Steel:

Heart; mind; fists; will

I am the strongest in my fragile little bubble

No one in it is okay

Neither am I

But if I break no one survives

I can't even cry

The tears are stuck behind this brick wall in here

The one that bears the callously scrawled titles of "protector" "leader" "off duty unofficial counselor"

None of this graffiti is in my handwriting

I didn't choose this

But to chip them away or scrub them off is to remove a piece of me

Isn't it?

If you don't choose who to be, but you accept the burdens as others place them on you

Are those pieces yours or not?

Welcome to the job honey

I'll be your manager, Dumb A. Heart

But my nickname is Emotion, so call me whichever you like

I ain't gonna lie to ya sugar (well, not for now)

It's a tricky sticky job here

Bein' a PRN peace of mind piece of ass

Just like any job, you gotta give some to get some

All you'll need for each client is your time

And a little chunk of your soul (no one needs all of that, anyway)

We serve a special demographic

Those who need a little...practice in between the "real thing," as it were

Well, they'll come to you

The playboys on the off week

The Army boys killin' time until they ship off

Anyone who needs a pastimer time waster fill-in love of their life

Darlin', that's where you come in

Now you just let them bounce their pretty words and their promises off you

Don't let it go to your head; they ain't gonna mean it, so try to keep your distance

If you fall

Welp, hazard of the job

And Service With a Sob is our motto anyway

Your paychecks will come whenever the clients run off

And boy do we make a fortune here; here's your first one in advance

Payable to: Your agony

In the amount of: "I'm sorry"s

Date: His convenience

Signed: Heartbreaker

I was quite comfortable on my tidy little shelf

Oh no, no one ever wanted to pick me up

Quiet, closed, a little scary looking

The few who window shopped put me back down in favor of the other shinier ones

And that was more than alright

But then you plucked me out of the back row and took me away

Hey! I was at home there!

We walked through your front door, indignation burning through me

A nice house, sure, but not mine

I sat on your mantle, guarded, unsure

But then you smiled at me

And I felt the shutters crack a little

Fast forward a bit

Still quiet, closed, a little scary looking

But pretty and sparkling whenever you glanced at me

Fast forward a bit more...

You found another one.

Shinier maybe, maybe not. 

Didn't matter when you set it right in front of me where we couldn't see each other anymore.

I cried in the shadows like I used to every now and again when the loneliness hit me.

But I tried not to let you hear.

So you wouldn't be upset too.

One day the wind shifted and you dusted and moved that shinierornotshinier one to a different spot

And suddenly

Oh! Hey you! I almost forgot about you. You're the best prettiest sparkliest of them all!

I'm open again, and not crying, and there you are looking at me the way I've been silently craving

Until later.

When that fucking shinierornotshinier grimy little thing crawls back in front of me.

And you forget about me again.

And round and round it goes, I'm your in between nice to look at thing when there's nothing nicer in front.

I'll never get a permanent place at the front of the mantle.

I don't know how to learn to be okay with that.

I want to push them all onto the hardwood floor, but I know that would make you sad.

And you'd just buy more to put around me anyway.

You should've left me on my shelf

I didn't care when no one looked at me there

The trouble with dancing on the edge of a cliff is sometimes you slip

You skid down the impossibly steep incline

Screaming and clawing for purchase when you realize no one's there at the bottom

Letting go and closing your eyes when the mirage of a safe landing comes again

Back and forth up and down 

Your hands and arms and eyes and throat are raw from this endless alternating drop and cling routine

Night 1 (and 2 if you're lucky as fuck)

happy sighing sleeping sweet dreams closeness everything's fine

Night 2 (or 3, see the aforementioned good fortune)

crying gasping can't sleep nightmare distance nothing is okay

And rinse and repeatrepeatrepeatrepeatrepeatrepeat

Why can't I stop

Who willingly stays on the cliff, letting it bleed them dry and gouge divots in their back?

Someone crazy mad fixated obsessed insane

Psychosis maybe?

Or just stupidity

I'll keep screaming and grasping and letting go in this dark to light and back again pulsating aching addicting fever dream

Because at this point I just don't remember what else to do

Someday you'll catch me

Or I'll hit the ground

Doesn't matter anymore

Possession/protection

One without the other

A tender balance to strike

Fear is what tips the scales

And the shielding hands become prison bars

And the guiding words turn to shouted accusations

Let me go

Let me out

My wings have been clipped

Far too long

You feel fine I know

Possession/protection

You forgot how to hold the leash without strangling me

"Love" is the driving force

But malice by any other name

Would cut as deep

And zealous commandment under guise of selfless indignation

Is still a stifling staccato beat

Sometimes things are so beautiful they're frightening

Lightning

Volcanoes

Fire

The things that have the power to kill you will almost make you damn happy to die

Twisted?

