Life Cycle

I stripped my soul for you

Talons dug deep, wrenching

my ribs from my chest.

A massacre of tendons and muscles

dripping and screaming with protest,

"No! This isn't how it's suppose to be!"

Everything was a struggle.

To love you was a struggle,

to give and give and give,

never expecting to receive

and becoming overjoyed when

that sacred gift was bestowed toward me.

To conquer my fear was a struggle,

how many nights, countless

I assure you, did I stay up

praying to God that you were nothing, absolutely nothing, like my father.

To over come your past, because you brought just as much baggage as I did into this, was a struggle.

Can any other girl say that

her love was so great, so mind numbingly brilliant, that she was capable of making you forget your own name.

Does she know every small

bone in your closet that you

hoped would fall between

the floorboards and disappear ??

To breathe without you was a struggle.

Because you promised I would

never have to be reminded of it,

to have the icy tendrils of

loneliness consume me

and for your words to

float away,

promises strapped to the

necks if dandelion seeds,

like doves off to a foreign place

delivering messages to people

we will never meet.

Because we will never

be them.

So the next time you

see your friends, and I

mean your real friends,

not the ones you've

convinced yourself are.

The next time you see your friends,

confess to them

that you can't live without me

and that it is a struggle.

Life without me is a struggle.

Because she doesn't carry your

eyes in her smile, and the jar

of butterflies doesn't erupt in her

stomach, like they do in yours

every time you see me, even though

you pretend you can't stand the concept of my existence.

She doesn't tell you that you are

beautiful, strange to tell a boy, I know. But you are undoubtedly breathtaking.

She hasn't spent hours memorizing

your features and she couldn't draw

them if she were blinded.

She doesn't hold your heart

the same way; with soft, forgiving, open palms.

So when you see her next, hold her

as tightly as you can and kiss her.

Does she taste like me?? No??

Then for the rest of your life--

that will be your struggle.