just the other day my mother asked me why i don’t write Happy Things.
i couldn’t produced the words from my tongue to explain that happiness is a firefly hovering just out of reach,
how it sometimes dips
just low enough for my fingertips
to brush its wings
before it soars above my head once again.
i couldn’t figure out how to make her understand that most of my time is spent with my head surrounded by darkness, so that the “happy” moments only appear to be a grey light.
my brain functions at a baseline of a light drizzle and a slight chill spent alone,
where happy can't live because of the possibility of catching the sad.
she wouldn’t believe me when i said that i can’t write Happy Things because i need to drain them of their nectar while their light is still in front of me.
i cannot afford to write Happy Things because then i would never have the chance to experience them as close to fullness as I can.

happy doesn’t linger the way depression can.

I don't feel like I'm awake
Every word seems hard to take.
I'm stuck in this routine.
I'm stuck running in this bad dream.
My thoughts are twisting and my wishes changing.
What I wanted isn't what I got and
Everything just makes me feel like I was shot.
Like my chest is bleeding out.
This numb feeling overcoming me.
It's all just a bad dream with an exit I cant find.
I wake up every morning feeling like a ghost
And I spend my days haunting everywhere I go
I'm not really there and I'm not seen by most.
I'd say I'm invisible but some unlucky souls
Still manage to see me wandering alone.
It's not like I made this choice.
It's not like someone caused me to lose my voice.
It's just something about this feeling.
Everything just feels so fake.
I really don't think I'm awake.
And at some point I pray that I'm right.

If I was to sit here and tell you my pain we’d be here for hours,
Pain is inevitable,
For some endless,
For me a darkness and lingers in the back of my mind waiting for a moment to envelop me in a blanket so heavy I have no way out,
I have to wait.
For someone outside that darkness to just whisper my name so I can swim up and just breathe.

This darkness is wide,
Even as I cry out to this darkness it has no sympathy,
My pain is mean,
Heartless,
My struggle is its joy,
My hurt is relief,
My sorrow is a sweet aroma to the stretch of my happiness,
Yes, I smile. A lot in fact,
But is it real?
I’m the best actress you’ve ever seen,
My smile is laced with the pain; darkness; hurt and sorrow that you will never see so, please!

Allow me to grieve for the happiness I can’t feel. I forgot how it feels, it’s numb but pain...
You’ve all but won.

something sweet like
licorice
burning down my throat
absinthe makes me gag
blurry moments
fill my head like laughing gas
life is a cycle of
breaking chains that I didn't know were there
tearing them off
sobbing or standing in the wind until
your pores are clear of them

//

my face is numb
trickle down spin
my legs over his
(a gentle caress)
time is irrelevant sometimes

Lost inside a clockwork
        Heart attack
        ‎     Waiting to happen
        ‎   Ticking and cracking
        ‎    The silence in half with a second's helping
        ‎           I was hungry and delving deeper into somnambulance
        ‎                      Gambling my waking minutes
        ‎       Away with a hazy resemblance of life
        ‎     The sharpest of minds couldn't cut it out
        ‎   This troubled route gets more fractured with each forced laughter
        ‎             Hours pass faster the faker my happiness becomes
        ‎                    I scrape by on a yearly basis as my days have gone numb
        ‎