The Dark Place

If I told you the truth, would you turn away? Would you stare at me in wonder, in horror, take me to the hospitol? Do they have a hospitol for things like this?
If I told you the truth, would you think it was me? That I must have had something to do with it, for it to hurt so bad? That I might have participated somehow? Must have brought something to the table? The world is full of victims who do just that, like it’s a lifestyle choice. There’s something in it for some of them, something to gain, though I can’t tell you what it is. I never wanted to be one of them, or drag that cross around. I wanted to be someone who made choices. Always choices.
Yes, I did do something; I did bring something to the table, did make a choice. I’ll try to tell you what it was, even if I can’t tell you everything. I’ll be honest in the ways I can be, while I may be guarding myself now. What I did is easy enough to tell, easy enough to admit, though I’d rather not. To you, I’ll tell it.

I was honest. I bared my soul. I did not keep secrets. I exposed my soft underbelly. I left the windows to my soul open wide and did not apply make up to my scars.
I didn’t call my fears another name, but said “Here. Here are the soft spots, please never put pressure here for they hurt.” I was fearless, in my fears. I was brutal in their exposure, for no one can say they did not know, did not see them. I showed them, took a picture to be sure.
I was there for the viewing, patient, lest it frightened or was something never before seen, like seeing the melted skin of a burn survivor for the very first time. I took the time to explain.
It’s not everyone who needs that much information. Most people have no need. You didn’t. But now things have changed, and everything’s inflamed, infected, and scraped raw, and I know you don’t understand why.

I never really concealed these marks on me, on my soul. I never wore them like a crown either, or like a badge of honor. I don’t deny they are a part of me, but there is more to me than just what I have survived. You see the more in me, you see who I hope to become, who I am today, not just the wounds and the pictures of who I once was. You, maybe more than most, know I do not want that, for myself, for anyone I love. You know I do not want to BE that. I am not what someone else has done to me; not even as a survivor of that. I am the me you know, a whole person apart from another’s actions.

But here I am, and it’s a dark place where I have no voice. I can’t find the me you know, even while I know you still see me. I can’t hear my own truth, can’t see my own face, without a scream choking mute in my throat, a ghost from a life gone to me.
I know you’ll let me take my time. I know you don’t have to know everything; the fight I’m in will take time and isn’t the kind of thing that needs pushing. I haven’t lost myself, I’m only misplaced. I’m just a little too far into the weeds, but it’s not the first time. I’ll start walking again, soon. Won’t I?

I know I made myself a target. I didn’t mean to, only meant to be honest. I framed it up so nicely, neatly, said “hurt me HERE.” I didn’t need to point out the ways to my breakdown in such a handy way. The shame of that will take me a while to mend, because I know the truth of it. The truth of it is I did it for fear that my scars would hurt another I thought to protect, and for the need to feel safe, finally.
I know I am not her, the girl that was hurt, the one with the scream in her throat and the ghost in the mirror; she’s a part of me but she’s ok now. I don’t have to protect her anymore. She’s been safe for a long time and I will always have her safe in my arms. I can let go of her hurt and rage and shame. She doesn’t have to suffer anymore and either do I.
I will never let HER go, to be alone and lost; she is mine. But I will let go fighting for her to not be hurt one more time; she cannot be hurt again. She is safe now.

Still, here I am, in the dark place where I have no voice. I can’t find the me you know, even while I know you still see me.
I know you’ll let me take my time. I haven’t lost myself, I’m only a little misplaced. I’ll start walking again, soon.
Won’t I?

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Stealing Peace

I sit in the dirt, watching the water. Bass flicker in the murkiness there; he points them out here and there, softly tossing a pebble to trick them nearer so I can see. What else is there to do when you’ve lost your mind? The fish don’t know, they keep doing what they do and don’t have a thought for me and my mind. They only avoid sudden movement, of which I am careful.
An ancient backpacker’s mat appears from the truck and I’m given a place to sit there. I have to make an appearance later and shouldn’t look like I’ve lain in the mud. I don’t care if I do.
I go searching for a cigarette and when I return there is a pillow on the mat. A pillow with a wildlife motif. A man’s pillow, placed exactly where my head will lay.
I close my eyes there and wonder, wonder at the small things that I will survive on today. The drive with hot tears behind my sunglasses and the hand that tucks my hair behind my ear; the friend, the water, the pillow. The quiet parade of objects that emerge from the truck to ponder. A small Norweigan flag, mine now. An English flask, beautifully engraved, run over and smashed completely flat; useless but for it’s loveliness and curious state.
A gravy boat. It perches on my belly for a while until it confuses me. Why am I lying in a road by a lake with a gravy boat? And then I remember, it’s something I would do; it should be funny.
A small bottle of lotion.
A magic bag of tricks.
Found treasures and remedies for dry and untended skin. Skin that doesn’t feel like mine, that doesn’t fit.

