I love this like the china shop loves the wreakage of the bull

I love this like the china shop loves the wreakage of the bull

I love you like a dirty doll

On the floor on the cracked tiled floor of the local shopping mall

That yearns for something beautiful

This longing, this spite

This anguished joy

I want it. I want it. I want it more

Than a baby girl wants the broken toy

That now is just outside her dimpled reach.

Want it with the ferocity of those who don't yet understand

Anything more than the touch

Of mother's soft, well-meaning hand

I want what you can teach

I want what you can preach

I want whatever lies beneath

This smile you so hurriedly bequeath

To a world that has never known

The light it brings.

I want the love

I catch glimpses of

In the rearview mirror of my mind when I imagine what I might find

If you ever gave up on being tough

And decided I was good enough.

And this painted martyr

(Who doesn't really exist)

Wants nothing more than to just try harder;

I want to shrug off this skin that clings

And stings

And feels foreign

And safe

The way home, one day, once was.

And never far from the where and the why-

I find the because.

Because you're everything I wished I was

When I was too scared to speak

When I was in that car that day

With one of your many protégés

A prototype

Of the fantastic click I felt that night I leaned over

And you leaned in

And I wished I could have kept you there

With the bright lights gleaming in your eyes and in your hair

When I would have

When I could have

But I didn't.

The smallest mistake I could possibly give

And one I'll never, ever relive

Because it took much less than death

Bad food, or just bad breath

Or illness, or just a lack of things to do

Or really anything that could bar me from you

It didn't take hard drugs or wine

To make me sure

To make me decide

To make me want to make you mine

And I won't cry, because this isn't the end of you and me

But the end of an era, the end of a friendship

The end of what has and what could be

The end of everything I tried for

Because I'm not your friend

And I do want more.

And now…

Now I wonder what will happen

If I give up this mission

If these words I put so much faith in now turn out as empty as a politician's,

Should I succumb to my fears

And we don't become what I want over these next two years;

What will I become?

Will I learn?

Will I progress?

Will I ever get the chance to undress?

Is this you, or is it me I fight

In this adolescent stronghold, so sheltered from the light

All I can do, all I can say

(And it makes me feel weird to be saying it this way)

Is that until it comes time to say goodbye;

The least that I can do

Is try