walk away
The test of love

God brought you in my life
And He may be taking you away
But I've learned through all the joys and all the mistakes
And knowledge is not wasted
It is not thrown to rot in the street

It is here in my heart
Where I will always hold you dear
Hold the memories so close to me
Where they are always supposed to be

Where God has made me complete
God has given light to all the dark in me
And I am full of life
Full of promise
A hope for a future

I will always love

Afraid

Did I just jump back?
Right now I feel afraid
Again

Why do I always resort back to feeling this way?
The thought of loosing everything for good
Stole the life that I had found
And I feel nothing
I'm walking
But I feel no ground beneath me
I'm floating somewhere between death and life
Again
And I despise this feeling
Yes, I am not hurting
But I'm not living

Secrets and solitude
Do nothing for me and you
Nothing for us
And I'm ready to loose you
While I'm already so void of feeling
It would make it easier
And my depression has proven
To be a black hole sucking everyone in
And I may never forgive myself
If I take you down with me

Right now I want to be alone
I want to believe again
That no one will love me

I want to believe I have nothing to loose
Because I've found myself afraid again
Afraid of loosing all of the things I love
I'm not sure I could live through that again

I'm waiting for bad things to happen
And I hate myself for feeling that way

And when I look in your eyes
I can see your fear too
Fear of being another one of my regrets
But just remember
I don't regret

If I were given the chance to go back and be as perfect as a human can be
I would turn it down in an instance

I like this version of myself better than any I have known
Or any that I've dreamed up
And I would not trade that
Even if it meant that I would not be haunted by these dreams
Or feel the life being scared right out of me
Every time that a strange man touches me
Even just to tell me that I dropped something

I will keep all this scar tissue
I will keep all my jaded insecurities
You could never be a regret
I never regret anything
I just live

So let me find the life that fear as taken from me
And I will smile
No matter what happens to you and me

Never Die

I want to fall
Into arms that will hold me

Life has shown itself as a good many things
Swirling quickly
Acting as if it is never ending
Then stopping suddenly
As if the end were sitting before me

I believe

There's not much to grab onto
But I believe that God is good to me
He always has been and He always will be
So sweet that I can feel Him sweep through my body
To just let me know that He's still around
Appearing in memories
Where I had never seen Him before
But now remember so clearly
That the entire time
He was standing next to me
Reaching
So gently
So loving
Everything that I needed Him to be

I have life
Down to my core
And I always knew
Almost from infancy
That there was something about me
That was immortal
Different from everyone else
And unable to die with my body
There was a spirit in me
A soul, if you will
That looks just like who I am supposed to be
And just like my Father

I have His eyes
Just look
There's a part of me that will never die

Heart

I want to break into your heart
And find a piece of mine
Tacked on the wall
Like a collage of many beautifully broken things

Old

Sometimes I only wake up in the morning
To look in the mirror
And see how much damage time did to my face
While I was asleep
Someone stole my beauty

A Soul

Once I learned how to stop feeling

It became easy to do it again

And again

And again

Easy to detach

To stop caring

So numb to life

That I could allow people to use my body

Without waking a weary soul

To fight back

For a body

That never felt like my own

Is that any way to live

Staring through eyes that feel so disconnected from me

That I'm floating

I need to feel

My soul needs to feel

To live and love

Like tomorrow was never coming

But it's already here

My Reasons

I'll wait years on something
That apparently I don't even want

I'll walk a thousand miles
Just to say that I did

I will be beautiful
Just to be forbidden

And then when I reach my destination
I turn right back around
And head back to where I came from

Little Girl

Do I still look like your little girl?
When I paint my face
And change my hair

How do you know...
That I'm the same little girl who sat on your lap
And demanded that you tell me stories

I don't always know that she's still me

I just see her sometimes
When I get embarrassed
Or exceedingly happy

But you remember more of her than me

Daddy, how do you still know that it's me?

Oh Great God

The joy of the Lord is my strength.

Those words always hit me like a ton of bricks. Today I found myself having a tough time trusting God, and a tough time trusting myself. I was listening to "Small Enough" by Nicole Nordeman. I've been listening to this song almost half my life now (I feel old). This song has been my constant reminder every time that I've found myself sad and unsure, every time I just needed someone to love me... to hold me.

"oh, great God, be small enough to hear me now
there were times when i was crying
from the dark of daniel's den
and i have asked you once or twice
if you would part the sea again
but tonight i do not need a fiery pillar in the sky
just wanna know you're gonna hold me if i start to cry
oh, great God, be small enough to hear me now"

It's easy for me to think of God as big and great. It's easy for me to look up in the sky and know that He knows every star and every galaxy. Sometimes it is just hard for me to realize that the same God who holds the world in His hands has a special place in His heart just for me. As small and insignificant as my problems are, He cares. That thought is so much bigger and more inconceivable that the stars have ever been to me. It's hard for me to believe.
Today I found myself sitting on a bench in the middle of downtown Atlanta refusing to get up until I believed that. I didn't just want to believe, at that moment it seemed almost life and death that I grasp this concept down to the core of my being and find rest at His feet. No matter what I've had or how many of God creations I have worshiped instead of Him... no one ever really cared about me the way I am supposed to be cared for and I'm starting to think that no one ever can. I can't help but think that God knew that when He was creating the world and He knew that He could only ever be the one for me.

It's comforting to know that God doesn't need me, but He wants me.