We’d eaten chile rellenos, seated high over the street where the people walked; people with places to go and money to spend, lives happening. The sun was shining, maybe birds were singing. It’s how I see the picture, but I don’t remember and wouldn’t hear. I ate and was surprised that I could. It feels so wrong to eat, like eating on somebody’s grave, which is ridiculous. Who’s grave? Mine?
Nobody died. I have to eat.
I am ravenous, and I eat over the grave, the one no one but me knows I am sitting on or in. His long legs brush mine, a comfort, safe. His blue green eyes look at me, never deeper than what I can stand. The most they do is turn dark once.
We look like any couple, maybe slightly more interesting, better looking than some. People that don’t quite know think we are, because they know there’s something, just what they can’t figure.
He is beautiful, but he is not mine, and I am not his. He is the impossible friend, who couldn’t know the broken girl I am, who’s never seen my world, who doesn’t know darkness, who needs nothing from me. He is the impossible friend who I would love if the universe was different. But he is just a friend. The friend who brought me to the water this day so I could think, or not think.

I turn the music up. It seems so trite, lyrics that meant something a lifetime ago, now just a feeling that doesn’t make sense, nothing more. I am nothing but feeling and confusion; it seems fitting, none of the words making sense. And then the Norah Jones I’d given him gives me a lullaby and finally something feels right. I sleep the half trance of temporary peace. This moment, it’s all I have.
I ask him to drop me off and I don’t bother to retrieve my own vehicle. I know I will have to walk for blocks later, and it will be night, but I don’t care. I have borrowed time and now there isn’t anymore. I’ll worry about it later. For right now, I can’t give back one stolen moment of peace.
There’s nothing to be said when I leave, only his eyes dark once more, and my quiet thank you, and then I’m gone, carrying my stolen peace in a bag with a Norweigan flag to say it’s so.
I hang it over the calender in my office and sit in the dark, watching people through the window again. The calender says May. I don’t know when this started, what day my self slipped under the door and ran away. I don’t mark things on calenders and I’d rather forget. But I look there all the same, trying to figure it out. Which day did this happen? Which day did I realize I couldn’t get away from it? Which day did someone tell me “You have got to get your mind together”? When did I stop being able to get my mind together anyway? Have I gotten it back together at all?
I play with things on my desk. The tiny pewter tray with the viking ship. The pocketknife I forget to leave in my pocket and always need then. A rubber band, so useful. Nothing looks familiar, does the trick of making me make sense to me. It’s just stuff.
I go back to my closed eyes and see ripples on the water, see a pebble falling into depth, see a small fish making it’s way. I only know this, this moment of stolen peace.

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Beaten

“No one beat you up. I don’t see any bruises.” His blue green eyes look at me steady. “Why can’t you tell me?”
We stand outside, like any other time, only my world is upside down and it’s all different. I am me, but I am not.
“Were you raped?”
I am silent, for a long time. Chain smoke, stare at the ground. “No.” I wasn’t, right?
No, I know I was not.
“Why can’t you tell me what’s wrong? What happened?”

I can’t tell. Or if I do, it will never be the whole truth. No one really knows how it is with me, how I feel my soul ripping out through my skin and my mind is flying away a thousand miles an hour. How my heart thumps so hard I can hear it, or then it’s just hollow, cored out. How I feel shamed, awed that I could ever feel such embarrasment that I would literally hide under a rock if I could.
Instead I go each day where I need to go and I face people that don’t know and they wonder what’s wrong. I’ve taken to sitting in my office with the lights off, watching people from my chair where they only see me there if they know to look. I stay there until I can’t. I get some illusion of safety there, of separation, and I can’t bear to get closer. I interact when I have to, and then go to my place I came from and cry. It hurts my skin to talk to people.

“I know a place where there’s no one, a beautiful place. It’s very remote, and there are a lot of trees and a beautiful valley. No one would ever hear you. You could scream. I’ll take you if you want to go.”
I imagine this. Try to see it as a comfort, a safety. I try to see him being there, keeping me safe. I don’t know if I can feel safe again, anywhere. With anyone. It’s so far away, or so far behind me.

