english teachers detest me
because i never capitalize my i’s
but they never once bothered
to come and ask me why

uppercase is a privilege
at least, it is in my mind.
it’s reserved for war heroes
or a painter who is blind

i have done nothing remarkable
i have hardly even tried
everything good i’ve done
is eventually cast aside

why do i deserve an uppercase?
or for that matter, why do you?
we’ve done plenty of bad
when there’s plenty of good to do

english teachers detest me
because i never capitalize my i’s
but i will have reason to someday
and i hope that is not a lie

Walk through my antique assortment of recollections
and lining the shelves you will find a de trop amount of regrets,
superfluous surplus that will remain behind when I cross state lines.
But tucked back in corners are stories and memories I’ll miss,
the figurative trinkets who, in absence, I will not and could not forget.

I will miss the childhood films watched while curled up on the couch
with a bowl of still warm popcorn and the symphony of pet snores.
I will crave our 3 AM conversations that just preceded sleep,
when we filled the air with words of nothing and created memories sweet.
I will yearn for the sound of your laugh, his voice, her smile
that echoed through any room the personalities occupied.

Walk through my antique assortment of recollections
and lining the shelves you will find a de trop amount of regrets
mixed with valued, treasured memories that I am sure to miss.
But tucked back in the spaces is room for new worlds
so I close and lock the antiques away, save them for a rainy day.

Depression isn't a black cloud.
That cliche implies that eventually there'll be a torrential downpour,
And then the cloud will fade away and allow
The sun to shine through, ending that terrible storm.
Depression is a starless night.
An expanse of black where even the stars have abandoned you,
Long since dead, and you try to make sense of the loneliness
In a world where people have turned into zombies.
Thoughtless, repetitive phrases become their instincts.
"Think positively," is the mantra of the dead to the dying.
As though statements turn into directions when the sun goes down,
Like signposts leading us to a brightly-lit land.
But the sky doesn't respond to artificial lights,
And nothing but time can force the sun to return.
Their second statement, under the facade of help,
Is to remind us that day will always follow night,
And no matter how starless and eternal the darkness feels,
The sun will eventually break through the horizon, waving pinks and oranges.
Sadly, not all lifespans are created equal,
And for the many colourful transitions people have seen in the sky,
There are plenty who never see more than black.
Some souls are born at dusk and are dead by pre-dawn,
Never having lived through anything but darkness.
And to the zombies, accepting that fact is the hardest.

Terrors chase me out of sleep in disguise
I sit in darkness fiddling with my thumbs
All the while hoping that the sun won't rise
And that morning will never come

Soon the sky starts to bleed
And the horizon is covered in slaughter
But as soon as these tears have the strength to fall
The blood melts into water

And I realize the sky had turned blue
As I was sitting there in fright
And I realize I can either embrace the day
Or I can spend the rest of my life
Chasing the night

But I haven't made up my mind
Because night is the only place I'll ever belong
I'm a stranger to the light
I live through the day in a montage
of a sad song

Even though daytime reigns
There is still darkness in my mind
Maybe that's why I love night so much
Even though every morning
it leaves me behind

I spend the day clutching pictures of the stars and moon
Just waiting for them to come
And I know they'll leave much too soon
But maybe this time I'll go
where they come from

And I wish I would never sleep again
So I could spend every second enjoying the dark
I convince myself that it's good for me
But even the darkness leaves its marks

I know where you are right now because I have been there too, I know how it feels to be so sad for so long that you can't imagine being happy again, to be so sad for so long that you stop trying to be happy again and so you just feed the sadness, just try to give it what it wants in the hope that it will be content enough to spare you, but feeding it only helps it grow. You have to starve it out. You have to lock it up, have to tell it "no", have to fight it. It will claw at the back of your eyelids, it will moan and howl so loud that you cannot hear your own thoughts, you will ache because it is aching and you and it are one but you have to remind yourself that it is created entirely of you, but only a portion of you is made of it. You have to make it shrink. It will not be easy. There will be days when you give in, when you feel bad for it, withering away, and so you throw it scraps of food under the table but there will also be days when it is silent. It will have grown so weak that it can no longer pound on the door, it will lie still there in the dark and you will forget about it, if only for a moment, and you have to hold onto that. There will be good days, days when you think to yourself "this is how happy people feel on a regular basis," days that remind you why you are fighting this beast in the first place and the next day may be bad again, you may not hear that silence again for weeks but when you cannot see an end to this torture, you have to remind yourself of the good days, you have to keep them tucked underneath your pillow and reminisce about the way walking felt easy for a day before you go to bed, you have to keep telling yourself that although this is an uphill battle, it will be so much easier on the way down the other side and the view from the mountaintop is breathtaking. You have to convince yourself that you want that mountaintop, have to tell yourself that the good days are worth the fight, that the sadness will not last forever, that you are not made of darkness although it is made of you. You have to starve it out; it is so much easier to live when you only have to feed yourself.

I wish
There was no gravity
So people wouldn't get hurt
When there's no one there to catch them

When they fall

©IGMS

People lie.
Promises are spoken.
People die.
Promises are broken.