Bleed, Bleeding, Bled

We played hide-and-seek as animals,

Ducking between trees with feral growls

And crawling across the sharp forest floor

Until our splintered palms bled.

You went to sleep in the river

And I stained my keys red.

.

You didn't come back the next morning,

But it was a part of the game.

A hide-and-seek victory

That stretched and stretched and stretched.

I didn't like looking,

You were lost.

.

But my hands kept bleeding from the search.

The things under the rocks bit me,

Thorns sliced my hands,

And soon without really knowing how,

I was lost to the dirt of once familiar

Now hopelessly foreign lands.

.

And the blood on the keys kept flowing,

Because I could not find you in our forests

No matter how much I sought you out.

So I turned to my veins,

The things that ripped and tore and bled

When we crept through the brush like monsters.

.

I had to find you somewhere,

If not in the trees then maybe in me.

You were so good at hiding

That you must have slipped inside of me

When I wasn't looking that day.

So now I have to bleed you out.

.

Smoke out your presence from my veins

Like you are a nest of bees.

You are constantly buzzing in my thoughts.

I have to dig you out of me

And drop you to the table like a trophy

Because I cannot lose, I cannot lose you.