We are like roses that have never bothered to
bloom when we should have bloomed and
it is as if
the sun has become disgusted with
waiting

When you have a second,
I can show you what happens
after you take something meant
to be so deliciously singular
and trick it into becoming
part of a collection.

Just let me see if I can
fit under this microscope.
I'm sure the findings
will be worth writing down.

I used to break bottles on the ground
and the glass I would use to fill my words
just like people
glass never breaks the same
some will find its way into weapons
and others are simply
echoes in the night
some words are empty
and others are so full
that they spill all over the concrete
filled with water
or rocks
I want them to weigh you down
sometimes
and other times I want you to be able to stand on them
like I do
when I scream messages on street corners
blood dripping down my face
I will promise myself I will never write another empty word
and instead of filling my words with weapons
I'll fill them with sunlight
or unused happiness

I don't break bottles anymore
the only thing I can break well
is myself
and
silence

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.

She sits there,
Fingers entwined,
Face showing her tangled mind.
"I don't know what to write,"
She states, and follows,
"I don't have anything interesting
To say."

I ask her what she loves...
Sometimes it's horses,
Sometimes law,
Sometimes children,
Sometimes God,
Sometimes....
Always
Something that she loves.

And when she talks,
Her eyes grow bright,
Revealing memories,
To be nudged and wheedled,
Poked a bit and needled,
To find that sliver and
Extract the thought
On which to write.

Then off she goes to compose,
To start a journey up the path
We both hope leads to a diploma,
A job, a career, an opportunity.

When she is gone, I sit and muse....
I am a father and grandfather now,
Still adjusting training wheels and
Giving that first push,
Still patching skinned up knees,
Pulling slivers...
Sending children on their way.

The words
I should've said
the tears
I should've shed
the wounds
that should've bled
locked
deep inside my chest
in a box labeled
regret