DodgeBall.

I won't let you win- you won't break me

not again, i am stronger than anything you have ever faced.

Play your games, probe my mind, read my quirks- they tell you nothing of what i am or who i will become.

I won't break down my walls- i will reinforce and refuse to let you in.

Your eyes reflect the shimmer of white light- hope. But i won't

let you in not this time- my mind is my own

and not your personal playground.

Photographic Memoir

things never were ok- you said they were but the tears never healed. Its downright painful to say goodbye- its hard to have you within my grasp. It's funny how you glance my way in a crowd of people and smile. We never really moved on- because it ended as quickly as it started. You played with fire and now i have to rise from the ashes of a past not lived.

with the winter chill breathing your name on my lips i now know the truth- it was all a game and you played your game and stole my heart. Your pictures relive a time before we were forced to grow up. Every memory spread out upon the kitchen floor- i laid it all down and you burned the pictures of your regret---its me.

It's only me on this road now- you are no longer beside me- you abandoned me to the elements too afraid to admit anything. My heart is no longer beating- it hurts too much.

The war wages on inside my mind for everyone to see but only guess at what used to be. I want it all to disappear- everything except the pictures of you and the pictures of me branded upon my eyelids.

I'm drowning and you stopped giving a shit before i even awoke.

Frozen

You stopped fighting, you gave up the one thing that made you special...life.

Now i find myself questioning the very thing you gave up. You left for greener pastures and I am all alone. I wonder why you left and why you stayed in the place so dark that no light found your smile. I reached for you, but you fell transparent through my fingers, you stopped fighting and I couldn't fight for your last breath because you faced your demons alone.

Now i am alone.

Far from Normal

He was a boy without a father-living, breathing, searching to be something better then the past that followed him.

He was a boy without a family- torn from pictures, journals, videos- forgotten and scorched he weeped.

He was a boy without a friend- to follow his footprints in the untouched snow- always alone breathing the air of emptiness but living with the strength to be something more than the norm.

Sight

I can't find the courage to journey outside- the rays of sunshine peak through the cracks of the window casting shadows across the room- I can't open the window, I can't pull up the binds- i can't feel the wind on my face- barred perhaps, barred in my own mind- It's harder to pretend that nothing is wrong- that breathing doesn't ache and that living doesn't kill. Trapped in my mind- pounding on some invisible barrier that keeps me from reconnecting- foolish i know- but i feel so trapped and no one can hear my screams.

Echo Letter: 3

You won't answer my dying calls, your silence is all i deserve- i know that now. I became selfish and fell to a poison that claimed your life. You once smiled and played with a language only we knew, but somehow you refuse to answer and it hurts with ever breath- every breath that comes and goes- i can feel it dragging out the last of my sanity to be replaced with fear- but what would you know of this- you refuse to answer to my calls as I search under the peach trees.

As breathing gets harder, i find the razor that cuts my skin hurts less and bleeds more- because i know you are never coming back- maybe thats why it hurts to think of you and feel the sunshine. I broke you and stole away a calm that kept you whole- i don't blame you for not answering for all i do is claw at the heart that you gave me so willing- i never meant to hurt the one person i could count on but i did and now your hand holds the razor and cuts between flesh and bone.

Echo Letter:2

I can't lose you, don't you see how much you mean to me.

But, how can you? when i am too afraid to show my face, afraid to show my scars.

You are fading and I cant tug you back except to protect you in my untainted memories- back in a time when you weren't afraid to touch and laugh with me, back when your smile made the holes less frayed. Now, i find that you live in a world that quotes melodies of classical music and broken guitar strings- that I am not present in that canvas- you won't know my secret until i lay dying amongst peonies in western winter- you won't know how i longed for the days when you cared for me- you won't know how i fell for you and you weren't there to catch me.

Your hurting and i can't unwind the past, the past that i stole from you with selfish aching of an untamed heart- I can't change the how your fingers fit perfectly between mine- Things that now bring hurt and pain- pain you mask behind your coy smile and laughing eyes- only i see the damage my wildness did to you and now i can't change it

perhaps the cutting wont bleed as bad- perhaps you will fade and never look back?

The Echo Letters: 1

It's not like I mean something....

hiding desperately in a room full of chairs and tables, i don't understand the meaning of my hiding.

Until he appears followed by by his flock of judging friends...the ones that judged and condemned me forcing me to close in on myself. Yet, even among the growing crowd i know that i cannot hide. Sitting alone, trying to look busy doesn't help much when it comes to trying to avoid your gaze- but then again its not like you are looking for me. I can't call out his name to meet him. An outsider visibly hidden the only writing letters. I can feel the shaking starting up again, but it never really left the first time. I have always struggled to make that special bond with people, the friendship relationship. Even with people I am close to, I find i am unable to join them, let alone look up. Trapped somewhere between a lie told long ago and the emptiness of not knowing my own identity.

Perhaps i am just a ghost- living and breathing in a fractal world that only means something to you.

I stare at the floating ice shards and wonder if you can see the pain amongst the fear written in my eyes. As i walk past you I silently hope I remain a ghost.