Sigh! It comes like a train — an express line through
my thoughts, no stops, no warnings. Oh how
DEPRESSION clips at my heels, familiar as shadow,
unwelcome as memory. Defeated — like sunlight
pressed to branches too burdened to bloom. My heart
hangs in moss — heavy, strangled in the green silence
of old grief.

Tears lean like leafless trees, bowed in all directions,
yet rooted in a place with no direction — a forest dying
quietly, where even the familiar trails feel like ghost
roads I no longer recognize.

I feel short of worth — like coins counted in silence,
never enough to buy the currency of being loved.
I glow in daylight, but dusk takes its due —
and now I dim with every breath.

I try to speak, but end up forcing books down my throat,
pages crammed with words I never learned to say.
But you’ll never see me cry in public — I’m an island
left off every map, burying bottle messages even
I won’t recover.

I have so much hopeful words for others, but I’m
a stack of unread stories to myself; a pen that dries
before I can name the ache.

And somewhere inside —I find a red box with hidden
compartments, each one meant to hold something sacred.
But they echo when I open them — soft, hollow
reminders that even my soul has forgotten how
to fill its space.