Oh, I've got this friend
holding onto her heart
like it's a little secret,
like it's all she's got to give.

- The Civil Wars, I've Got This Friend

-+-

The vulnerability resonated in every syllable.

"..."

Equally so, I've begun to witness the sheer ferocity in silence.

The enormous amount of fear that can be carried by the sound of nothing at all.

-+-

Your bark is so much worse than your bite.

It stings more than it hurts.  It bothers more than it tortures.  Bottom line: it's epidermal.

You used to carve yourself into the deepest layers underneath my skin.  You would appear not like a heart of flesh and substance, but like an apparition.  I feared you like I feared a night terror.  Oh, how you would haunt.  You would lurk in every corner, every crevice of my conscience.  You were like I dreamed you into existence, but unwillingly.

However, like every other lackluster ghost, you're a faded image now.  You're no longer that phantom that taps on my shoulder in the dead of night.  You're not the shell that I look for in every room.  You're just that weird smudge in the corner of my photo album that I can't decode anymore.

Maybe you're there, but honestly, probably not.  At least, not anymore.

Thank you, though.  Really.  I mean that.  You've hardened me, and I learned a lot from you.  You've actually been a pretty immense piece of my life for quite a long period of time.

But I don't even think you're going to leave a scar.  I wouldn't be surprised if you end up washing off like a pen mark.

Then, the slow drive by your neighborhood, when I hold up a triumphant middle finger towards your house.

Suck on that.