Holding On.

Can anyone tell my why.
Tell me why I fight to keep these lungs breathing,
to keep this heart beating,
to keep myself from bleeding.

Why can't I turn my arms into scratching posts?
Turn my wrist into a punching bag?
Turn my lungs into blood bags?

I don't want to keep trying this hard
if it's not going to get me very far.

You don't know that my heart turned red,
and real the night that my arm kissed the steel.
You don't know that my body turned to stone the
first time I gripped whatever I could and breathed so much water,
I thought I was a mermaid.
And you don't know just how many bad days it took before I swallowed all of those candies,
every last one, and munched them up.