Ripped into thinner shards.

If you've taken half of me,

know that you've taken all of me.

For I cannot give you anymore than what I am.

Though I don't have much, I can search for the rest...

But I'm not quite sure that I had anything in me to begin with. 

I want to change,

but there are so many different voices going on in my mind at once

that I have no idea which direction I need to go in.

I've been open as the water and 

I can feel the dam forcing closed.

I know that knowing me isn't an easy thing.

You never get the whole person because

you get everything at a first glance.

But, the only thing I'll never say out loud are 

the things I should be screaming at the top of my lungs. 

Sometimes, I feel like the core of me was ripped out by wolves.

Whenever my soul goes to reach for a tissue, it never finds the box 

because I dropped it on the way.

Like everything that made me myself was torn at the seams

and I have no way of getting it back. 

In my head, 

I make up an image.

It is one neat, pristine sheet of paper.

And in an instant, 

I see bloodied hands go with their red quills and engrave their dirty words into it.

The words that I see when I look at that sheet of paper are the only true self images I have.

When they've finished with their gory masterpiece, 

the tear it apart, 

sliver

by sliver. 

As I get thrown away like the trash I was seen as, 

part of it gets shoved back into me.

Doctors told me the worst, but 

I know that's the realest reality.

Stitched up like an old stuffed bear, 

this is what you get.

Everything is out into the air because 

I know that if I don't tell the world,

I'm left shaking and hiding all of the things that cause the sinking into my chest.

And the things that are left are visibly rotting me to the core.

These are the unknowns that decay and cling to my stitches until they bleed a little. 

I see you and I know that I can't attatch myself to you because of

all the pain I pretend not to have. 

I hope that you don't know what keeps me so awake at night. 

I hope that I never have to know what you think of 

what keeps me awake at night.

I can't let anyone see any of the true monsters under my bed so

I hide them with smaller ones.

But I know that my miniscule demons are the largest of yours.

Which is why my sheet of paper covers them up and keeps 

me warm enough to 

keep the air in my lungs and the pink in my face.

If everyone in the world looked as they did inside,

I know what this would look like.

I would be a beautiful corpse.

Died on her way to tell you that she was okay like she always did.

Lips blue and a body cold as the ice that lived inside me.

Hair thick with light gray frost that 

attatched itself to each one of the ebony strands that the wind had whipped right through.

The tears frozen right into my eyes-

though they wouldn't have been shed in front of you anyway.

The parts of me that were too dark for anyone to see, brought to complete life.

This dead princess was priceless upon meeting your eyes.

But then she ran.

I wouldn't have faced you with my body, but 

none of my physical presence had a hold on my soul.

Harboring all of my tragedies within each and every cell.

I know you won't come after me. 

I know I wouldn't.

Human Dignity + Compassion = Peace.