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Her sweet Weight on my Heart a Night
Had scarcely deigned to lie—
When, stirring, for Belief’s delight,
My Bride had slipped away—

If ’twas a Dream—made solid—just
The Heaven to confirm—
Or if Myself were dreamed of Her—
The power to presume—

With Him remain—who unto Me—
Gave—even as to All—
A Fiction superseding Faith—
By so much—as ’twas real—

I burnt the tip of my cigarette into my
Tumbler to **** two habits with one stone.
Though the **** coughed its last sigh and polluted a decently-priced
Rye, I don't trust that the addiction died.

Tipped my finger to the 'tender to fill a new glass,
Struck the flint to the tinder, a tobacco mask.
They poison slow, but the effects are fast.

You, like these habits, are in the past,
Waiting for me at the bottom of a flask, swearing always
"It'll be the last."

i want to be held the way our galaxy holds the earth
there once was a boy that held me how the sky holds a sunset orange
beautifully
but temporarily
i painted his edges in soft watercolors, wrote his mistakes in gentle calligraphy, made something hurtful turn into something healing
he loved her more
and let me go
and now i find myself looking at someone else from the corner of my eyes, wondering if a tiny, flickering feeling can be valid at all among the fire of my others
i hear a requiem for a dream and my heart flutters like it did two years ago
two years
i want to be held like the galaxy holds the sun, the stars, the earth,
in a delicate orbit
a bright light in dark space

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.

Missing you
comes in waves.
I feel mellow,
I feel a rush; hitting me like a tsunami.
Nothing is ever consistent with you;
and won't be it seems
(just like the sea.)

An ant before God.
I am a humble soul within
Humble flesh,
Yet at times ignorant, like a
Baby kissed by a president.

Sometimes you are the most
Womanly woman I have
Ever felt.
Pure feminine.
Venus mirrored.

I am snake to your swan.
Turtle to your cheetah.
When you ask me to hold you,
My arms embrace the
Universe.

By open fire
We celebrate Friday.

Arms heavy, as wine
Ascends mouthwards.

Pantera on vinyl.
Flames dancing on raindeer skins.

I rest within my
Confidence knowing

The dress and make-up she
Really didn't need to put on

Are for me; we're the only two
Clouds in the blue.

Window blackness caused by
Absence of sun, moon, and winter tree

Shadows combined.
She lights an IKEA candle

Wedged into a wine bottle
And turns to me from within a veil

Of black hair; blue Norwegian
Eyes piercing through strands of raven.

Whispers:
*This is Happy. This is how

They will find us diseased
In fifty years.

Cold, warm
Smiles.

Hand in dead
Hand;

Between empty
Bottles.

Edited.

My girlfriend has had trouble sleeping
For as long as she can remember.

None of us willing to worship the
Consumer's deity that Valentine's day

Has become, we dressed for February
And lit a bonfire behind the barn.  

She prepared gourmet hotdogs,
I provided beer, homemade wine

And carried firewood. She turned to
Me, eyes narrowing as the wind

Turned, and smoke caressed her
Fire-warm face.

This is the best Valentine's ever.*
Her face all smile.

All smile and embers.
Now, back in the house,

Her breathing and barely audible
Snores from the bedroom are pure

Music. Sometimes fresh air and
Fire is all

It takes to find silence
Enough

To
Rest.