Someone asked what depression felt like.
“What?” I asked.
“What you feel it's like,” he gasped.
I've been in and out of this all my life, I thought.
“It's something,” I said, “something you can't let rot.
“It's when you feel freezing at 2:17 p.m. on hot July 24,
“and you shiver and sweat blood you can only see.
“It's when you feel water filling your lungs, clogging every pore,
“clogging so drowning is all you breathe.
“It's when all the ticks and clicks and noises in your head
“are all you feel—not hear, feel—in bed,
“and all the while [silence] breathes down your neck.
“It's when the world doesn't stop an inch for you
“but slows enough so you're left more than unhinged,
“unscrewed, and you want the days to go by faster
“but time says no, and melting is your only answer.
“It's when you sound content on the other line,
“but all there is [in your throat] are a million little knives
“and they can't hear you from the other side of the glass
“from all their 'You'll be fine. It'll all just pass' [*******].
“It's when you down all the Citalopram in the world
“you fit in your hand but still feel as grim as the [under]world,
“and all you want to do is sleep so you're all alone,
“but the Ambien fails so your eyes and regrets stay open in its bone.
“It's when the closest thing stopping you from the trigger
“is the thought that you'd have Mom clean up the mirror
“from all the blood and flesh you leave behind
“but you still think of pulling, keep [the lead] in your mind.
“No, it's not something you will want to feel,” I said.
“It's not something as easy as talking to a friend.
“It's not something you leave to rot in your head.
“It's not something you want in the end.”

A slow serenade of pianos and birds,
solemn, broken voices caress
lonesome souls wandering the world
endlessly in black print dress.

Hands softly touch carved ivory,
[dark and white].
So easy, so effortless, and without disdain—
never false honesty, an unfaked feeling of pain—
a specter, an angel, clad in beautiful light.

Hair flowing like wolves under moonlight,
lips colored cold, pale wine.
Eyes drowned in a weariness pulling
magnetically, hypnotic in eerie delight—
a hopeless promise of paths entwined.

On an autumn day, they saw him stand;
on a winter night, they saw him on cold lands.
Such earthly things he needed were friends,
and there was no one, no one in the end.
They all knew about his loneliness
and his accompanying sorrow.
Smiles and laughter were objects
he could never borrow.
The birds and trees still stand witness,
the sky refusing once more to tell.
Everything he thought he knew
could neither be smooth nor well.
At the sun’s first ray of light,
at the trembling crack of dawn,
he spread once more his arms,
mimicking wings.
And he was gone.

I woke up in my dream last night,
and it felt real and you were there.
I woke up in my dream and you were inside
my room and on my bed you lay bare.

I woke up in my dream, and the northern lights
could not match the colors in your smile.
I woke up in my dream, and there you embraced me tight,
and I swear I was breathless a while.

I woke up in my dream and oranges and sky blues danced,
when you stepped and swayed to old piano pieces.
I woke up in my dream and immediately into a trance,
when I felt your freeing love in innumerable kisses.

One day, I'll wake up from my dreaming
and see you sleeping by my side.
One day, one moment in the right timing,
I'll wake up next to you for the rest of my life.