for how else could i be haunted
months after you've gone?

at first
it stung
wandering through this world alone
after belonging to you for so long
every song cried out your name
i had to plug my ears for peace and quiet

and then slowly
and with tremendous subtleness
it got easier
the nights were not plagued with memories
i reclaimed the streets we once walked on
i created my own religion
away from you
and everything you reminded me of

i found solace in getting to know myself
when the host is gone, who is the parasite, really?
i climbed into myself and found
all the things you loved about me
and all the things you learned to hate

it takes a long time to forgive someone who broke your heart
but a longer time to forgive yourself for allowing it.
the heartbreak didn't scar me;
instead, it was like the time i sprained my knee
in the second grade
it felt like i was dying in the moment
until
weeks later
it didn't

and now the only reminder i have of that day is the soreness i feel every winter when it's cold
and my body remembers what my mind forgot

I look for any excuse to get in the car nowadays.

the bed I once found comforting feels lonely and cold
and I have to remind myself I've always been the only person
who sleeps on it
it's like I miss someone who never existed,
a slim shadow from another dimension of something that once
brought me warmth

I fall out of my bed
a puddle of last night's tears
slipping into the shower counting on the same broken promise
that I'll feel better when I get ready
because how can you hate yourself when you look beautiful?

trying hard to find an outfit feels hypocritical
no one's gonna see me
no one's gonna care
I'm just putting on something
because I want to feel like I'm the main character of my own show for once in my life
I want to feel that this day is mine to conquer

so I climb into my car
the only safe space I have left
untainted by the tears that have been shed over text messages
and fights between my sister and me
it's like rolling down the windows clears the air inside and
in screaming lyrics to the same three songs
I finally breathe

many poets attempt to dress depression up to be
a fancy visitor in a gloomy suit,
like some rich guy from the forties
with the cool hats

but that's not it at all.
now, given, everyone experiences depression differently,
but to me it feels like it's entangled into my every breath

i feel like the tree wrapped in poison ivy i found once
when i was a kid
and i grabbed one of the leaves like an idiot
and rubbed it on my face because
"the leaves are soft, mommy"
and then i had to stay home for like, a week, until
the rashes went away.  

and, so,
it is part of my humor now,
and my breath, and my laugh, and my every blink,
and even when i don't think it's there, it is-
and it's not always destructive.
sometimes it gives me a break from the anxiety and i can just sit back and let myself be mellow and tired

THUS
it's okay that i am depressed
and for the longest time i thought
it was a part of me
and getting rid of it would be getting rid of a part of me
but i have come to realize
that the healing process
is CONSTRUCTION only
and nothing will be destroyed as i get better.

rather,
flowers will grow out of my volcanic ash
and the fog will only linger in a way that makes a day look beautiful
and I get to decide what i do with this palace of a brain that was granted to me.

that's what i think about tonight.

one of the things i'll never get over as a depressed person
is the feeling of utter e m p t i n e s s...
you don't know it till you feel it
and you don't feel it because it's absence of a feeling that you feel

suddenly nothing makes sense and you yearn for a pen to scribble your thoughts down on a piece of paper that you will never let anyone read anyways so what's the point

your questions stop having ?s at the ends of them and the threads in your heart are undoing themselves until you have annihilated your chances for sanity

you listen to music you wouldn't normally like to listen to, but your person of interest told you to listen to them so you do

and taking pills becomes a habit and sometimes you forget why you even take meds because i thought for a long time that feeling like a gray cloud 24/7 was normal until someone put it into a box and labeled it

"chronic depressive disorder"

i am the moon but less beautiful
simply mirroring what is thrown my way

i am the moon
only a part of me is available for your eyes
the cold, shrouded depths of me are hidden away from you

you love the moon
because you love the scant silvery light
and not the bite that life has taken out of me
leaving me as a lonely crescent