I want to say it wasn’t that bad, that I’ll get over it. I want to say I’m stronger than this. But I don’t know how to be. I don’t have any marks on me. How can it be this bad? “No one beat you up.”
There are so many ways to violate a person, if you know how.

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Somebody’s Child

It’s not too late. Or is it? I should not tell myself a thing I would not tell a friend.
Things like:
It will get better.
Be grateful for the things you do have.
You’ll get over it.
Time heals all things.
For every cloud, there’s a silver lining.
Don’t give up hope.
Tough times make tough people.
Blah, blah, blah.

The truth is, I’m tired. I’m so tired, I don’t have the energy anymore to describe how bone and soul crushing it really is, this tiredness.
Do I mean I don’t experience joy, love, or inspiration? Of course not. I live for those moments, and I have never managed to numb myself to the finer things in life. The beauty, the stunning beauty all around us. The exquisite color, sound, magic surrounding us, that truthfully, is sometimes almost more than I can bear. I feel so much, see so much, it’s overload. How can I hold it all?
No, I’m not numb, far from dead. Miles and miles from not caring, not feeling. I just can’t feel much about you anymore. I’m just so tired. Tired of it. I would like to rest. And it never comes.

I try to separate myself from the craziness. I succeed, sometimes. It’s a necessary thing, but an acquired skill. When there is a new chapter in the drama, I find myself watching, yet again. Mostly to give myself the sense that I might be prepared.
I troll the mugshot sites, watching for you, for those connected to you. Eventually we will find you again, if you don’t die first. Death or prison, those are the choices you’ve left yourself, so I watch to see; what way will we grieve?
I am past the point of grieving for you, but not past grieving for the others who love you. And the truth is, I may not care about you much at all anymore, but the course you take will impact me nonetheless. Those others-they can’t seem to help themselves; they still think the loss of you-to death, to prison-is something to lose, something to maybe prevent, something to be fucked up over. I know the feeling, because I have been there. But there’s nothing, nothing they can do to stop you. Nothing but face it square, and move on with their lives. They won’t, not for a while, and they will torment everyone around them with their own coming to terms with it all, but I knew it all along.
Since I’m telling the truth here, I might as well say it. I don’t care if you live or die. I have had to put my care elsewhere. Why is that so hard for me to say? It sounds ugly, unsympathetic, so harsh. Sorry. I didn’t get here overnight.
How many ways can you rob people before you’re seen as a predator? Myself, I saw you this way quite a while back. I knew what others were just catching on to. I knew you were going into peoples’ houses. I knew what comes next, and of course it did. Someone came home while the two of you were still there. And bad things happened. Everything finally caught up to you, didn’t it?
Or that’s what everybody thought. Poor, innocent people. They really thought that with all those dozens of charges, all those felonies, at least you’d be safe in jail, unable to self destruct any further for a while. Unable to hurt yourself or anyone else, anymore. Forced to get help. And of course, it’s what you said you wanted. Help.
Well, now. What a surprise for everyone. Except me. And now, the moment you had a window, you did what I would predict. You fled.
To a few people, you are a loved one. To most of the world, you are the reason they lock up, keep guns in the house, see a suspicious person in the neighborhood and call the cops. The world isn’t wrong about you.
Everything I’ve said has been true. No one will ever tell me that, because they think that means giving up hope. It doesn’t. It’s just truthful. To tell myself a lie would only help you continue to victimize others. While I can’t stop you, I won’t help you lie to yourself and everybody else. And I won’t open the door. It’s shut tightly to you.
And this will make me unpopular, and tired, lonely. It will cause a rift between the people that still love you, that believe that there’s some kind of reset button on you, a default setting you can revert to if only the drugs would go away; a rift between them, and myself. But I know this game, this fantasy, too well. I will not play. I want only to extricate myself.

I still watch the mugshot sites. I hate the way it makes me feel. Like a participant. But it’s information I need, for as long as it’s necessary. I will protect myself; no one else is going to do it. They’re too worried about you. And they say, “I never thought he’d do such a thing.” They always say it. But I did. And you’re far from done.
I asked the cops to try not to kill you when they catch you again. I know how easily those things can happen, especially when I know you will likely do at least one more really stupid thing when they find you. You can’t say I never cared. But I know it’s coming, something’s coming, and when it does, I know whatever peace and rest I do have will be rocked again like it has been before. People around me care in a way I won’t, and they won’t understand. They won’t understand that I just don’t care anymore. If they can’t bring themselves to hate you, to blame you, they will hate and blame me, because they still have to blame someone. And it doesn’t change a thing that I think. That I know. They hate to hear the truth, even when it’s right before their eyes. Even when it’s hurting them more and more to not admit it. And I’ve always told them the truth.

