Chemical Warfare.

Where am I without you?
I am stripped bare
Reduced to my need for your absent care
And I want to be brave
And I want to be strong
And I want to be the woman you've thought
Was standing here all along

But she doesn't always have the answers
And she hasn't always taken her chances
Especially when surrendering to love
And its chemical warfare
And the way it strips you bare...

And yet here I am, I'm going in
Reduced to my need for your care
And my needs to be nurturing...
And I want to say I don't
But I do!

I care
I ache
I long to love
And be loved by you

And I want to remain independent
But what does that mean?
I've been this fiercely so, for so long
I'm afraid it's turned my heart to stone:
A sculpture, a relic
A tombstone in memory of
Lovers lost in the past
Where once it was broken
I must have placed my heart in a cast
Thinking it would heal alone
But this wound only wept
For having been kept
In the dark for so long

And so, I'm not as strong
As I look, you see
Sometimes I cry
I frown
I crack and I bleed
Reduced to my basic need
To be cared for by you
But don't you know
I would return the love tenfold to you

It's simple and it's sweet
And yet, it's so hard to admit defeat
So hard to put my weapons down
And to relinquish the "I'm unbreakable" crown
For if I take it off
Where will I be?
I'd be stripped bare
But armed with a new sense of bravery
By stepping into this chemical warfare
Honest in all my vulnerability
And surrendering this tiresome, lonely weaponry
...I lay it down
And as I do
There you are standing next to me.