She dusts herself off with gasoline and matches.
She tries to cover her scars with nicotine patches.
She looks up with her broken glass eyes
and asks without words for me to refrain from lies.

That's what she's used to; half-mumbled truths
which after further examination only proves
to be as sterile as the type of fluids
which escape from underneath swollen eyelids.

I hear her story and I can only weep.
This is the type of pain no amount of deep
cognitive behavioral therapy can undo,
but she tries because she's desperate to become new.

She's like the light bulb in the closet,
flickering for dear life inside its socket.
She can sense her impending end
and has no hope for a better friend,
I plead with her and plead with her
but she cannot imagine a world or learn
to accept that there is beauty inside;
the trauma simply has caused her magnificence to hide.
She doesn't know,
she just does not know,
and that is why
when I hear her story
I can only weep.

02/15/2014

Posted on 02/15/2014
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