So, if you want something and you call, call, then I'll come running to fight. And I'll be at your door when there's nothing worth running for.

I think I know why I never wrote for you. Many different states of being can tug my pen across paper, from elation to utter sadness, but ugliness is not one of them. Maybe my eyes fell right through your shallow surface and saw the blackness bubbling beneath, the tar sticking to your ribs, that soot-smeared heart pumping ash into your blood. You tried to hide those parts, tucking them behind masks of sensitivity, pacifism and denial. Glaringly evident as it is now, your ugliness was once fleeting and coy. It lined the beds of your fingernails, it flickered across your skin like an oily birthmark, you coughed up pieces of it on cold mornings, I had to look twice to catch it staining some corner of my eye. Ah, but that was what I saw all along, wasn't it? Hard to deny it now.

It all comes back to one night in your mind and it's amusing to reflect on how many layers you were unaware of. Could you see well enough through the smoke-strangled bar? You saw where my fingers tangled into another's but you couldn't see where my head was turned. You focused on an easily-defined betrayal and even after I let my tongue paint dull shades of truth over your eyelids you still only saw your own colourful fantasy. If you had lifted your head a little further out of the haze you were drowning in you may have figured it out. A fire was still boiling my bones and every word I wrote in that year and a half singed the tips of my fingers. I distilled my drunken conscience into script, open for all eyes to feast on. You pulled and pried at me to get the truth while it lay right in front of you. Sadly, you only saw what wasn't.
You held my freedom in filthy hands, saw my body as something to possess and my mind as a threat to your manhood. You got more from me than I ever planned to give, but the only thing I never let you have were my words. He got every beautiful one.