You know too many of my secrets,

Too many times you’ve seen me fall;

Your eyes keep track of every weakness

I try to hide under cold armor from the world;

/

You love about me things which aren’t

Deserving of more than contempt;

You like the smiles, the tears, the frowns that

I hate – just like most other features of my self;

/

My eccentricities don’t scare you,

My doubts don’t make you doubt your choice

To be with someone ever-absent,

Who’s all her own and won’t be yours;

/

And in your hands my ill-kept secrets

Are deadly weapons, which you use

When with those hands you bend and break me,

And through your mouth spit out abuse

/

You love about me all that’s ugly

Because those spots aren’t hard to hit;

Against my own self-hate defenseless,

I stay; for who will feed your anger if I leave?

/

My eccentricities don’t scare you –

They, too are targets for your blows,

But this unyielding something in me

Your fists can’t reach, is still my own;

/

It is the pride that I was born with,

Which some like you would take away;

It is the courage to be smiling, crying, frowning

With a bruised face, day after day;

/

It is the hope, too, that one morning

I would wake up and wouldn’t need

Somebody by my side, destroying

My body – to distracts me from the pain under my skin