The truth is you cannot handle the whole thing Deep beneath this surface smile lies the cold dark part of me You want to feel the warmth of my sun See the nice blue in my eyes You seek to feel my nice brisk wind on a beautiful spring day You want to see my violets bloom Hear my heart birds sing of new life You desire to see my fields of green with sprinkles of dandelions shining You want to feel my inner child laughing in the playgrounds of a new house You long for the sound of wedding bells and summer kids playing in white dresses and Pickett fences To experience songs of canaries that sound as beautiful as they look You want to suspend to my happier times and paint me with a whitewashed window-dressed meaning You refuse to look at me, all of me, because if you did; you would be afraid of what you'd see The weeds the thorns the thistles that will cut you without a second thought The hot beating of the sun on the broken back of a slave, deep scars, and welts that may fade on my skin; but will forever darken my heart The truth of broken divorce and the unlikely prospects I'll ever truly be loved Look into my fucking eyes and see a loneliness that cannot be cured and a thirst that can’t be satisfied The hatred for all who laugh and the shrieking of my loud bitter cries My anger and grief of a life half-gone The sight of my brutal shame that will destroy every part of you that I touch You don’t want to feel the part of me that will hurt you simply because I can; and the feeling of justification that somehow brings equilibrium to the world If you looked at me not just the parts you want to see You would not be so quick to love, so quick to trust You have made me in your image and attached yourself to my sunshine While ignoring the darkness of my shadow and blaming me when the images don’t match I am not one or the other- I am both and that is the truth you can’t handle You wanted to know the whole thing and I just shared with you a small fraction, and I see you even now trying to reframe me. Searching for reasons and times when I've been misunderstood, where I must have it wrong, how no one's perfect and I have a pathology and don’t see or fully understand myself. You are hunting your memory for moments of my kindness thinking that my sun and storm are not one and the same Welcome to my world the hell of my existence where I am not just One but a multiplicity of truths, Your confusion is that I get one body to live out a cast of characters that are far too complex for a single name You cannot imagine a world where I can be your most trusted ally and your worst enemy