Rotten Flowers In Faded White.

         When you smile, is it because you're genuinely happy? Is it because you're conspiring against me? I've never seen you smile. You say that you smile all the time - you smiled just twenty seconds ago. But I've never seen you smile - genuinely.

         Every time you laugh, the sound haunts me, and rings in my ears for days and days and it drives me insane. Your voice sends chills down my spine, and a deathly cold wraps around my bones so when I move they scrape and scream and I'm immobilised.

         You paralyze me.

         You're different to different people, an ever-changing wall of watercolor on a canvas background. Sometimes I want to tear your walls down and expose you for who you really are, but the guilt would weigh me down, just like the tonne-weight iron shackles you tie to my ankles. Every time you open your mouth, it gets a little heavier.

         I'll drown if you knock me into open water, and it seems like I'm always teetering on the edge of a tier, with the weights fifty-fifty.

         When you ask me for favors, do you ask me with the intention of being reimbursed later? Do you expect care in return for your blatant hostility? Do you expect me to simply disregard every time you've ever fucked me over?

         Why do you constantly hide away whenever I offer my help? Every time I feel like my confidence is brimming, you shun my efforts and you leave me to the darkness.

         I often entertain the idea of letting the darkness claim me.

         But do you know what keeps me from doing so?

         You.

         I keep fading, and fading, and getting fainter and fainter, but the glimmer of opacity that keeps my heart beating is the satisfaction of knowing that I can help you, and you can help me in return. If only.

         When you're near, I can't decide whether to club you to death with the nearest object or walk away, because everything I do is always wrong, wrong, wrong, and I hate being wrong. I hate failing, so I never try. Even if I wanted to kill you, I couldn't, because God won't let me. If I hurt you, he'd let the planet have it's way with my head, and it would crush me with my own relentless guilt. Mercy doesn't know my name, and I pretend I don't know yours.

         You cut me down with single syllables, and even if your words are copiously laced with sweet sugary overtones, I know what you're thinking, and it's enough to drive me to suicide. I've seen you fall so many times that before you stumble, it comes as second nature to hold your hand. Every time you trip, your chains yank me down with you. But I always land before you - if I don't take the impact for you, it just hurts me anyway.

         I know that I'll never see you smile, because you're never happy, you're never satisfied, never whole. I try and I try and I try, but no matter how long I tinker with your controls, I can never fix you. The time is always off, the joints never click into place as they should, and the paint on your face is always a tone too dark. Why do you always have to be in control? Why can't you let me fix what is broken? I know the glass heart within that porcelain chest is broken, because when you cry I can hear the shards of it clinking against one another.

         You set me up to fail, but know this.

         I will not fail this time.