Erin Hanson

My mother always told meNo monster lived beneath my bed,But she had failed to warn meIt laid on top of it instead.

Why must it be so hard For us to come to understand,That there are things we cannot changeHidden amongst the things we can?For we can rearrange our hearts,Dust out the corners of our minds,We can teach our eyes to seeOnly the things we wish to find.Yet once we decorate our wallsAnd sweep our sorrows off the floor,Why do we look to someone else,To show us how we can be more?For here is where the line Between our can and can't gets tough,Just the point at which we all must learnThat we are already enough,That since we cannot choose the home,Our only soul was born into,We should rearrange its roomsBut learn to love its window's view.

It's not the endings that will haunt youBut the space where they should lie,The things that simply fadedWithout one final wave goodbye.

I lend everyone my ear,But nobody my heart,And I sure would like to change that,But I don't know where to start,I smile more to myself,Than the world will ever see,Because the only time my smile is real,Is in my own company,People don't know how I feel,They never even ask,It seems I have fooled them all,They can't see past my mask,If they were with me late at night,When the world was still asleep,Maybe I'd let them sort,Through the secrets that I keep,But when I wake at 2am,Nobody is ever there,And I learnt that why I hide my heart,Is because no-one really cares.

Because the birdsong might be pretty,But it's not for you they sing,And if you think my winter is too cold,You don't deserve my spring.

There are ghosts of yourself scattered everywhere,Whispers of a moment suspended in time,Where every life that you've brushed up againstNow lives with a piece of you trapped in their mind.

If one of the things you believe in,Is that this world's an ugly place,You must have never gone outside at,And stared up into space,You haven't felt the way the air changes,In the minutes before it rains,Or watched the world pass by below,Out the window of a plane, You've never been awake so early, That you see the moment the sun starts to rise, And you've never lain with your back on the grass,And made shapes with the clouds in the sky,But maybe if you've done all this,But still don't believe it's not true, It's because you can't see all the beauty, That I see when I look at you" ~e.h.

I once had a mind of quicksand,That dragged ideas into its depths,Inhaling specks of sunlight,Every time I drew a breath,But the world thought me a hazard,When every word I spoke, I meant,So around me they put caution tape,And filled me with cement.

Do not hold your breath for anyone,Do not wish your lungs to be still,It may delay the cracks from spreading,But eventually they will.Sometimes to keep yourself togetherYou must allow yourself to leave,Even if breaking your own heartIs what it takes to let you breathe.

what if I fall? oh, my darling, but if you fly?

There is freedom waiting for you,On the breezes of the sky,And you ask "What if I fall?"Oh but my darling,What if you fly?

The irony of lifeIs our greatest fear is to forget,Yet it's the only certain fateThat anything has ever met.We know one day our earthWill find itself victim to time,That nothing will be leftTo tell of your story or mine,And still through life we rushScrambling for something to remember,Perish the thought that ash be ashAnd not the memory of an ember.

Don't ever think you're alone here,We've just been trapped in different hells,And people aren't against you dear,They're just all for themselves.

Your blindness to my downfall,Has gone too far to be a joke,As I stand ablaze before you,And you tell me you smell smoke.