Internal struggles over softness sweetly laid

Her pulse quickened
Blood rushed to blossom on her cheeks
He pryed in effortlessly
Every time her name fell from his lips,
She slipped more deeply into his undertow

Her breath was held captive in her throat when she would listen to his voice
He fed her, his words like spirits,
She consumed them all, over and over,
Letting them intoxicate her

The restraint, she had to struggle to practice, was enough to make her hands tremble
Like a woman's hands desperately clasped in prayer
She longed for the absolution to let her confessions pour over him
She yearned for it
To tuck his loose locks behind his ear, and whisper to him thoughts, long lie latent in her
Through blushed lips and heated breath
With every exchange, her mask fell a bit more
The numbness began to hollow, and she could feel again
With the small pleasures she obtained from him, came a torrent of pain from all around her
As it rushed at her, she remembered why she has banished them all to begin with.

If she could not succeed in chasing his shadow from her fortress, and his eyes from her mind
He may well be her undoing
For every minute longer he stayed there, gently knocking at her door
She seem to struggle to keep it closed

There were no bearings here to be had
For every wall, door, lock and key she had
He had his own, in return
For as close as his knocking may seem
It may every well be an echo of echoes greater still

And for all these hardened truths
For all the scars, the bruises
For all the damage she had caused
And all she had destroyed ,despite having tried to nurture it
For all the reasons she had retreated to this constructed haven
Turned prison
She knew she could not relent to him
It was worth the constantly warning herself
Her exile was to protect all parties involved

What she couldn't hold back from him, she could bargin with
Messages tied in twine to rocks, thrown over walls
Trading
A secret for a secret
A feeling for a feeling
A compliment for a sweetness in return
Bartering bits of her soul away to him
A little at a time

Each one more dangerous than the last
Each dispersion that could be used to cut or wound

The bloodied handprints on the walls around her, recalled the state she found herself in when last she crawled back to this place. Bringing back to memory the mortar these walls where mixed from
Beautifully broken, crushed and powdered dreams
And an ample amount of her own tears.

While he was silent
She would refortify her defenses
But not before she looked through where she kept his returns
And allowed herself one moment of undeserved contentment
Then closed and locked the box
And shoved it to the nearest dark corner
She prodded herself
This was not a selfless thing she was doing, letting it get this far, it was selfishness

She bathed in the moonlight
Justifying to herself
She was only surviving while trying to keep her vowel
....and harm there none