Like this:

You are,
Every broken promise,
Every longing heart,
Every tear I ever let fall from my life torn face.

And while you are all these thing,
You are also the smoke from my lips in the cold winter storm,
The laugh that interrupts  everyone at every table,
The hug that breaks the pattern of being love disabled.

But I’ve never even had a hug from you,
Something that comes around in my fever dreams,
Cutting through reality like only the truth,
You are the eyes that make me cry and make me scream.

You are my dream,
The dream that one day things will change,
I will leave my home and call you pain,
Then one day, things will change.

But what of the chance that you don’t like what you are?
What if you wake up and stare at that scar?
And it turns and twists under the light,
And hangs in your mind all night.

What happens when you no longer love yourself?
When your body revolts and your mind melts,
When you cry and scream and drive your car way too fast,
And then you dream that you live in a place of the past.

What happens when you quit drinking and eating and caring for yourself?
When you look in the mirror and see nothing but a shelf?
A shelf that is holding all the cares of the world,
All the anger and hollowness of when mom and dad fight,
All the monsters and big brothers who sneak in your room at night.

And when you wake up screaming drenched in sweat,
When your no longer breathing but your heart beat is so fast,
Are you really feeling everything that you know you can,
Are you trying to numb all the mistakes and worries with cold showers?
With a drink from the bottle and a cigarette from a  pack,
Are you eating till you puke and then eating some more,
Spending thousands on new clothes that only end up on the floor,
Crawling into a sleeping bag in the back of a van,
Next to a stranger who calls himself a man,
Who you are giving yourself to only for the pleasure,
Are you numbing the pain and losing your treasure?

I only ask because you are a crystal in a dark cavern,
Hanging from the roof like a star in heaven,
And when you refuse to be translucent there is no one who can see you,
There is no one to take you down from your underground life,
Wrap you in paper and box you up tight,
And move you to a display where there is proper light.

Are you still hiding?

You Are, Are You by Joshua Grider is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at aibcs.wordpress.com.

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