I've recently fallen into an elite group of individuals: youth diagnosed with depression by their mothers.

I can't argue with her; she is licensed.

But I can't help but feel that my case is different, minor in comparison. I'd like to call it loneliness but it's more developed than that.

It's like a cancer that started in my fingertips when they realized there was nothing to hold on to, and has since spread to my heart or my brain, whichever is responsible for the distribution of numbness to my bones and vital organs.. I'll call it 3rd stage loneliness. I'm saving calling it the 4th stage for when it starts to feel terminal.

"Lonely" is kind of a **** of a word, like "love," or "beautiful." I think people like to use "lonely" like teens use cigarettes. It taste good when it falls off the tongue. And by my observation, they both cause cancer.

Everyone wants to be "lonely" but no one wants to be alone.
So I've put it upon myself to separate loneliness into subcategories, based on mortality rate.

If you're wondering why I'm lonely, don't bother. I'm wondering the same. I have friends a family that loves me, and the rest of the chemo-esque **** that's suppose to nurture you back to health. But
I've still got that tumor buried under my skin where no one cares to look.

I ain't got many friends I can talk to.

I've concocted a list of side effects of 3rd stage loneliness, if you're interested:
1.) Insomnia - the inability to completely shut the third eye on your skull because it persists on looking to the future.
2.) Selective Hearing - the inability to listen to supposedly happy music and instead sulk with the sounds of Bon Iver or Bright Eyes ricocheting through the canals of your brain. Music your friends "probably haven't heard of"
3.) Loss of Appetite - Don't worry, you still crave food and other survival necessities. You simply lose the appetite to expand through the universe. Loss of Ambition, as the form would say.
4.) Improved Acting Skills - You'll eventually learn to manipulate the stringy muscles in your face to pull up the corners of your lips when you feel you are expected to. Not all side effects are bad.


I am not one of those darkly dressing teenagers that complains with visible angst about being misunderstood. But I do have the hair for it.

I am not suicidal. Maybe I would be, but I seem to have been struck particularly hard by Side Effect #3.

But at first mention of depression you can see their faces squirm and contort to resemble a clumsy soldier tap-dancing through a minefield, while simultaneously conducting open-heart surgery on himself.

5.) Exaggeration.

This poem is not meant to sadden, to depress. It is simply for the public awareness of 3rd stage loneliness. If you know someone suffering from this disease, please call this hotline:

1-800-462-5663
(1-800-IMA-LONE)


The more you know...

They told me you had a past, and I guess I should have listened.
But who was I to deny the way you cried when your laughter was genuine?
  And I think I fell in love with you when you played your violin
But the music you played no longer resonates in me.

  You told me about your past, because I was the first one that would listen.
And I saw pain in your eyes that I wanted to steal and inflict upon the man that broke you.
  But you told me you were not broken, and I apologized in my head.
Not because you were right, but because I could not fix you.

  And for a short time I lived in the confessions you made while we drove through dirt roads
But now I reside in the first time you told me you were addicted to me
  And I wonder how easy it was for you to quit cold turkey
Because it's almost impossible for me to quit you.

  I told you that I'm empty and you told me you didn't think you'd ever be happy
And it felt like a shot to the heart because that's all I ever wanted to do for you.

  And now I'm not quite convinced there is a cure for what's ailing us.
Other than every moment you spent in my arms,
  the smell of your hair,
and each other.

Before you fall in love with me
you should learn a few things,

like how to live in a shell of thunder storms
or in the breath battered by
whatever drink I could get my
trembling hands on,
you should make yourself at home
so I can too

You should learn how to adjust
your naive eyes to the
darkness in mine
so you can see what lies behind,
so you don't become afraid and hide
and in turn I will reveal myself

You should learn to swim
in my silences, deep
and cold enough to make
your china skin turn blue
and I will hold you in
fiery fingertips
until you're warm

You should learn to live subtly
not only in my reality
but in between the lines
of the sullen poetry
that I write mostly about you
and I will promise you every word

You should learn to push back
with every fiber of your perfect being
when my thoughts get heavy
and I push you so,
so far away

i have racked my mind
trying to figure this whole thing out
the staying, the going
the threads we claim hold us here
& the people who've stopped to play a tune on them
i sometimes relate it
to waking up in waist deep snow
in our former selves
the us we wish we could give one another
the children we've sat on the shelves
trapped, like the looks
we leave behind in snow globes
i sometimes imagine ships
dragging the bottom to the sea of "me"
for sleep & pieces of my old self
to sell to the new one
like history doesn't repeat itself
it gets me wondering
if you too want an apology from the rain
or if you dream of burning family photo albums
and wearing the ashes like perfume
if you're anything like me
how i hope god chokes
on memories of me blowing out candles as a child
i know i shouldn't reference my reader  
but don't you know, the only difference
between alone & lonely is you?
that if my hands could talk
the only thing they'd be able to say
is "dear god we've missed you"
and how can you tell me it isn't love
when even the rain refuses to fall
in places where i've kissed you
i remember the day
you found my smile at a yard sale
it reminds me of how you'll leave
i wonder if when you go
you'll tell yourself
the person in the rear view mirror
is closer than they appear

stomachs churn, insides
twist, anxiety bites
chunks from the swollen
brain. silver glints in the
corner of the eye, quivering
hand snatches metal
weapon, slicesliceslice.
feels warmth ooze from
wounds, thigh catches
fire, singes part of any
remaining self-control when
roses fall from
perfect blood lines.

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

What is poetry? Is it happiness. Or is it insanity, or is it just moments of our lives caught and frozen. Put on display for all to see.I guess poetry is whatever we want it to be.