Suddenly  gone  very  quiet  here.
Main  tourists  now  long  gone.

Birds  and  animals  quiet  too.
No  morning  chorus.

Weather  stagnant, mainly  cloudy, no  wind.
And  surprisingly  no  sign  of  rain.

Trees  are  beautiful  though.
Leaves  of  rich  reds,  browns,  and  golds.

Keith  Wilson.  Windermere.  UK.  2016.



,

It will end badly
I know it will
I know it will
I know it will
*I know it will.

I have been depressed. I will not say am. This is a six year ongoing illness that is formed itself into a personality trait, and now an uncomfortable, casual day to day topic.
I wish I could take the heaviness out of the words “I want to **** myself.” because they have never felt like a heavy sentence to me. They are words that string themselves through my brain at least twice a day and occasionally can be formulated into joke at my expense.
I tried to **** myself when I was twelve. It was a two week long ordeal. I was a hospital project for a week, an out of home charity case for a week, and after that, it became a running joke.
“Do you still have a few screws loose?”
“Are you still a basket case?”
“How many pills you think you could swallow?”
Over six years, I have become a great actor. I am best at holding my tongue, swallowing my spit when my throat is closing, and pretending like I am breathing steady. I often laugh in the face of my problems and I distance myself from people when I feel rocks sitting on my chest so they don’t smell the rot of a dying conscious. I have never been untruthful either. Just honest in a way that wears a theatrical mask and relinquishes an audience from an awkward state of “wow, I’m really sorry.”
But some nights are the farthest things from jokes.
Some nights are all choking up on words that don’t make any sense and some days are “nobody actually likes you.” Some days are not having enough energy to do laundry or dishes and then  hating yourself because how could you, you’re so lazy. Most nights are complete self hatred and manic heaving into a wet pillow while your brother sleeps quietly in the next room.
The worst thing about depression is that it’s so uncomfortable. It’s become such an awkward conversation to me. It’s like coming out as something that nobody has ever seen before until it’s living in front of you. It taints everything I do with a feeling of disbelonging with the people that love me because I don’t believe that my depressed presence is comfortable enough for others.
But I am trying. Tomorrow morning, I will wake up to a sun that still shines, even if it is covered by clouds and I will still be depressed. I will pick up a book that  I haven’t started, and wait in a sitting room full of other people who are emotionally sick. I will be the same person that I am, and have been. And I will know that right now, I am also trying very hard to become so much more.

Sometimes my mind runs,
so my feet walk.
My brain is an unsorted file,
and my body is a disconnected server.
There are moments in life where I am so in love with it all that I cry.
Moments when I am so upset, I laugh.
I can not fully understand the loops that my mind takes
over and over.
But I still ride along them.
When I was younger, I use to be so scared of the mess in my brain.
But the truth is,
I am full of clutter.
I am the home of loved objects that is messy,
and lived in.
I am a cloud of multiple thoughts
that lead me to sing at the wrong times.
Love harder than I should.
Feel every emotion at once.
We are all cluttered boxes.
I promise you,
you are messy
but full of love.
And I promise you,
we will all be pulled
from the attic
and taken
back home.

and here i am again
at the intersection
of pedestrian language
& old wives tales
swallowing gum
like 7 year memories
opening umbrellas inside
cause i can't seem get away
from all of this rain
i ******* with my left hand
cause i was told
back in highschool that
"it feels like someone else is doing it"
it gets me wondering
about the difference between
losing you and finding out
that some one else found you
or my sleep
or lack thereof
its starting to tear me apart
i keep having this dream
where you are in
an unfamiliar body of water
trying to wash my poetry
off of your hands
or the one where
something happens in my chest
every time you sit
on someone else's bed
i'm tired of feeling like something you've misplaced
but don't have the heart
to look for anymore
tired of you saying my name
like you're trying to bury it
i'm tired of wondering
if you can tell the difference
between the absence
of my voice & silence
the other day
i almost started sobbing
at work when a woman
asked me about
our equipment
i was explaining how
things come apart
and almost mentioned your name
it made me think
of how you used to say
things like "what would you do
if i showed up on your doorstep
one day?" now, i haunt
the windows in my house
i don't leave for weeks at a time
i sit on the porch like the dog
you didn't shoot behind the shed
the one that refuses to die
until you come home again
i told somebody once, that
you didn't even know
what my voicemail sounded like
i wonder if they thought
it was because you
are so important that i never
let it ring that many times
before picking up
or if you dont know
what it sounds like
because you've never called
you can't be the ****** weapon
and the search party
i'm tired of all the seats
to the ferris wheel in my chest
being empty
tired of your voice
being the one i look for
in abandoned places
that one sound i beg
to bounce back
down vacant hallways
i just seem to stand there
in all of that quiet
like someone looking for a mistake
on an eviction notice
so i guess the hardest part
isn't letting go
it's forgetting
you ever had a grip
in the first place
and since you've been gone
i wonder if when
you pushed yourself away from me
you used your left hand
so it felt like someone else did it

Have you ever been madly in love?

The old man broke my reverie.

On the long faded green bench white with bird droppings
he was peering at me through his silver grey beard
looking oddly out of place in that college squire park
where only the dreamers at the prime of youth
would sit between classes to exchange love notes
and steal a kiss when the passion couldn't be reined in.

Have you ever been madly in love? he repeated,
and then as if growing impatient by my silence
mumbled, pausing between words,
like they stung him like thorns
it extracts a price been paying all my life
living with a void no other woman could fill
a commitment that breeds only pain
yet makes me insanely boastful
of being madly in love.

It was recess hour and the benches were being filled up.

How many, I wondered, would still hold hands
when the classes are over.

The unimaginable zero summer lies in the water
A water grey with the half-time break
Where mother takes a breath
A breath that sends chills up every nerve ending, even in the tips of fingers
When the sun is a bleached dot in a faded sky
And the evergreen wilts to clay
The sounds of the water hitting sand in the tide
And the rustling of the leaves weaving to make the ceiling
Are no longer welcoming comforts
But detached, careless, and fierce
Any young are burrowed away
A short-notice hibernation with mom and dad and half stock
The black no longer a vast night sky
But a lurking cold beneath pale, cycling feet
That are numb, frozen
Zero