please don’t think there’s more of me.
i am not what i used to be.
these days, i am just
the palest impression of myself
a fraction of my own existence.

lately, i am any girl
buried beneath clinical diagnoses,
verdicts made by women smart enough
to have multiple Ph.Ds,
but not sad enough to know
how ‘major depressive disorder’
has discolored our years,
left the days stained blue-black,
bruised raw with pain.

this leaves me with my own two hands,
trying to find the romance in mornings spent alone
emptying the coffee ***
escaping into other lives written twelve point font
on well-loved pages
but i am always left wanting.

i am alone & this is not beautiful
my sadness swallows me whole.
when things are bad, it leaves me
paralyzed in my bed as the daylight dwindles,
bent into myself stifling the sounds of sobbing
with my fist
so the neighbors won’t hear.

dealing with depression when there’s no one else around
doesn’t go down easy, but then again
neither is hard liquor
at least it takes the edge off
at least something makes the suffering
of living less of a burden to bear.

call it semantics, but this isn’t living
once we come into being,
once we have consciousness,
we are dying real slow.  
we **** time until it comes back
to throw us six feet under.
karma’s karma.