Andrew Kerklaan

Andrew Kerklaan Jan 2021

Granted

Everything I know I have assumed.

A sense of shame and humility, bewilderment. I don’t know where to start.

Everything is a gift! In some capacity or another - it wasn’t ours to begin with.

Is it just my nature? Is that what I owe to history? Assumption?

I don’t want to participate if it has to be this is how we “behave”.

Yet my pain is so intense when I have to go without these addictions I’ve adapted myself to be born into.

I know no other way. Every path has led me back to this conclusion. I fight and lose my fury. I run but I can’t escape. I eat but am never satiated. My CALM is a sense of unrest.

But I keep you, and I feel you will always be with me.

Writing my suicide note with my one unconscious hand and shooting me with the other.

A sicko ****** fantasy. I’m sure you could bet on it. Just put it on my tab!

Started off as a revelation about how everything that we use is something that someone else made/invented before you were ever even a thought but it turned into a self reflection about suicidal depression.

Andrew Kerklaan Aug 2019

Kyle

Sometimes I want to do something reckless while thinking about you

I know that it's selfish of me, but I don't want to have to miss you

I wish that I could say for certainty that you'll be there when I arrive, but what if I don't?

I want to walk a tight rope with my eyes closed

I know you'll be with me

I feel you in my tears as I take my final steps toward the edge

The time is right for me here.

I'm with you now.
It's been too long

My friend.

Where have you been?
I love you!

Rest in Peace Love and Death Metal

Feb 2019

Sam Greig-Mohns

Loud

It’s to loud here
There is to much happening

Everywhere I turn the sound is finding crevasses
Seeping through like rain water
A downpour of noise
It trickles in faster then I can bail it out again
Filling everything

I have no room to think here
The air is made of harp strings all vibrating in a different tone
Shaking all thought right from my head

Enough, this has to stop...
I draw back behind my walls
An island of silence

I watch people slip past my guarded coastline
They call to me

My eyes flick lines of morse code to them
But they are far to busy being loud to hear the soft tick tick of my conversation

I sit alone to watch a muted sunset
Static lapping against my toes in frothy waves
But I don’t hear a thing

Finally, it is quiet

Sometimes the world just feels far to busy for me

Feb 2019

dadens

when the dust settles

between you and me,
i'm still rooting for us.

maybe not in this lifetime,
but in the end.

Jan 2019

krm

Writing Suicide Notes In Gel Pen

Clothes have outgrown me many times over,
but this sadness never does.
One size.
fits all.
There should have been an obituary for cancer, not you.
Wishing these slits within my skin could have been
replaced by a reality check from you, “You chose to exist.”

My name causes a sigh to escape from lips,
that do not feel like they belong to me,
the girl,
whose words always had to be special.

The schematics of hospitals like a birthmark in my brain,
born into sadness, a gut feeling as a child.
Never trusting time
due to what it delivers.

Death, being the only thing I desired.
But you,
who I love,
endlessly-
robbed by it.
Whose ebb for life glowed so feverishly.
Stopped comparing depression to lace,
restricted the belief that suicide is poetic,
seeing things as they were.
More often than not, applauded for feeling emotions deeply.
Every second that dies, the shift of my heart quakes.

This world is not tender.

II. Sad.
I have known the flowers I wanted at my own premature funeral,
knowing how many bouquets honored you that day.

split open my veins like a dimension
reminiscent of days where I anticipated deathbeds.

My family wondered,
can we make it through another day?
Death scares me for what it has taken,
yet, I’m not afraid to die-
it’s all I deserve.
So I await the day pain erupts
from my throat,
acknowledging the days a soul
lived inside of my body-
footprints that walked,
belonging to me.

But I learned so well.
How to suffer with a smile,
dreading the beating of my heart
how unfair—
I don’t want to take these deep breaths
You deserved,while I masquerade as a member of the undead
Never outgrowing the desire to rot with the phantoms residing under my bed.

III. Jokes played by the universe.
punchlines delivered,
how could anyone to stand to be in the same room as myself?
How could anyone look over skyscrapers and sunsets,
and not be infatuated with concrete consuming them?
How I shared a sigh of relief during the thought-
of knowing people would thrive without me,
or the power of a belly laugh,
resembling a laugh track audience
drowning out 3 AM suicidal thoughts.

I wrote this in pink gel pen, maybe, that’s another joke.

#ramblingssadlonelydepressedidk #pain #sadnsss

Jan 2019

b for short

rebound

I know exactly what this looks like.
Cold, grey, and understated.
It's the bruised piece of fruit at the bottom of the crate;
the one everyone sees but won't commit to buying.
He thinks he won't buy it either,
but when she drops him,
the loneliness consumes, it envelopes,
and the grasping begins.
He grabs... anything.
He grabs the bruised fruit.
He sinks his teeth into its soft flesh;
juices sweet;
texture pleasing.
He forgets the superficial imperfections.
After he's enjoyed it down to its bare core,
it knows.
This was only temporary.
He won't replant the seeds to watch it grow.
He won't thank it for the nourishment
that got him by.
He will drop it, without regard,
as he admires
the polished pieces placed at the top of the crate.
When he's hungry, he'll choose, carefully, this time,
without letting on he knows exactly what this looks like.
Seeds by a trashcan;
unfulfilled potential strewn across the floor;
a rotting purpose.

Jan 2019

Cynthia Lewis

I am.

I am.
The one who stands tall and proud.
The one who doesn't have a care in the world.
The one who makes everyone laugh
The one who is always smiling.....
But is that really me?
I cry myself to sleep.....I dont even eat..... My heart is closed because I cannot trust anyone.
To think I feel this pain.....To hate every inch of my skin......I may seem ok to you but.......i guess its best not to judge a book by its cover.

#mentalhealth #eatingdisorder