You turn away from me sometimes in the night and cry silently into your pillow, not wanting to wake me. But I always wake when you weep like that, and I can see the outline of your slim ivory shoulders shaking with each stifled sob. Your dark hair cascading around you in a soft halo as some unspoken sadness carries you so far away from me, to places I can't follow. Once I would like to just cast aside the hesitation and enclose you in my arms as I do when we make love. But I know that I would be invading a private moment by doing so, would somehow hurt you more, even if I don't understand why. Is it some secret shame you carry within you that causes you so much pain? Something you think I would recoil from if I knew? I would not, I swear. I would kiss away your tears as I did that day I found you in the bathtub with a bottle of whiskey and handfuls of oxy. I pulled you up out of the cold water and you clutched me like a drowning person. I never told you that it was I who really was drowning before you found me and brought my dying heart back to life. It was that night that you baptized yourself in my bathtub which gave me the courage to really love again. I played Szerelem, Szerelem and you pulled me into the bed, just wanting me to hold you. It was you who were really holding me, though you didn't know it. And when we make love, your hands in my heart and myself moving within you, it is you who are pouring your strength into me. I know that we can't last like this though, with secrets and shadows between us. Whichever of us leaves first doesn't matter. Only that it was beautiful while it lasted.

We are critical.

We find flaws in
everything we see
because nobody
wants to write
about perfection,
even though sometimes
we wish we could just stay
staring into that
unblemished surface.

2. We are never satisfied.

We live our lives upon
mountains of
scrunched up
bits of refill and
ideas we gave up
trying to
express.

3. We never forget.

We write words about
eye contact made
three months ago
that we replay over
and over in our minds
even though it
stopped
being relevant.

4. We are fickle.**

Our emotions flash
from one
to the other
like strobe lighting that
disorientates us
until we feel as if
the world
will never be still.

5. We are exposed.

We don't know how
to keep our feelings
to ourselves so
we'll write them
down for
you to find
'accidentally'.

6. We are vulnerable.

We wear our
hearts on our sleeves
and won't lift a
muscle to fight back
if somebody tries
to break it
because we thrive
from the pain.

7. We will never stop.

We will never stop
feeling and
we will never stop
hurting,
we will never stop
breaking and
bleeding and
loving
even though the cycle
is endless
and we know what's
coming next.


We are addicted
to agony,
but we agonise
for the art.

My mother used to hate me. Shortly after she found out she was pregnant with me she started to hate me. She tried to get an abortion, but I wouldn't die. She tried to vacuum me out but I just wouldn't let go... She was late 5 days on her due day , 'cause i just wouldn't leave. She hated me all the way out of her ******, through the ****** and finally out. She hated breastfeeding me, she hated putting me to sleep and changing my diapers. She hated the day i said my first word, "mama", she cursed the day i started to walk. She hated going to my kindergarten recitals, she hated all the contests I won in grade school. As I finished the 8th grade, I left and I moved to a big city with my sister, for grater education and a better life. She didn't say a word before I left, nor the following weeks. Papa was crushed, she lived happily... Until one day, three months later. I was on my way to school, when, in front of the building I saw papa and her. She looked awful. As she saw me she started crying and ran to me. She hugged me and kissed me for minutes, as she kept saying "I love you so much...I'm so sorry...I missed you so much...". Papa said she didn't eat, she couldn't sleep for weeks and she was devastated. I went upstairs with them, I laid her on my bed and she fell asleep in my arms, shivering and whispering, with big tears running down her pale chin...She never woke up... I love you, mama...
                                                        ­                                             DCimpean
                                                        ­                                                       2014

Everyone talks about depression as if they know it.  

But what they don’t know is that depression is a hooded figure standing just outside of a wooden doorway,

it’s feeling the blood dripping down your skin and having the sick thought of  “Oh, look how beautiful the red is” (they always say red is my color).

Depression is lying on your bed for hours on end, salt tracks lining your face like the scars on your ankles, staring at your ceiling tracing patterns in the paint and accepting death in life with this hole in your chest because death is a reward, an escape from this pain you deserve to feel.

Depression is writing sick poetry on skin and publishing it with scars, cutting on ankles, not wrists because you’re scared you’ll get in trouble but you so desperately need to be seen, and never are.

Depression is writing the word “alone” and seeing the word “home”, accepting the pain like a gift because you deserve it.

Depression is admitting suicidal thoughts to paper and not to people, and loving the broken things, hoping to tie them together, thinking maybe things will get better, but knowing that’s just wishful thinking.

Depression is hearing your mother call you monster and disgusting through the too-thin walls of your door when she thinks you can’t hear, and then telling you to your face that you have no right to cry, as if sadness is a privilege and you’re so pathetic that you don’t deserve it.

Depression is shutting yourself up in your room and hearing your family laughing downstairs because you feel like you can’t be a part of them and learning at a young age to love family always but that family isn’t always love

Depression is wanting to take love and your heart and break them into tiny little pieces and throw them into waves, to throw them away

Depression is a foot when the shoe hasn’t been broken in yet, is you when you haven’t broken life in, is seeing happy people and thinking they all look the same, like the front covers of magazines with smiles reaching their eyes when yours can’t.

Depression is wishing you could package your smiles into tiny little piles and hand them to people more deserving of them because you know you’re wasting them with half-assed lines of “I’m fine”

Depression is having to view your past as if it wasn’t yours, because to accept it as reality is to accept finality of your life through suicide.

