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Description
It’s said we’re given two ears and one mouth to listen more and speak less
So instead of lacerating yourself in mirror’s reflection
Mend your thoughts to the lips of a poet
And we’ll put those fears through a test
You’ll hear things you’ve been told before and acknowledged a thousand times prior, things you’ve been told before but couldn’t bear to believe
So innocent and adventurous you must have been at some point, only to be torn apart, like a dress so constricting – ripped apart by lace and seam
“I’ll never hurt you” they said, “You’re beautiful” they said, how wonderful and sweet life must have seemed; the metaphors you’ve only read to yourself in romance novels – the rhetoric and stuff of dreams.
Like a hummingbird - with a sweetened but less than eccentric thirst - you found the nectar to mix with your ambrosia and youth hasn’t tasted the same ever since. How innocuous and sweet it must have been to hear those [(verbal presents of others) or (honey soaked words)] decorate your presence.
But after promises made and successively broken, listened to things said in anger not to be spoken, you found yourself hurt and quickly learned that long beak of yours only pecks at exposed wounds.

Your complexion once bright but now pale; bones already hollow and tragically frail - they rest in your wings and ribs more broken than cracked. I suspect that at some time (past?) (passed?), they were fluttering and flourishing; spectacularly intact.
[You’ve had enough of these conquistadors’ conquests; they set anchors to rock as words crash so bluntly onto one’s heart.] (may be changed to extend the bird metaphor)
[might be edited to introduce a new extended metaphor] People tyrants, words their subjects - wars of similes and compliments laid relentless siege to your soul.
Deserting the battlefield, you lock yourself in the mind’s monolith to bask in solace after reckless abandon discards the key.
You think to yourself, wondering while wandering a vast inner lachrymose -
“How can words so emblazoned with passion (now meaningless and empty?) scorch so paradoxically cold?”

[And upon hearing this lament I come to you; requiring of nothing less than trust since I speak what I know is nothing less than truth. The things you’ve been told are lies – nothing more than lies; painful and biting - lies steeped in toxin - a serpent’s tongue spits a polemic more caustic than the most potent of poison] (may be revised or deleted – serpent imagery may be intertwined with bird metaphor)
There’s someone else, someone like you, who sat upon words so harmful; torturing him by thinking they were true.

One might say that he fancied himself a surgeon. After rending himself to ribbons, skin divorced from muscle and exposed to raw air, he uncovered the nature of disaster our unfortunate structures bear.
He picked apart his own brain, the scalpel of introspection to dissect the essence of outer pains, and found something startling so apparent yet blindingly inconspicuous within a cross-section.

From skin to flesh

and from flesh to sinew

and from chords of sinew anchored to bone
He picked apart something unsettling - nestled closer to thought than marrow encased in bone
Brick by brick, stone by stone, like removing abrasions smitten to the most timeless of tomes, the fortress surrounding his monolith slowly crumbled after entrusting something very special to someone other than himself.

This very special thing was that of his conscience, the treasure of his mind’s monolith, and through the spilling of thought words flow like rivers – everything he thought about himself.

Through discussing with others, the waters of the mind strained the streams and exposed the monsters settled so deeply in more than our dreams.

While wading through this stream of thought, the other took a moment to pause and spoke –

“The things you think about you, they’re things you’ve twisted and wrought, they’re warped perceptions of the self; the machinations of malevolent thought.”

He says to the other, “How do you know? How can you be so sure that none of what I say is true? It’s been told to me countless times by other people, how can it be anything but true?”

To this confession a smile of compassion brightens up the companion’s face and a friendly arm rests on his shoulder.

With this gesture they spoke the kindest of words, like a ray of light piercing the darkest of seas;

“Stop saying those things to yourself: I see none of it in you.”

And for the first time in all my life I had finally heard the truth.