Paint me Alive by Jewel {For my family and close friends} Only Their touch keeps blood running color through me to paint me alive. They hold my head above doom-weighted-water. I can see Him everywhere. Yet He evades all other senses. Nerves whimpering with deprevation. The fist-blow of loss on my mortified-memory, my acid-charred lungs, is almost more than I can control inside my beating-box-of-feeling. A rage tantrums inside my head; claiming survival is impossible unless time retraces. I know the impossibility of this request. For now. Stop. Check. Oh yes. Lungs still burning. Chest still contracting. Everyone's shoulders still shrugging. I grasp They that draw near to me. They still love me. I cling to Them; clutch Them to my chest and hold-fierce until tears climb out. For They are the all-only good I can feel. Forced so close to the edge of a sulfur-mist spewing precipice, They are the gold in my pocket that keeps me from tipping over into that death-lock darkness. Oh if They only knew what They meant to me. If They only knew They are the only avenue by which He sends me His love. The only embrace He soothes me in is Theirs. They numb the sear-slashing pain. They tend the wounds that eat away at my wasting-will. They allow moment to follow moment to follow moment. Each moment is one broken leg in front of the other. Until this flesh-burning drink passes from my scarred hands and lips, They are the all-only salve my skin-senses receive. Some hunt me. Some want me dark-red-dead. But They paint me alive. | 
