On Icarus Wings

The Darkness Knows Me by Name (interlude)

darling, i must confess:

the darkness knows me by name.

i dance with shadows on the walls

cloaked in a dress made of starless night,

the colors of my soul seeping through fissures in my skin

and staining pages with poetry.

i hold hands with my demons

on the worst of nights,

and they bring me comfort for

they are as ruined as i.

love, i bare my heart before you:

the shadows are friends of mine.

i find solace in them when

i am drunk on insomnia and heartache.

i am at home in the blackest of nights,

when they sing me to sleep with a phantom lullaby.

they are the only constant i have,

when the stars are lost behind clouds and

the moon waxes and wanes,

the darkness of the night behind has always stayed.

i will ask you only once:

do not feed me lies,

do not try to fill the emptiness you see in me

with fragile promises of staying and empty empathy.

i do not need another person to tell me

to push away my devil,

to banish my knight in rusted armor who would go down

fighting for me,

to exorcise the demons you assume haunt me,

to tear myself apart fighting the pieces that

you are too scared to love.

darling, are you afraid of the dark?

the darkness goes by my name—

it is a part of me.

i do not need fixing.

i was never broken.

do not ask me to walk away from the shadows

just so i can walk with you in a facade of light,

dressed in gowns of liquid gold, draped in rays of sun.

i will not hide my scars or

drown myself in stardust,

i will not blind myself with light

so i am more pleasant for you to look at,

so i am easier for you to love.

darling, i bare my soul before you:

i will no longer hide.

if you cannot love me as a whole,

both the girl who carries sunflowers in her pocket

and the girl who confides her secrets to shadows,

if you force me to choose between loving you and loving myself,

i will walk away.

you see, my shadow--

it will follow me loyally

into the brightest of days and the darkest of nights.

it will love me unconditionally,

seeing silent strength where

you searched for stars and found none,

singing poetry when you screamed demons.

I do not need you and your conditional love.

the darkness knows me by name.

and it will stay by my side as we

search til the ends of the earth for light

that does not try to chase away my shadows,

that will accept me as i am--

nothing more,

nothing less.