Depression is a hooded figure standing just outside of a wooden doorway and when you close the door out of fear it keeps pounding, possessive, ******, and when you open the door out of anger you shout, “I’M SCARED” to thin air but your voice comes out as a whisper.

words rack my body
like an exorcism
and i fear
if i do not get them out
i might cry

i'd rather swallow my demons
than let you see me
like that.

Months of stale, cigarette smoke
and spilt **** water pleasantly
offset the stench of cheap cologne
and ratty, abused furniture.
    
Fictitious stories occupy this tiny, dim
apartment, birthed on the lips of
rebellious juveniles whose tongues
pierce the ears of our elders.

In a forsaken corner, Jeremy lounges
awkwardly on a grubby-plaid sofa that
suitably complements his button-down shirt.  
I join him.

Behind his right ear rests a lonely cigarette, while
another sits snug between his lips, set ablaze
by the 1968 Slim Model Zippo he inherited from
his beloved grandfather.

His transparent sense of self-worth emanates
from his grubby, grease-stained hands, scuffed boots,
blotchy-checkered flannels, and faded blue jeans
that are completely obliterated with holes.

I look into his pale blue eyes, the depth of which
often goes unrecognized.  Jeremy is a soft-hearted,
pudgy youngster with the kind of chunky cheeks
that all grandparents love to torture.  

But his marred, acne-ridden face betrays the transition
that has been forced upon him.  Slowly, his trademark
grin appears across his face – subtle, mischievous, and
typically without reason.  But this time it appears justified.

Jeremy takes a moment’s break from his cigarette to drop two
hits of acid.  A new drug for him, he hopes to find relief from
his seething anxiety, evidenced now by the wide expansion of his
chest as he takes another, more lengthy and powerful pull from his cigarette.

The mundane chatter that fills the room continues, a seeming
necessity to offset any potential awkward silence. I feel as if
this noise is closing in around us.  But just as suddenly as I
feel overwhelmed by this sensation, the noise stops.

I look around, noticing everyone’s eyes staring in my
direction.  Jeremy is still next to me, now giggling
like a little school girl.
I begin to feel sick.

Jeremy swiftly leans forward, giving his
cigarette a premature but honorable
death, eliminating its glow as he smashes
the cherry into tiny bits against the ashtray.

As he sits back against the couch, I can see that
his eyes are now indifferent. Foreign.  With a perplexed
and fascinated stare, he watches the pearly-white smoke
slowly slither upwards towards the ceiling.

There’s no question in my mind that his
soul has fled. Jeremy sinks further into the
couch, turning his vacant eyes in my direction.
I want to *****.

His high-pitched giggle has now subsided into a
low whimper.  Gradually extending his left arm into
the air, he tilts it from side-to-side, examining it as if
an infant discovering his genitals for the first time.  

Bike wheels appear in the corners of the room.
Entertained, his eyes rapidly zigzag from the
corners of the walls to his hands. He asks me
if I can see the wheels. I don’t respond.

Intervals of psychotic emotion begin to cycle. Jeremy’s eyes
fill with tears as he tries to understand the hallucinations
engulfing him.  The expression on his face betrays the reality that
he has stepped onto the never-ending theme-park ride from hell.  

Together we leave and walk to the bus station, Jeremy
walking slowly and whimsically. The bus arrives,
and I hand him a few crumpled, single-dollar
bills as I attempt to instruct him where to get off.  

All I can envision is his mother’s first reaction to her son’s arrival.  
Would she collapse at her son’s knees, crying like a mother whose boy
has come home from war?  Would he forever be an awkward guest
at the dinner table? Would she disown him?  Would he become a feral child?






I no longer know what day it is. I am surrounded by lockers
and students, trapped in a tunnel of shadowy walls.  As I stand
alone, I find myself entranced by the blinding, January sunlight
that floods through the double doors a mile away.

My vision is unexpectedly blocked by a figure
standing in front of me. Clothed in little but jeans
and a bright, white t-shirt, Jeremy stares at me, his eyes
mirroring the emptiness I now feel.  

“Do you have a lighter?”  My hands pointlessly search my pockets for
what I already know is not there. “No, man. Sorry.” A look of confusion
spreads over his face, and I suddenly cannot help but notice the sick irony
of the scene in front of me - Jeremy flooded in light as if born again.  

My thoughts linger here too long, and just as swiftly as Jeremy
appeared, he is a mile away sauntering out through those double
doors. Estranged, I continue to stand here, hoping with
futility that this isn’t the last time I have looked upon him.

-
-
*My eyes love you so much—
I only wanted to see two of you.
I only wanted to see two of you.

I remember that fall,
I was seven years old,
you were 6 feet tall
and I hugged your legs.
The leaves were changed
but we stayed the same,
you may have aged
but we were both young at heart.

I remember that fall,
I was twelve years old,
you were still so tall,
and now I hugged your waist.
We sat by the fire, like every other year,
you told me a scary story,
the first and last I'd ever hear
in your deep, soothing voice.

I remember that fall,
I was fourteen years old.
You were just as tall,
but so, so thin.
There was not a hair on your head,
instead a tumor resting in there.
You smiled but you wished you were dead,
and you couldn't enjoy the season with me.

I remember that fall,
I was sixteen years old.
You're not here at all,
and I am not okay.
It's nearly two years,
everyone else enjoys their days;
but I still shed the most tears.
Fall is no longer a place for laughter;
only horrific memories.

It's summer now,
I'm eighteen years old
and nothing's how it was at all.
You'd be so proud of me.
I've made new friends,
I'm working now and I'm happy.
She is too, I know you're wondering.
I still miss you every day,
but at least time has taught me
how to continue on this way.