Maybe (probably) (definitely)

But true all the same

I've gotta add your smile to this list

Of deadly elegant things

Because the first time I saw it

I knew I was beyond screwed

The world lit up, just like it does in the middle of a burning forest

Twice as fatal

Twenty times as captivating

And I hope to face the terror (thrill) all the time

So, keep smiling

(And I'll write you this letter  about it because you need to know how special it is

And I'm bad with the words with no screen and keys to hide behind)

I will keep slowly falling off the cliff

And be damn happy to do it

clickcheck clickcheck clickcheck nothing yet

Focus on something else

waitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaiting timecheck nothingyet has it only been three minutes? thank you time stamps

Focus

nothankyou clickcheckclickcheckclickcheck nothing yet

Ding! One new message 

yay it's time

taptaptaptaptaptap thoughts out across the miles

clickcheckclickcheckclickcheck itbeginsagain

waitingwaitingwaitwaitwaiting whoelsewhatelsewhy whoever whatever whyever, does it matter?

No, it doesn't matter

oh yesyesyesyesyes it does but ohnonononono it shouldn't

Pathetic

Loser

Nothing no one psycho piece of shit pull yourself together

trying?I'mtryingtrying very hard don't you understand?

No one cares that you're trying

No one is going to want you this way

SILENCE

okay.

.

.

clickcheckclickcheckclickcheckclickcheck

Ding!

I tried.

I am standing in a throne room

With fragile walls made of conflicts and dark emotions

Here the guilt and the ineptitude weigh so heavily on me

That I am forced prostrate on the floor

Sobbing, screaming, begging for forgiveness

Staring into the face of my twin protectors

My twin oppressors

They sit on the same throne, intertwined, curled around each other like the serpentine beasts they are

Obsession laughs when my screams are so loud they shake the walls

Anxiety smiles, pleased, when all I have left to offer are my doubts (certainties) as tribute to the twisted crowns

And they both slither onto me and cover me drown me suffocate me

When all I have left to say is "I'm sorry" and "I tried"

They whisper to me that it will never happen again

Obsession shows me the proof as many times as I can handle

Anxiety reassures me that my worst nightmares will indeed come true and they will solve everything

Quietly behind my back, they gesture with their dripping tails to their servants Depression and Old Habits and order them to fortify the castle walls, make them unbreakable

It takes all I have to throw their grimy, well-worn bodies off of me and to rip a hole in the wall before they have the chance to chain it board it brick it make it impassable

It is a tiring task, indeed

The world is fast, furious, hectic, disjointed and aggressive

The only way I know how to survive is to grasp those "empty" spaces, the quiet moments

Feeling peals of thunder reverberating through me during a rare summer storm

Sinking into the unsteady rumble of a cranky old car down an endless highway

Inhaling that first bit of dew-soaked air on a spring morning

Losing focus in the achingly perfect crescendo of Bach or Beethoven

Getting dizzy in the absolute quiet of a swirling snowstorm

Hearing that one voice that drowns everything out and fills everything up at the same time

These are the beats in between

The pauses and lulls and track changes of life's album that makes the whole thing work

It's the silence that is the music I live for

I'd like you to put yourself in my shoes a second. I need a moment out of them.

You're the odd duck - irrevocably so; it's been that way since you were five and it's not changing any time soon. Uptight. Obsessive. Buzzkill. Clingy. Sanctimonious. These and their synonyms are your constant monikers. Well, maybe not constant - occasionally people get creative ("Hitler reincarnated" is one of my personal favorites), and the thousand different faces you've tried to dawn your whole life to cover it up have sometimes held things at bay. Some longer than others. But eventually all the masks (shields) will crumble and these chains will be shackled to you once again.

You cannot walk into a room and blend in. I mean, it's utterly impossible. There will be nowhere you fit seamlessly, no one with whom you can strike up a pleasant meaningless conversation and simply fade away after the day is done. If it's not your awkward posture, your weird physical tics, or your inability to speak out loud without thinking too long, then it'll be your resting bitch face or your improperly perceived aura of arrogance that drives people away.

There will be a miraculous few with whom you honestly click. The few who don't mind your weirdness, don't mind your tendency to want to talk all the time, the few who actually finally get to see your real face. 

They won't stay. You won't know why. You'll get to the point where you let your guard down and they will get to see more of you than the rest of the world sees - in precious cases, more than anyone else has ever seen - and something about that real you will push them away, or push them into secretly hating you and hiding it. Most of them won't tell you what it is (and I do mean most), even if you demand it. More than likely you won't demand the reason, though, because there's an endless string of options that you've been trying your best and failing to fix for more than a decade. And so, whether it's a slow, gentle drift away or a hard, clean break, they will be gone. 

The drifting hurts more than the clean breaks, if you're honest, because, God, you're one to wonder. You are the master of What Could've Been. Because of this, you never give up, you stupid little thing. You promise yourself that you will, that this one was the last time, that one hurt the most and no, you don't want it anymore. But someone will change your mind. And you'll go through it all over again. You're a car racing towards an endless parade of brick walls. And yet, no matter how bashed up and broken you seem to get, you limp your way as fast as you can towards the next one. How long until you're so crumpled you can't even move anymore? Can you even make yourself care?

Probably not.