Agony and delight

You swish past my mind at the most unseemly times

you plunge straight into my heart

pulling it down tight like an elastic band

and you finger it till I want to throw out some profanity

heart strings trigger fear and hate. loathing and love

I lose myself enmeshed amongst the layers of sanity[?]

I scrape the skin from under my nails hoping to find traces of you there.



I can not lie.

I can not confess

I dont understand this mess.

or you. or me. or us.

I crave and I misbehave

I miss and I dismiss

I feel and I reel

***** **** dust or

crimson lace and black love?



nonsense on top of nonsense

it never made sense

but it always felt right

it was never easy

always too hard to ignore



where are you now?

in every cell, in every memory

in every space, in every moment

a part of me

apart from me



love you.

miss you.

it is as simple as that

thats all there is and

all there ever will be.

Everyone talks about depression as if they know it.  

But what they don’t know is that depression is a hooded figure standing just outside of a wooden doorway,

it’s feeling the blood dripping down your skin and having the sick thought of  “Oh, look how beautiful the red is” (they always say red is my color).

Depression is lying on your bed for hours on end, salt tracks lining your face like the scars on your ankles, staring at your ceiling tracing patterns in the paint and accepting death in life with this hole in your chest because death is a reward, an escape from this pain you deserve to feel.

Depression is writing sick poetry on skin and publishing it with scars, cutting on ankles, not wrists because you’re scared you’ll get in trouble but you so desperately need to be seen, and never are.

Depression is writing the word “alone” and seeing the word “home”, accepting the pain like a gift because you deserve it.

Depression is admitting suicidal thoughts to paper and not to people, and loving the broken things, hoping to tie them together, thinking maybe things will get better, but knowing that’s just wishful thinking.

Depression is hearing your mother call you monster and disgusting through the too-thin walls of your door when she thinks you can’t hear, and then telling you to your face that you have no right to cry, as if sadness is a privilege and you’re so pathetic that you don’t deserve it.

Depression is shutting yourself up in your room and hearing your family laughing downstairs because you feel like you can’t be a part of them and learning at a young age to love family always but that family isn’t always love

Depression is wanting to take love and your heart and break them into tiny little pieces and throw them into waves, to throw them away

Depression is a foot when the shoe hasn’t been broken in yet, is you when you haven’t broken life in, is seeing happy people and thinking they all look the same, like the front covers of magazines with smiles reaching their eyes when yours can’t.

Depression is wishing you could package your smiles into tiny little piles and hand them to people more deserving of them because you know you’re wasting them with half-assed lines of “I’m fine”

Depression is having to view your past as if it wasn’t yours, because to accept it as reality is to accept finality of your life through suicide.

Depression is a hooded figure standing just outside of a wooden doorway and when you close the door out of fear it keeps pounding, possessive, ******, and when you open the door out of anger you shout, “I’M SCARED” to thin air but your voice comes out as a whisper.

There is You,
my son, and You.

The You that died;
the You which we see
on rising
in photographs on walls
or framed or there
by the window;
the You staring back at us
from our mobile phones.

There's the You I saw
brought into the world
pink and small
and wanting to feed
and latch on
for the liquid food.

The You growing up
from baby to toddler,
mischievous, but loving.

The You growing
into manhood,
stoic and quiet
and brave, going about
in your own way
to climb many a mountain
of adversity
and reaching the top
and over it
and quietly smile
and unseen
in a corner, sit.

There is the You
of quiet talk,
of gentle words;
You of soft
under the breath swearing,
if the referee
had got it wrong.

There was the You who
became ill so suddenly;
the You who was let down
by medical professionals;
the You we loved,
the You whose heart
flat-lined and died.

There is You,
my son, and You.

The You who was taken
and the You whom we feel
around us still,
touching;
walking by
out of the corner
of our red rimmed eye.

Why do we burden our hearts
With all those weights of guilt
Of regrets etched so deeply in our souls
Rushing towards the darkness we ourselves built

Why do we regret
Those shattered dreams
When new ones can be sought
Endlessly in our mind's realms

Why do we regret the loss
Of friendships fading away in the chaos
They were chapters of life's book
Ending with every milestone we cross

Why do we regret the decisions
Made on an impulse, without a care
On the train to our destinies
A few unplanned detours we are bound to fare

Why regret the life we lived
Upon reaching the end
Mayhap we'll live it differently,given a second chance
But the Maker's laws for us will never bend

Many have come before us
many to come after we leave
don’t wake us from the hush
traveler here silently grieve.

Time washed we came on the shore
to our place ‘neath the moss laden stone
when our dreams soared no more
down here we lay cold alone.

Hold here traveler your breath
forget for once all the strife
hear the peace of the world beneath
death in the midst of life.