"You Come to Me" by Kelly Shepherd

You come to me and you tell me you are NOT okay

that nothing is right

that every breath you breathe

aches with the fire of a million suns

that each step you take makes you shorter inch by inch

until you are too small to even muster a wiggle

You come to me and you tell me it is NOT okay.

It is not okay how one second you’re flying,

laughing, wind in your hair as you run,

and the next you are stuck

motionless, curled in a corner

hands around your ears, nails digging into your scalp,

screaming for someone, anyone

but still there’s no one.

You come to me and you tell me that life is NOT okay.

Your life feels as though its in shambles,

like a broken glass scattered across tile floors.

You feel as though you are bleeding out as you attempt to gather

the sharp edges of the broken pieces of your life.

As your hands shake and knees wobble,

you start to crumble too.

You feel yourself falling down to the glass below.

You come to me and you tell me that your past is NOT okay.

That what you went through was a lonely desert,

surrounded by only the questions

and the doubts so intense that you don’t know

What’s up

And what’s down

I go to you and I give you my all.

I tell you how the scars life leaves only make for a beautiful story

How there is so much more to life.

Life isn’t black and white

Perfect or shambles

Life finds a way to be everything all wrapped up in one

Shambles tied to together to make your own kind of perfect

I go to you and I give more than I have to give.

I tell you that I have been there.

The tears, the agony, the pain that I thought wouldn’t recede

The hopelessness, the helplessness.

Everything I’ve hid for years lies bare for you.

To help you.

But then,

You come to me and you tell me you are NOT okay.

You tell me you need more,

More than everything I have to give.

You want perfect and blissful ignorance.

You push my past away and wallow in the anger you feel

The anger that you say you’ve felt since we met as

Little princesses playing on the playground,

Yet I didn’t know.

You come to me and you scream at me that it is NOT okay

But I gave you my secrets, my tears, and my support

And you throw it in the trash with the rest of your dreams

As you slip further and further away from the person I knew

I watch as you let yourself go and reduce yourself to

Only your depression.  

You come to me,

But love you as I may, I can’t break myself down to a shell

A shell I am well familiar with,

Just for you to walk all over me and hide.

Life is so much more than this.

You just have to make an effort to find it.