Here.

Here I stand, trembling words and shaking hands, yet I still stand, pouring my soul out onto this cold pounded pavement that you call your love. Every darkness kept barred within my veins and scars from where they were torn by my own hand paves my every sentence in the tales of my memories. Perched upon a pedestal of my own design sits a shattered gargoyle, worn from days long in use; he can no longer defeat the dark spirits plaguing my mind. Instead, I parade them in front of you.

Of course, I know that you will never accept them, that my demons are not yours to exercise, and yet, I feel as though you are the P90x to give me new life. You trace the rose petals of crimson left on my skin by cold, loving steel- the marred beauty, you say, that adorns the hardened gypsum walls I so easily built to keep those surrounding from reaching inside. When you speak, the angry words that bombard my every waking moment fall dead upon the ground, nirvana resounding in their place, and I swear...that's when I'm in heaven.

But, how can you be expected to soar with the eagles that you so rightly belong with, when, instead, you are weighted with the anchors that you pilfer from these weary shoulders. I scream and I bite and I yell, trying to take it all away, because the pain that wracks my brain  is not yours to maintain, because I'm not sane, so it all feels the same. It is mine.

I have taken these shadowed walls of my prison, and instead I have made friends with the demons that are my jail keeps, so I have no need of your salvation, my dear, because I have known nothing but Hell. I am the sturdy floor for others to build their sanity on, and, yes, while these words that I so brilliantly weave as "I'm fine, just sick." "I'm sure, it's all good." "No, I don't mind", I am the weakest of pylons for my own construction.

You see, I've taken to these small statements that ring in my ears. They take on the sound of every voice that I hear, and no amount of Oxycontin balls or Head-shrink phones can silence them, the way that you do.

My dear, you bear no sight of a lonely girl that dreams of unraveling of her skin into crimson ribbons with the metal emancipation she holds in her hands. Instead you see the shy girl, who works her bones to the fingers to break the viscous cycle her predecessors had so rightly gained. To earn a value to her name, other than that which others before her had given to disregard. She who wishes to be a pandemic, an oncoming storm, that cannot be denied the reverence that is to be given. Because from the rubble of the past, she will pull herself up, and why you think this, I know not, but, dear? Had you not proven yourself up to this challenge, I would have been consumed by the one fire in my heart.

You might not have born sight of the silent sobs that shook and racked my ribs, nor the countless weeks of sleepless nights, where your's was the only care I had, but you embraced my emptiness. Would you have seen through my soul's windows, my eyes, you would've seen the monsters that I tried so hard to hide. Or perhaps the darkened heart and lack of 21 grams of a soul? Your abdication of hope and your shared strength were all I had when my etched glass world spider-webbed at its seams; the only conversation I had on lonely nights spent wandering through crowd-less rooms.

And you, my dear? It was always you: the one who took shattered pieces of a long forgotten mind and gave them glaze to bind them- full; who turned scattered characters into poetry that will reign through time.

And it was you, who took a broken and lonely girl and gave her the will to fight, because her pieces couldn't be jammed together anymore and the pressure inside them was too much.

Oh, yes, the bitter sweet release you offered bit less than a blade; so armed now with forged words and a leaden voice, she can call to her challengers to face her, at last, and resign themselves to shadow fates, because they can no longer reprimand from her in this take and give called life and a choir of vignetting opinions resounds at once for gratitude to her spirits and his helping lift. Marching to the beat of my army’s worn down drums, because it was you, my dear, it was always you to lead me from crimson-soaked battlefields strewn with fatalistic ideas and worthless memories and should you take your precious love away, you shall always have mine, because it was you who gave me a voice in which I could usher a battle cry.