「 PAINT ME IN SHADES OF THE SHADOWS 」

a night when broken dreams
are swept under the table
only to be replaced
with promises
our adrenaline made
rather than our mouths.
a night when a million
hearts throb
with life and vitality
with hope that maybe
just maybe the next three
hundred and sixty five days
won't see a wound weeping
a heart clenching
a dagger bleeding.
when promises of love
are made when music drowns
your sorrows but inside
you know it's all still there.
when glitter and makeup are
enough to mask your face
when nobody asks why you
painted stars around your scars.
when the clock strikes 12:01
and it's all back to reality.
when the dreams swept
under the table finally peek
out to see hungover lies
and weeping wounds.
the stitches break out
and the heart tears apart
because broken dreams
make it cry and it remembers.
it remembers the last new year
when you sat with your mother
under the christmas wreath
that father bought.
it wasn't christmas anymore
but it pained your mother to take it off so it hung there like the
empty promises you made to
yourself on that lined paper.
january you want to paint a girl
with her heart in her hands
her scars smiling as they weep
her hair tangled with
cosmic winds that blow
from fluttering papers of her
unpublished manuscript
her smile stretching out
while her fingers press a little
too tightly on the pumping flesh
and it pains to see her but she
is beautiful and you call her
january.
february you paint her face
with that hollow smile and
vibrant eyes that holds
the hope of the next three
hundred and thirty four days.
you show it to your mother who
weeps because the girl looks
so sad yet so beautiful and
her heart breaks from the
stitches that she had carefully
strung so she goes to bed
hoping that she falls asleep
before she falls apart.
her smile is pained but
beautiful and you call it
february.
august you paint her smiling
scars with little stitches of your
affection on torn flesh
of their indifference. they smile
with hope that maybe
just maybe the next one
hundred and fifty one days
won't hurt as much and now
it reminds mother too much
of herself so she seeks comfort
with a blade. you would be concerned
but it makes her happy so
you don't say anything
just paint her skin
marked with sins that you call
august.
november the girl is almost
finished but you ran out
of red to paint her lips
and her heart pumping beneath
her tear stained fingertips.
mother said the blade hurt
but it took away the pain
in her heart. if you did so too
then maybe just maybe for
the next fifty nine days
no one would make fun of
the half moons under your eyes
the way you wore the same clothes
every day the way your scars
burnt when you played.
so you draw rivers of red
over your pain and you dip
your thumb in the blossom.
the canvas is painted with
your past and present with
shadows of doubt and flitting
moments of hope. the blade no
longer scares you
and you call it
november.
december you made pain
sound so hauntingly beautiful
pain is to take the hurt away
but you fell in love with
the ache so much that
you went out to look for it.
you finished the girl and now
she stands with her heart
in her hands
her scars smiling as they weep
her hair tangled with
cosmic winds that blow
from fluttering papers of her
unpublished manuscript
her smile stretching out
while her fingers press a little
too tightly on the pumping flesh
and it pains to see her but she
is beautiful and you call her
december.