I’m not looking for answers; this is the world of meth and opiate addiction. The world you live in. The world you’ve brought to everyone you know, everyone, people who didn’t enter it by choice. The answers your loved ones are looking for, well, they haven’t figured out yet that they can’t save you from yourself. There’s no answers for saving you. I’m powerless over your addictions. So are they. But like a stone thrown in a pond, the ripples go out and out, and what you’ve taken from me, from your babies, from everyone you touch, it goes far beyond whatever you could pawn. It goes on, will go on for your children. And you can’t even fathom it, because what you care about is your own need. What you cried for was your own trouble, your own self behind bars. Not the hurt and harm you’ve cost, but for the way you yourself were suffering, all because you will choose, every single time, to feed your own endless bottomless pit of need, even if it means the ruin of someone else.

Some people say you’re a victim. Victim of the drug, of the economy, of the people you got tied up with.
I call bullshit.
Choice. Make a choice. No one said it was easy. And no one can choose but you.
Yes. You are someone’s child. But you’re not a child anymore. This may be your last chance. The train might be leaving the station for good. You don’t have a ticket. What are you gonna do?
Choose, it’s your choice.

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Replacements

Till death do us part.

But what if one parts before then?

Do you die, so you can make it right? So you don’t have to break a vow?

Life goes on—that’s the brutal fact you just can never get around, not alive anyway. It did for me, no matter how long I grieved. It went on around me, while I felt dead. I wanted to be dead. Still, it went on.

I lived, and found out one can’t live and not be alive. Least I can’t. So, I began to live, tired of dying.

I didn’t replace you. I found a new life, a new love. Something more than what I was missing, and finally I didn’t miss it anymore. I didn’t miss you. I didn’t want what I’d had.

What I had missed was what I’d thought we’d had, cruelly ripped away from me with a scar put in it’s place. A scar everyone could see. A scar of ugly self hate, slow to heal at all, festering with the delusion that I was deserving of the abuse you gave. But what we really had was just a chapter in a story—your story, made up along the way to fit your needs. Your needs, disguised as ours. You lied about that more than anything else, and you lied about almost everything.

You left me with a sawed off stump, my amputated ego hanging by shreds of aching skin.

In the words of an old song we’ve both heard, “I Wouldn’t Treat a Dog” the way you treated me.

The magnitude of raw hurt I felt for years may have made it difficult for me to trust again, to really love and give myself to anyone. But it didn’t mean I wouldn’t, eventually. I did.

Till death do us part.

But you see, that died; I died, who you were to me died. I grieved, died, lost another chunk of myself here and there as time went on—the old rotting illusion of our marriage would shrivel and fall away, just drop off in chunks whenever I least expected. New little deaths, over and over. And by the time they finally all fell off I was so sick of the disease of them that I wanted them to go, even while it was still painful to let them go. And it usually was. Pieces of my identity went along. My belief system went along. My hope went along. And my ability to fall in love went along as well. So I imagined.

But know something here; I wasn’t really dead. Only pieces and parts of me, the pieces that you could still touch, the pieces you’d told me were me. Well, they’re not me.

I’ve spent some time backtracking, walking parallels of paths I took after you left me broken and bleeding. I didn’t set out to follow these old times, more they came to me, and called me out. Only after the fact can I see that they did so because I was finally ready to give all of myself to someone. It was necessary to see where I’d been since you changed how I saw love. And it was shocking how many wrong turns I made just trying to distance myself from what happened. Just trying to heal.

I visited those old spaces, places, loves, and found quickly that whatever stray parts of me were still laying about lost fit handily in a basket, nothing more than I could carry, although the basket seemed really large at the time. Later when I picked up the basket, it felt small and looked hardly a thing to hold so much woe, yet it was the same basket. And it was easily set down.

Finally one day all those stray, misshapen, fallen apart pieces, they were all gone. The little basket was just empty. I felt naked, and surprisingly light. Uncertain, too young to be the age that I am, I stepped up to my life. And love was waiting for me. I didn’t know I was waiting for it too. Sometimes we have to die a little, in order to really live. Life goes on. Life begins anew.

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You See Now…

You see now. I didn’t know it would be like this. Who in their right mind would have ever taken it on had they known?

