I remember when I first smoked.
I thought I'd be coughing for weeks,
but now I smoke a pack a day as if I can't get enough of inhaling a sickly sweet smoke into my lungs.
It reminded me of family reunions and hugs from my long dead grandparents.  
I swore I'd never get addicted.

I remember when I first drank.
I attempted to drown the shot,
but it seemed like the liquid crawled back up my throat like a fire looking for a burn, but I kept going back for more.
I kept on getting burned, drowning another after another until I couldn't remember my name or the date
when in reality I was trying to forget yours and the day I met you.
I swore I'd never get addicted.

I remember the first time I cut.
Blood poured from my wrist in ribbons of red
and in a sickly way someone in me might have thought it was beautiful,
the way it fell to the bathroom floor in a
drip drip drip waterfall.
the razor cut through skin as easy as a butter knife through butter
and at first I didn't know I would love it so much.
I swore I'd never get addicted.

I remember the first day I met you.
Your brown eyes could go from happy to sad in a split second,
but the grin that formed on your face like an artist carved it on there was so contagious I found myself grinning, too.
Your hands were always cold, holding mine, touching my waist, moving my hair out of my face.
I kissed them to keep them warm.
Your kiss sent fireworks throughout my body, like it was 4th of July
and I was just a little kid screaming at the colors and the sounds as your lips explored mine, and my hands explored your body.
I could never get enough of you.
I swore I'd never get addicted.

you are a
hidden oasis
and as i
pause
to drink,
i find that
you are
only an
illusion

I regret sleeping on that couch.
I was never very good at sleeping alone, and sleeping on that couch only made it worse.
Maybe that's why I clutch my pillow at night like my life depends on it.

A pounding headache is all I'm left with while my battered soul still remains there on that couch.
But it's time that I take it back.
It's time that I make a trade.
An eye for an eye, they always say.

So its time that I step out of my perfect fantasy and face reality, because I've become a ****** human being from searching for perfection and love.
We all know we can't obtain it.
I created my own hell, building blocks made out of self loathing, self pity, anger, the list goes on and on.
But every hell must freeze over.

That couch I slept on?
It's in my own mind, residing in the hell I created, smack in the middle of the thousands of hands that grab and choke and claw.
It's right in the middle of my inner demons.

I may still be sad in the morning, if I wake up...
But I'll sleep better knowing that I accepted the past.
Even if I still regret sleeping on that couch.

So,
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I know that my soul is mine to keep.
But if I should die before I wake,
I know that all of my struggles were not a mistake.

Do you remember
What we talked about then?
Lit by the thin moon and under the stars
They praised us like pedestrians praise oncoming cars
And we were inside, solving crimes
When we dug our graves that night

And I miss your touch like tomorrow's sun
Misses the moon and the horizon
It's a shame that it's the truth
A hundred bottles down are you still the sleuth
You were back then? With your tongue made of poison

(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.