“I strip. In low light. In the silence of my room. I strip like an act of confession. Unclothing my meticulous mind and teasing language from the vestry of my soul.”

Burnt mirror, smeared glass. Do you like what you see? If my body is a temple, then my poetry is the darkest vestry. My mouth is a chalice, and these words are sacramental.

Still, I wrote. Even when the police where coming. Even when my whole body hurt, and the slightest sound would make me quake.

Go on then, color me broken whilst I feign my surprise. Let me summon some sorrow for this wreckage inside.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, and watch me spark like a match tossed to tinder.

With all these past fears still written on my skin, it bruises me to let you in. Trauma’s that this body holds, still guard these tactile lips untold.

A seed of suspicion. A sprout of doubt. A sapling of worry. But what an oak of strength I’ve become.

I was told I could break free if I wanted to. That my wings would mend with time. But how can I mend a part of me that was never built to weather a storm?

Let me show you how words can make merriment from the most bitter melancholy. How words softly spoken, can heal even the most insidious of wounds.

But are they protection or a cage? These ribs that ensnare my heart so.

Guess who’s flying free now? You, a mere speck of the ground. And I, lost and found amongst the clouds.

You pack your whole life away as many times as I have, and it’s no more than routine. But in you I’ve found a home, more so than anywhere I’ve been.

I couldn’t care less how much money a person has, or what their job title is. Show me a person who seeks out the beauty in a wreckage; who’ll take the remnants of their troubles and stitch a sail from the tatters.

What’s the end game? Well, when hate is your agenda, and my own is but love, then this game is not one in which you feature, and my end, is a far-flung world from yours.

And if it’s true that trust, like happiness is a choice, then I’ll take this leap of faith.

He loves me. He loves me not. Perhaps I’m one that fate forgot. Perhaps I wasn’t made for this, to lose myself in love’s first kiss.

I sell my pain in beauty. Wrap it in words. Package it in pleasantries, and deliver it in verse.