I didn’t know the thing would follow me here. I thought I was safe from its nose, always sniffing the wind and watching for movement, any movement. I hid in plain sight and moved slowly, so as not to call attention. After awhile, it had been so long I assumed I was forgotten. Wouldn’t you have? Years went by and the signs all pointed to the same thing-I was safe. No longer a hunted thing, of no particular interest to the one who watched.

What would you have done? I couldn’t stop living forever.

Man, was I wrong. Of course I was wrong. These things don’t forget, they never just quit. That would be like losing and one thing’s for sure, winning is everything. I’d given up the idea of that long ago, had settled for survival, but then I’d gotten tired of that and reached for something more.

I guess I forgot myself and who I’d been. I bought into the idea that freedom was my birthright, once I’d had a good taste of it myself. And you know, it is. But dance with the Devil just once, and you might have a hard time ever convincing him and his ilk that you are your own, ever again. They wait.

I’d danced to that darkness once, alone I thought, but of course I was not alone when my eyes opened in that dark. The thing was right there beside me, his hand sliding up my dress. It reminds me now of the one time I fell asleep at the wheel and eyes open, drove clear off the road. I guess I’d have to say I wasn’t really asleep, but in a kind of hypnosis. Leaving the road, I willed myself back at the last moment, but found it hard to resist the sweet slide to oblivion. Like the overwhelming urge to sleep, the drift insisted that I just let go.

The dance was the same-a demand to let go and just drift where it took me. Kind of hard to explain now, but if you know what I mean then there’s no need anyway. Once you’ve felt it you need no description. The only sane reaction is to jerk yourself away before being swallowed by a tree or embankment or the devastation of a car wreck. Sometimes there’s no going back fast enough, and it’s too late. Me, I’d just get the willies whenever I thought about how close I’d come.

Ah, but enough of my mixed up analogies. The point is, I got away with my life and after the heart-pounding stopped I was really careful for a while. A long while, in fact. Eventually I got braver and took some risks. I wasn’t such a secret. I let the world in. I bought a business and one day had a business card and then I was on TV and everybody knew my name. Well, I know it wasn’t everyone, so what could the harm be? No one was watching anymore, right?

Besides, the name wasn’t quite the same name then, and who watched the local news channel but local people?

It started with the one I called Cowboy. He materialized beside me in the quiet part of the day, and left me the sound of spurs though he wore no boots. Afterwards, I went about my business, focused on the work, and tried not to think about it too much.

A month or so later, when I’d nearly forgotten, I found myself in conversation with a young man who wore mirrored shades like that other. A different guy altogether, so I’d thought. At some point I realized he’d just stopped talking altogether and was staring deep into my eyes. I felt a lurch in my stomach and a chill when I knew I’d stared right back. Not out of any kind of man-woman thing on my part, but like a rabbit stays still when finally cornered, staring at certain death. The young man breathed in time with me, then smiled wide and showed a pointed tooth. I almost fell backward and wanted to run but could not.

“You have a nice day now, Ma’am” was all he said then, not breaking eye contact, and slowly backed up before turning away and showing me that he walked on hooves.

Was I imagining this? Had my mind finally broken? I most certainly had done some damage to myself somewhere, what with the life I’d once led. Maybe I’d finally lost my grasp on reality.

But I knew it wasn’t true. Things were insane, this was insane, but it was real. I was going to have to deal with it; somehow I was going to have to find a way to not go crazy.

I did what I did the first time. I went back to work. I smiled, made money, looked like I was supposed to look. I looked good. At least good enough to look like I belonged where I was.

Summer came. I’d always liked summer best. Everything’s more relaxed and I’m not cold all the time. I like driving, and I like to put the window down. I didn’t miss the bad weather. I’d been out looking for treasures and trying to keep cool, and my guard was down, like before.

He wasn’t there when I pulled into that gas station. And I know the sound of a Harley Davidson as well as I know anything. But then he was there, astride the big hog, across the drive from me. He was next to the gas pump, though I knew he wouldn’t get any gas. And he was grinning.

His voice came across silky smooth and honeyed in my ear, while he still sat grinning across from me without saying a word.

“Nice day.”

“Yes” I smiled. Why was I smiling? I knew it was wrong, but I was scared so I smiled. Girls are dumb that way.

“Why don’t you get out of that truck and come have a seat? We’ll go for a ride.” The warmth dripped off him in waves.

“No thank you” I whispered. The sound of his voice filled my head. His lips hadn’t moved but for the smile. I looked towards the highway and stared, cold all over though it was at least 100 degrees. Maybe I could just drive away and not get stopped for taking the gas nozzle with me. It was taking forever.

