Monsters are real and they like to tell stories about us.
We're scary because we can walk around in the day light.
We only check our closets to make sure no one found the skeletons.

What you became is something that I find difficult to explain.
I promise that I try, but sometimes my mind won't let me.
I'm still fighting the instinct to protect you, long after you're gone.
If I wasn't cursed with hindsight you would remain a child in my eyes.
Do you truly deserve that kind of liberation?
Nobody wants to play an equal role in helping me destroy these memories.

Yesterday, I heard the echo of our laughter in the cries of a lost child.
I held her hand and waited for the mother to come rescue her.
She hugged me and thanked me for keeping the girl safe.
I never feel good about myself anymore.
It hasn't felt right to touch anyone accept the ghosts I see in my dreams.

This isn't about love or leprosy and I'm not a rat floating down the river on a wheel of cheese.

Do you see what I mean?
No.

I think you would have laughed, but these are words you'll never read.
I know that.
Please.
Please.
Please .
Understand that I know I'm talking to myself.
I also know how to build a wall and
I know how long it takes to scrub blood stains off your hands.
Forever is a blind man's estimate.
What you knew was how to breathe while running and
why it hurts when people grind salt into an open wound.

True story-
A young couple moved into the house where you used to live. They were unpacking and boxes littered the yard. As I was driving by, I got distracted and accidently honked the horn. The man was carrying a rather large mirror and must have startled him because he dropped it.  The mirror shattered and I felt terribly guilty. I thought about turning around and offering to reimburse the couple but when I looked in the rearview I decided to keep driving. The young man stood in the driveway with his wife, staring at ten thousand copies of their own frowns.  Six months later I drove past there again and a for-sale sign was pounded into the front yard.

Don't tell me things don't happen for a reason.
There is such a thing as "bad luck"
I woke up one day and decided that I loved you.
I don't think that I will ever get back to sleep.

I walked you home from the bus stop one day.
We were only friends and it was winter.
Neither of us knew the finer points of staying warm.
You punched me on the shoulder when I said goodbye.
I threw a snowball at your head when you turned around to go inside.
The last thing I remember seeing was the sun peeking
through the clouds as you tackled me into a snow drift.
I took you down with me.
I didn't feel guilty for being happy back then.
I didn't know that monsters were real.
What boy would have seen anything other than the girl in his arms?

So many things shattered in front of that house.
God, I hate the cold.