When I was a kid
I always had this weird obsession with band-aids
They're as close as I could get to the stickers
My parents wouldn't buy me
And I wore them over 'boo-boos'
And boo-boos meant attention
So I was always giving reasons for needing a band-aid
Now I would rather bleed out than let anyone see my cut up skin

band-aids
Do not heal
Their job is to cover the blood
Protect the wound
But I use it as the shower curtain
You hide behind during hide and go seek
The wound being the kid
My family the unaware search party
But they will never find her
Never find the lost little girl
I've been looking for for ages
Digging holes in my body
Knowing she buried somewhere beneath my skin
I know it is pointless now
Wherever she is
She is dead
She has spent too long malnourished
And void of any sunlight
Besides, if she hasn't starved,
The demons inside
Surely would have drowned her by now

I rip
I rip
I rip at my flesh
Trying to find her

Little girl, where are you?
Little girl, where is your smile
That one that used to be so bright
So big
Little girl, was it your innocence
Or lack thereof
That tore you to shreds
That beat you until you were small enough to be shoved inside of me
And buried deep beneath my layers
Little girl
Will I ever cut deep enough to find you
Or are you lost to me forever
These band-aids
Were never meant to keep you in

I'm so sorry

These band-aids were meant to keep the demons crawling beneath my skin
From ever escaping
And little girl
That means
They will never leave you alone
They will torture you
And hurt you
But better on the inside
Than in the daylight
Causing everyone else to suffer with us
Little girl this is a sacrifice you and I have to make

But sometimes it's too much to fight this
So I scrape
And I tear
And I bite
Trying to pull out
Each and every
Ghost
Haunting my insides
And they begin to spill out in red
And then I remember why they have to stay
So I bandage it
I bandage it every time

Little girl,
I'm sorry

I never meant for this war to consume the both of us
But it has
And I have to apologize

I created this

All the voices
All the terrible things they say
The way their screams
Bounce around the walls in my head
It's all mine
I own this non-masterpiece
And now everytime I try to destroy it
To cut it up
It always goes back to what it was
Transferring the marks to my skin
But the band-aids
Oh, little girl, the band-aids
Do not heal
They do not fix
They do not change
Little girl
No amount of band-aids
Will stop these cuts from becoming irritated
No amount of band-aids
Will stop these cuts from becoming ugly scars
To remind the both of us
That I have not trapped the demons
The demons have trapped us
The reason I can never carve you out
Is because we are both held captive by this monster
I try to remove
And the band-aids
The band-aids
Do not heal

Little girl
Do not pray for the band-aids
To fix what can never be undone
To put the broken back together
Little girl, these band-aids
Never did anything for us
But hide what we cannot see

Little girl
Band-aids
Do not heal