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Sweet and bitter and tender and harsh

Unyielding cage of my battered heart

Constrained but kept safe, protected, not free

I don't love her and she doesn't love me.



Bound and gagged and chained and hid

Forced to do as I am bid

Her word is law; divine decree

I locked the gate but she holds the key.



First she commanded me 'Tell me your name'

Then she explored all my deep-hidden shame

She tore me apart and rebuilt me anew

'Don't try to love me 'cause I'll never love you.'



I dare not explain: they would not understand

Why I willingly put myself in her hands

When I know that each moment she finds herself free

She'll be finding new ways to humiliate me.



Each night as she holds me in indifferent arms

I tell her my tales of deliberate harm

In some I'm the victim and make myself kind

In most I'm the monster I see in my mind.



She watches me speak with cold, distant eyes

That will not allow for distortion or lies

She wrenches the truth from my unwilling soul

Tearing open the wounds that have never been whole.



I will not show weakness; I silence my tears

And finish my story of the Buried Years

I wait for her words; they are always the same

But tonight she said, 'Child, you were not to blame.'



Where are the scorn and the pitiless stare?

Where is her judgement that I knew to be fair?

The merciless majesty is gone from her face

And instead, soft compassion has taken its place.



She brought out my secrets, broke into my past

Dismissing each one till she came to the last:

This final self-hatred, the root of the pain

And forced me to face what I've fought to restrain





Soft and cutting and gentle and harsh

She hands me the key to my fresh-wounded heart

The wounds bleed anew but this time they heal

And the scars on the flesh: only proof I can feel.



From when first she demanded I tell her my name

My rotted existence was swiftly inflamed

She tore me apart and rebuilt me anew

My self is now whole, and I give it to you