Now he was in my face, still on the silent bike. His face was in my window. How had he gotten so close?

“Just get on.” Grinning. A tiny fleck of saliva at the corner of his smile.

I don’t know if I said no, if I whispered it, screamed it, or only thought it. It didn’t matter; he could hear me and he could smell my fear. Still his smile could melt butter.

“No. NO.”

This time I’d said it aloud and I wasn’t smiling; I’d said it strong.

 He tilted his head like a beguiling child might, all charm and wistfulness, even looked a little hurt, and said “Well Honey, you don’t know what you’re missing.”

“Yeah, I do” my mind spoke. And like that, he was in my ear again, only this time it hurt, each word like a blow; “Get. On. The fucking bike.” I turned towards the right, the passenger side, the side my ear was hurting on, and he said there from the seat, “Last chance.”

I didn’t know what it meant, what last chance I drove away from, but I watched him ride off away from me too, heard the bike’s roar, at the same time he spoke from the passenger seat. A tail brushed the gearshift and I flailed at it in terror, a live snaking thing that didn’t belong there. And then there was nothing there at all, no one beside me now. And no one was watching and no one had seen a thing. I could hear the bike circling the block and wondered if he would come back for me. I knew no one would think a thing if he came back and cornered me, not in this neighborhood. But I also knew he didn’t have the need; he’d made his point. He’d find me.

So, you see. I would never have started this had I known it would come. I really did believe I was safe. I’d survived the dance and got really strong but I never guessed at what didn’t get undone. And I knew I had to stop waiting, it was crazy to keep waiting when that shit had all stopped for so long. It was time to start living again. What I didn’t know was that IT waits, and can outwait me.

I’m sorry I dragged you into this. I really wish I could pretend it wasn’t happening, but I’d be lying. Maybe if we stood together I’d have a chance, but I wouldn’t blame you if you split. Knowing what I know, I would.

Then again, you haven’t left me yet. Maybe it’ll get tired of chasing me after all. And maybe, just maybe, Ill be stronger than I think.

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One of the Shes

One of the Shes

She’s got it so bad

She’s counting the seasons

She’ll take to be had

She’s one of the Shes

He’s leaving behind

He’s giving her notice

But taking his time

 

One of the Shes

She’s falling in stride

She’s counting her reasons

She’s standing in line

She’s one of the Shes

He’s taking her time

He’s giving her something

But stealing her pride

 

Who would have thought

It would be so effective

Who would have sought

To be so subjected

She’s under his spell

She’s taken it well

Who would have bought

She’d be so reflexive

 

One of the Shes

She’s got it just fine

She’s counting each vision

He puts in her mind

She’s one of the Shes

He’s leading behind

He’s feeding her something

She’s bleeding inside

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Twist

“I’m doing this for you.”

                              –Last words of a sociopath

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Collected Perceptions

Now that you’ve taken everything

Tell me how does it feel to need more

Now that you’ve drank your fill

Tell me how does it feel to be bored

Now that you’ve spent all your time

How do you know you’re too late

Now when you empty your pockets

How do you sort your mistakes

 

So you put them on a shelf

Like you put me on a shelf

And you spend all your life in a haze

So you add to your collection

Of sideways perceptions

And you say she was just a phase

 

And you put me on a shelf

Like you put them on a shelf

And erase all those dreams in a blaze

So you add to your collection

Your toys of perception

You pretended to throw away

 

Now that you’ve taken everything

Tell me how does it feel in your soul

Now that you’ve stolen the best years

How does it feel to get old

Now that you’ve used up their lives

How will your ego be fed

Now when you see me watching

Who do you see in your head

 

You put me on a shelf

Like you put her on a shelf

Your relics lined up in a row

But you forget to mention

Her collected perceptions

Easily rival your own

 

So put her on a shelf

Like you put them on a shelf

And live out your life in a daze

Add to your collection

Your toys of perception

Each in her special place

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Injustice

What are you going to do? Arrest me? I’ve been myself for this long now, how could you think I would stop? And I never could stand injustice.

It’s been said that when I believe in something, I’m like a dog with a bone. Not the most flattering analogy, but likely true. In fact, I believe it was you that said it first.

Try and get it away from me. Go ahead.

Then there was also your description of me as “relentless”. Why would I change my ways now? I’m just getting started.

What are you going to do? Write something about me? I’ve got my own stories. And mine are all true.

 

Gotcha.

 

        

 

 

 

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