Wine stains.
Stains on the inside of my childhood juice cup.
A white plastic mug with cheery images of Pippi Longstocking dancing around the edge.
Her dance worn and faded from countless washings.
And with dark wine stains on the inside.

I think stains are sort of like scars.
So when I see the dark stains inside this cup,
Scratched and and scraped,
In a desperate attempt to erase them,
I think of the dark scars inside my heart.

Scars.
Scars like the ones left when you'd use that cup to drink  deep into the night.
And you'd just end up cussing us out.  Shutting us out.
Shutting it all out.  And locking it all in.

You kept it all inside you, like bubbling black poison.
All those sad, angry thoughts tormenting you.
You let them cook and you marinated them with wine.
From my childhood drinking cup.

I don't know why you'd use that to drink from.
Did you think we would be fooled?
Like you were drinking something else?
Or maybe you knew how destructive your vice was...
Maybe you were ashamed to use a glass for yourself.
But probably not.

Don't you remember Per?
He wouldn't have drank from a plastic cup.
You read me that story, I loved that story.
It was a treasured part of my childhood.
Like my drinking cup...
I guess that wasn't important to you.

You know a lot about scars.
Or at least you should by now.
Like the one on her face.
The one I will never be able to forget,
That will never fade,
That I can't rid from my mind,
That I paint on every canvas.
The one I can't look at without remembering it fresh, bloody, swollen, raw...

It was red.
Red like my mind when I realized the truth.
Red like the wine you drink to forget.
Red like the stains inside my cup.

And stains are a lot like scars.