Category: Where Demons Tread

“Is it really you, or am I going mad?”

No matter how we feel
We’ve got a taste for one another
And a few good years to kill

No matter what is real
It seems that even in Arcadia
You walk beside me still

—-

(Sleep Token lyrics from “Even In Arcadia”)

“I find it to be unfair that we have both in the past felt compelled to censor ourselves in order to retain what meager rations hinting at the faintest specks of love that we were portioned.

Yet, our endurance and fortitude against great challenges where weaker wills would have perished speaks well of us – and it is to be hoped that we have now deserved to receive much better treatments.”

I know you
We are the same

In how we transform
Adversity

A rare finding
Indeed

“Where is it?

That wound that still bleeds?

Lead me to it, and I will try to help absolve and heal it.

Will you do the same for me?”

They’d slander many things,
But we know truth from lies.

“You lit-tle beeas-tie…”

The basic realities of my life
Are me trying to linger in bed

Giving my systems more time
To rest before burn out again

Then staying in motion for as
Long as I can manage output

It’s a dead-end cycle recurring
Without exciting alternatives

You have become the voice in my head
My metaphors fall short in the end

My life is torn, my bones, they bleed
Will the pain stop if we go deeper?

Follow me between the jaws of fate
So I can have you to myself for once

—

(From Lyrics of Sleep Token’s “Vore”)

“No matter the cost of rain…”

I’m amazed at ways
That I feel about you

Having buried what
You’d stirred in me

Thinking we wouldn’t
Ever meet eye to eye

But when I turned back
You were looking at me

Which shocked composure
Aching to know you more

Every day the lure haunts
And seems to taunt need

Which is why I avoided
Intentions in first place

But I’d been ignoring
Something important

Thinking I could forget
If let hide deep inside

But without it
I’ve felt empty

“Nobody else can pull me out…”

But,

“Even if I’m on my own…”

They will try to dissuade us, but
If we believe we’ll always triumph

We’re both shy but
Emboldened to try

Will you come to me
Across the distance

Far beyond reasons’
Reach for me asking?

I just need to know
Give me permission

I’ve come to my edge
To bridge this chasm

As staring at you from
My side’s insecurities

Unsure if my instincts
Have guided correctly

Your words internalized
Electricity to my wiring

Circuit breakers flipping
From response’s surging

Awakened in readiness
God how we’ve waited!

But worried cautious as
Never been here before

Knowing our timing is right
Yet having not experienced

Communion’s resurrection
Tell me how to meet you

Oh there’s only so much
I can overextend to you

Witness my hesitance
Grip in self-protection

Because I need certainty
You’ll call my heart home

“I love to see you smile…

I hope your smiles mean that you are experiencing more moments of joy in your life.”

“It would be nice to move out from pain into a new paradigm, with you.”

“I do not want to go back into hell to overturn a ruling that belongs in my favor – but I have to.”

Would you place me on
A bed covered in petals

Tenderly kissing seeking
The still hidden wounds?

Sounds romantic doesn’t it?
What a dream to hold onto

But I’d prefer flowers
Alive with their thorns

It’s just you in my arms
And our love unadorned

That would raise me as
Queen to the heavens

“It matters, and it will always matter to me.”

Did you know that you are also a healer?
But you’ve been tending poisoned soil

So there have been very few blooms
That could grow as proof of efforts

“I don’t want nor need control,
Just trying to cultivate success.”

How can we overcome learned insecurities
Making sensory tendrils recoil in anxieties

When we wish to reach out and touch love
But had tips and worse burned when tried?

Thinking of you I become emboldened to
Reach out and take you into my embrace

Looking into your eyes with conviction
Affirming against doubts’ past poisons

But I can only find the perfect timing
In whispers of daydreams filtering in

Past imprinted harborings of damage
We are both perhaps still restricted by

I want us to be freed from these shrouds of
Unfulfilling experiences miscommunicated

Would a path be to recondition ourselves
Applying Cognitive Behavioral retraining?

For surely having had our hearts injured
We must counter by stronger assertions

Although I suspect that experiencing much
Positive reinforcement together will retrain

On levels no other therapy could or would
Create in deeper healing we have needed

I’ve always overachieved and
To succeed, overcompensated

How is it that you could still
Find me attractive if I don’t?

Maybe I’ve spent too much time
Around wrong male simulations

And according to current abilities
Perhaps I am relatively exceeding

I saw another potential form of you today
Deferent elegance and gentile-slicked hair

It is interesting to be tantalized by mystery
But my heart’s weary without knowing you

We’ve had to learn to harden
Honed edges from innocence

Where love in purity’s desecration
Left feastering wounds unmended

But a cure is believing together
That we can start all over again

No longer uncertain and
This time better invested

“I tried to take a closer step toward your true form today, but the way was barred firm – securing only your own intentions.”