I have learned that my depression is like doing everything with gloves on.
It makes anything so much harder,
still possible,
but not even worth it.

my therapist keeps telling me to stop thinking in black and white,
she keeps saying that there is grey in
between the night sky
and the ivory sheets of snow folded into the earth,
but what she doesn't understand is that grey isn't a stranger to me,
my life has been seeing my surroundings go up in smoke,
I see in thunderstorms,
my own anatomy is a hurricane staring back at me in the mirror,
before it becomes shattered glass planted in the garden of the floor,
I harvest my own blood.

I am always trying to put the pieces back together,
as if recovery is a destination on a map
but every time I become frustrated,
because my palms are on fire and the glass fragments are laced with gasoline.
I just break them up some more,
until they are grains of sand falling through my fingers.
I can't tell the difference between my hands and an open flame anymore.

I constantly am torn between living and dying,
because every day another forest becomes a graveyard,
every day the sky starts to look more like an emergency exit,
every day the ground starts to feel more like home,
because everything around me is already burning,
but I have always loved mystery and my palms are covered in my own blood,
I am the only suspect in this story,
and I will never take the blame for my own self destruction.
every other culprit's blood and fingerprints have seeped into my skin.
it has become part of me,
there will be no justice.

I am still looking for the clues to weave together the fabrics of my own ******,
where it all began,
who pulled the trigger first,
every other event has just been salt on these wounds,
I have chosen not to address.
but my therapist also told me to stop living in the past,
it's over,
but it doesn't feel over,
I am still a suffering child,
I have not grown out of my pain.

maybe that's part of the problem,
I keep thinking that I'm going to grow out of this,
when the reality is that over time, my body will only shift in shape to wear it better.
and some days, it is going to be bigger than me;
it will become me until I am drowning in it's violent tide.
other times I am going to do to it what it has done to me;
make it feel so small so that I can break it in my palms.

I often feel like this is a death sentence
but I am not dead yet.
and I still have other mysteries to solve,
like how to turn greyness into home,
how to lock up the past, so he stops coming back to my head like he owns the place.
how to turn these gloves into armour so that I can
grasp my life by the throat,
even with gloves on.

It's still not ok, but then again, when has it ever been...

There's nothing but grey skies
I can just about glimpse them through the door
As much as I tried
I still find it hard
Sitting on the lowest stair
Watching through the screen door

A simple comfort, it always is
Watching as the first few drops fall from the sheets of clouds
Creating channels across the dirt on the glass
Bright, despite everything
Bright against the pale white paint

Its good to not have to think
It can get overwhelming
And I'll admit to one thing
As much as I'm remiss to static opinion
Catching just a glimpse or two of
A passing black bird or
Something...

Just to remind me

I've never been fond
of the colour red.
I found it loud,
inexhaustible.
Arrogant.
I felt small around red,
an anger
that I was neither loud,
inexhaustible,
nor arrogant.

I found a home
in grey
and they called me
the grey woman,
equal parts white,
and black.
Neither here,
nor there.
Quiet,
passive,
contemplative.

How does
a grey woman
navigate a world
built for red men?

I met a man,
who was a fan
of Pink Floyd
who reminded me
that pure white
is a rainbow
and from then
I no longer saw grey
as equal parts
white and black.

Now I paint
my nails red
and lay down beside
that Pink Floyd man
every night.

He reminds me of red.
That's why I like him.

you have boring eyes,

or that's what you say.

But in the fluorescent lights of a classroom
they are an icy grey, piercing through my soul.

And in the sunlight of the waterpark,
they shine like the sky: as bright as your smile.

No matter how much I try to paint my life
And decorate my own soul
At the end of the day
I always, always,
Feel grey and cold.

Time allocates rebirth to nature,
But what of human kind?
Emerging from pink elastic walls-
They call it a miracle of life!
Only to end up as food for flowers.

And everyone is so obsessed
With making the most of their
Time.

What magnificent gardens shall
Accompany their Death?
Curtains of wisteria, rose-red poppies,
Flowers that speak a language
That disregards the natural flow
After sinking into that dark hole.

Delusional!
We don't rest in the garden of Babylon,
Or some fancy European botanical.
Tourists don't ooo and ahhh at the beauty
Of our Lives.

Remembrance after Death
Must be some kind of joke,
Because all I see are
Forgotten tombstones and weeds.

Your cotton-balled mind
Drowns out noise
While heals hit
Stiff, unyielding pavement

Everything is like
The annoyance
Of a mosquito buzz

And swatting
Is just a motion-
Like your legs taking you down the sidewalk
Like your eyes staring at the cracking grey
As you hurriedly move past
Impersonal shadows

I’m like the gravity
In between the space I stay afloat
But I could fall heavily
Wrestling with my own doubts
My colors change
From blue to ash Grey
My colors change
From Grey to midnight blue of different hues
When midnight falls I will never have a clue
If things are true or if I am blue
And I could rain a thousand times
Be the loudest when I cry
And still wait for seven colors to heal
As I hope for time, I know not of what's real
But the weather changes in seconds
So I don't realize the sun rays peeping from within
Or the warmth that touches my skin even the slightest
Not sure when am I the brightest
And now I am a different shade of Grey
I can barely see myself again
Like soft feathers so lightly
I feel the strokes of His mercy upon me
Like gentle breeze whispering "move slowly"

I faded into White...