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 May 2018 arowana
Dante
Never
 May 2018 arowana
Dante
I'm Aromantic
thats okay
I can never
And will never
Fall in love

My partner is not
He loves-
He loves me
He can fall
And has
Fallen

But i cannot replicate
What he feels--
I try to give him affection
But it makes me feel sick
I really am trying
But i just cant do it
I can never
And will never

I can never love him
And he knows this
Yet he loves me anyways
I will never love him
Yet he cares not--
I try to appease his romantic needs
But i guess its harder than i thought

When you can never
And will never
Fall in love
 May 2018 arowana
Elizabeth
Before my mum died, I never really took naps.

Couldn’t really understand it,
there was so much else you could do.

But then she died,
and it was just before midday
and I realised -
there’s so much day left.

It stretched on and on in front of me,
hours and hours of this same day,
still waiting.

So I went upstairs,
I told the people that needed to know,
and I went away for a while.

I woke back up in time for an evening meal
with an extended family filled with love
and a sister returned from work
and a phone beeped full of support.

And it’s been two years,
and the days stretch on
and still, almost every day now, I go away for a wee while.
Skip just a little bit,
every day.

I wonder if I should stop
Would my mum approve?
Probably not.

Maybe I’ll try tomorrow,
but still,
it’s late in the evening now.
Time to go to sleep,
Goodnight
 May 2018 arowana
Boaz Priestly
i tell you i’ve had a bad day
my depression whacked me
upside the head
and i cried on the bathroom floor

and you share photos
of a quaint forest path
saying that is the real cure for depression
and the pills i take
are a lifelong addiction because
if the pills really did work
then i wouldn’t still be on them
until your fingers ****** bleed

as if my mental illness
is a nasty cold
that requires antibiotics
for about a month
and once i am “better”
i’ll be okay on my own

you treat my pills bottles
like a crutch that makes me weak
like i am a bad person for trying
to live my life worth living
a life which just so happens
to be medicated

and that comes from such
a place of privilege
you and your stupid pictures
of forest paths that have nothing
to do with depression
and anxiety
and screaming hallucinations
that have left me
sobbing on the floor
making myself bleed until
i can tell what’s real again

my mental illness is a chronic thing
even when i am stable
i will never stop being mentally ill
just because i have more good days
than bad doesn’t mean i can cold-turkey
the very things that
keep me functioning
without losing my mind

and when i did try
to go off the meds in high school
you smiled and told me how
brave i was
how strong
how i didn’t need the medication

and days later when i
spent two hours sobbing
until i almost puked
because of the lasagna i had
accidentally burnt to a crisp
you laughed at me
and my tears
and told me to **** it up
to man up
to just be happy

like you telling me to
just be happy
will replace the serotonin my
brain can’t produce enough
of on its own

like you calling me weak
for being on medication
will take away the very real
truth that without
taking those pills every morning
i would have tried to ****
myself again and would
have probably succeeded that time

like you sharing your
pictures of forest paths
and demonstrating your complete
and utter lack of knowledge as to
how medication that isn’t antibiotics works
will suddenly fix
what is broken in my brain

but you take medication
that a doctor prescribes when you
are sick enough for that
to be needed
and nobody calls you weak

and when you break a bone
you get it set in plaster
well i can’t put a cast on
the cracks in my psyche

so i do the next best thing
because if your brain can’t
produce enough serotonin
to keep you wanting to live
all on its own
then store-bought is fine

(and you turning on me
when my mental illness stops
being something i can manage
on my own
says more about you
than it ever will about me)
Whispers in the wind
voices full of sin
blowing in the storm

they whip you round
they scream and howl
this is just the norm

they infiltrate your thoughts, your mind, and your being
they leave you lying broken, your heart open bleeding
they infiltrate your body
then find way into your soul
this is why you feel broken and so unbearably alone
 May 2018 arowana
Grey
You offered me your body,
I offered in return:

A tuna fish sandwich,
A nice piece of carnelian,
Maybe a book or two about odd things
like death by electrocution or Leonardo da Vinci
or the history of the upright bass,
Endless records,
Enough jazz to paint the world blue,
My mouth forming the shapes of notes,
A breath from my own lungs,
The scarf which was lovingly knit for me
by my one remaining friend,
Lipstick, bright red and smooth,
Feathers from a hawk that I found by the road,
Dried pink roses from a corsage,
Two baby teeth in a container that once held film,
Hair shorn with a dull kitchen knife,
A collar of cracked burgundy leather,
Sachets smelling faintly of lavender,
A mirror which was cracked on my thirteenth birthday,
One lace glove.

Why did you leave?
In the midst of it all
I stop, I stare
And I wonder what I'm doing in all this
The aches never cease, never stop

Them all I see writhing about me; humans
Clamber above one another
Leaving the ones they claim to love broken
In the ashen dirt

For the meagre prizes they salivate to get

They forget they can't take it with them
That their greed is for naught
As their breaths draw short, scythe draws closer
Leaving them alone in their suffocating solace.
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