Save Yourself

I can see you drowning.

Water filling your lungs, you breathe it in deep,

Close your eyes, and under you seep.

I try to pull you out but you pull me under,

And then dive back in after me.

I wish I could save you.

I wish I could save me, too.

It’s like you’re screaming,

But no one can hear your cries.

I pull you close and you push me away

I say I can’t do this for even one more day,

But I always come back for more.

I wish I could save you.

I wish I could save me, too.

Pain from our pasts, wounded memories

Cutting us open to bleed out in the sheets

Blood covers you and blood covers me,

We close our eyes and it all feels the same.

I wish I could save you.

I wish I could save me, too.

Forehead to forehead, but we can’t see eye-to-eye

You push and I pull, spinning circles each time.

We’re one in the same but too alike to admit it

The only drug I crave no matter how hard I try to quit it

I wish I could save you.

I wish I could save me, too.

With you I crumble, without you I fall,

Deciding between excruciating pain or feeling nothing at all.

I walk away and you follow, I stop and you run

Playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun.

I wish I could save you.

I wish I could save me, too.

I scan the world in panic, but it’s as though I am blind

Searching desperately for someone I made up in my mind.

Our eyes meet one another, from way across the crowd,

Tearing me open entirely, but you put me back together somehow.

I wish I could save you.

I wish I could save me, too.

We’re no good for one another,

But we’re even worse for everyone else.

Twisted minds and broken thoughts,

Living our lives taken captive within our skull’s prison cells

You’re the only one who knows enough to get through to me,

I gave you all the locks, you threw away the keys.

I wish I could save you,

I wish I could save me, too.

For the first time down this wicked road, I see my chance to take,

You’re standing on the edge of a cliff, my hands begin to shake.

I want so badly to push you; our chains breaking as I watch you fall below,

You turn to me, hand outstretched, and the tears begin to flow.

I breathe them in and begin to drown, they swallow my broken heart.

You take my hand, and push me off,

We’re right back at the start.

I wish I could save you.

I wish I could save me, too.

*****