I can always tell when my depression comes creeping back.

The insomnia is first. Not every night, but a night or two a week I find myself exhausted but sleepless. I stare at the wall in the darkness and wait for....something. Something that never comes.

The second is the sensitivity. My nerves start to fray, my temper holds tinder, and tears spring from my eyes at the lightest affair. I seem to suddenly hold my emotions like a three year old that missed his nap.

The third is my music. I envelope myself in it, and usually end up listening to the same song on repeat for days. Until it is no longer a song. Until the beat plays in my bones, the lyrics embed in my skull.

I only know I have fallen once I start writing again. I return to the place that smells like damp air, tastes like chalk, feels like numbing nothingness. This place is where I write; where I find my depression. Or rather, where it finds me.

When I wake in the middle of the morning I see your bare body glowing in what is left of the moonlight.
It takes my breath away and suddenly every inch of my skin is fiending to feel you like an addict fresh to rehab.
It's been a few hours since I last touched you, since I fell asleep in your arms,
and now that we have rolled to opposite ends of the bed I need the high back again.
You on top of the covers, and I underneathe, I envelope you the best I can and trace imaginary circles in your hair.
I run my fingers down the side of your face covered with stubble and plant feather-lite kisses across your skin
as your poison soaks into my veins and my heart quickens.

I lay there for hours on this high, watching you sleep with dialated eyes,
and trying to hold back these words that sit at the pearly gates of my teeth.
It's maddening; trying to keep the brigade of how I feel and what I know and how I hope behind the enameled walls.
They fight the barrier and pull at my tongue in an attempt to spill from my shaking lips and crash into the drum of your ears.

But I fear if you knew, you would run.

So instead
I take another hit of you
I regather my composure
and face the day of sobriety ahead.

I feel the sadness creep back into my bones and I whimper.
All of me crumples to the floor like a fallen autumn leaf,
trapped by the asphalt and the air,
with the impending fate of being trampled on by wandering feet.

I can do nothing but watch
and wait
as every bit of my being succumbs to this plague of past participles.

I long to be saved, to be rescued,
but when your savior is your victim,
       when your hero is the fallen,

it's a lot like trying to write with no ink.

You walk by, but you don't see me. All you see is the skeleton of lost potential that you once saw in me. I've gotten rid of all my hopes and fears and everything that I believed in.

I have given up.

I don't know what you ever saw in me. Maybe it was the sea in my sad blue eyes, the fight in the will I once had, the depth of my laugh, my compassion for humanity, my faith in beings.

That's all gone now.

The character that filled me from head to toe now lies shattered in the barren waste lands of your love. As the wind rattles my rib cage, I can almost remember the warmth it once filled me with.

Almost.

You hear the rattle, like hollow wooden wind chimes in an Oregon October. But you keep walking, carrying a smirk in your pocket for when no one is watching.

I'm all black and white inside,
       monotanous from left to right.
You have stolen the color right out of me.

The blank walls of my mind surround a black chair, grey end tables, white carpet stained with your ***** dark footprints;
       all that's left of your presence.

So I try to decorate with things you love,


       just in case you show up.

This awkward silence makes me crazy. I fix my eyes on the floor, entranced in the layers of loops in the stained cream carpet. I don't blink for what feels like hours at a time, testing the willpower and the strength of my eyelids to see how long I can keep them open. My vision begins to blur and tears form in the dark corners of my radiant sea-blue eyes, and I'm not positive whether they are tears from the dry pain consuming them or from your words that hurl at me, bouncing off my skin as if being rejected by Jesus at the glowing gates of heaven, and falling to the same stained cream carpet I gaze at. I watch them crash to the floor and writhe beneath me, banging their fists on the floor, screaming at the top of their little lungs, running in circles and eating each other alive. I then begin to wonder whether it matters where the tears come from, what caused the flood down my face like water through a leaky dam built when "engineers" were merely cowboys with hammers and nails.

The look in your eyes makes me crazy; why I refrain from making direct eye contact. The carpet will suffice, at least it doesn't stare back with those eyes. Your notice of the tears cascading slowly down the soft curve of my blood rushed cheeks changes your mood instantly, and I can feel the color of your aura change as your tone drops. You apologize and I watch the words dance on the floor beneath my feet. "I'm" dances slowly in circles, a slow lonely waltz, next to my loose shoe lace in an empty section of this stained old carpet covered with conversation. "Sorry" lays flat, twitching on the tip of my shoe, convulsing almost to the beat of my heart, which I can hear pulsing through my headache. You wait for a response, a word, a few words, anything. But it seems you have taken them all already. And all the words I could say now lay beautifully still on this carpet of mine.

You're not sorry.
I couldn't figure out why for the longest time.
I didn't understand until now.
Until this empty moment were 2 and 2 start looking more like 4 than 83.
You're a sadist.
I completely forgot.
You told me once, maybe twice before.
But I didn't believe you.
You seemed too sweet, too gentle, too warm.
To the touch, at least.
But you were right.
You did this to me on purpose.
You are enjoying making me and watching me suffer.
It makes you feel important, like you've had an affect.
And I've been literally feeding it to you with a shovel.
I thought I was making you feel guilty, showing you what you have done to me.
But I was doing just the opposite.
By showing you my anguish, I only fueled your sick minipulative mind.
I am your puppet.
See me dance, cut my strings, watch me fall,
and laugh and laugh and laugh.