When the sky turns to water,
hard and gray,
and the wind moves slow,
as if sadness has made it heavy,
I sit in a room
where the walls sigh.
The air is thick
with things unsaid,
but I wear my pain like a coat,
and it scares me
that it fits so well.
Then the walls start to close,
shadows stretching long,
a deep blue swallowing the floor.
I hear footsteps, but no open doors,
I reach, but the walls
offer nothing back.
This is the room of depression,
where time has no use for my name—
where the lonely screams
of the blood in my veins
fade before they find me.
A door creaks open,
but no one steps through—
grief enters like a storm—
rattling the windows,
dragging the scars of every goodbye
I never got to say.
I hear the scrape of empty chairs,
the ghosts of things
that should have remained.
Here, the air is salted
with old remorse,
and nothing I touch is real.
But somewhere,
far past these sunken feelings,
past the wind’s torment,
a brightly painted door waits.
I push it open—
let the sun stretch across my skin,
let the air smell like something fresh.
And though the past still haunts me
like dust in the corners,
I step out—
a little less broken,
a little more here,
a little more now,
in a house with four rooms.
The represents a journey from one emotional state to another—sadness, depression, grief and healing.
Sometimes, you write a poem and only realize after it is done that you needed to—this is one of them. Enjoy!