How do you keep safe when your whole day is as wide and empty as the sky?
They always call depression the blues,
As dark as my big blue eyes
Too perfect
Too delicate to be real
My features change by the day
As if clouds float above me
Casting sickly shadows on my face.
Blank contentment
Twisted with defeat, and a tiny sliver of hope.
Paradoxical.
I would have been happy to have woken to a periwinkle outlook,
But instead I awake in a fog
Wrapped in a woolen nightgown,
Despite the heat of the heavy world.
Your voice sounds wet when you speak,
Dripping with truth
I can tell you meant what you said-
That you care.
But you chiseled off all the thorns to my delicate yellow roses.
And deposited my hazards in plastic containers
To disintegrate into thin air.
You tried to fix me
And you lost me
To a face made of plastic
A change far too drastic.
I was the pretty girl
And so I was popular
People loved me
Everyone but me.
An incredible flirt
In any mirror I could find
Now the sight of myself
Out of the corner of my eye
Sends chills
Down my bony spine
Leaving me queasy with neglect
A loss of oneself-
The hardest one to face.
Problems always start
Long before you really see them.
It’s impossible to compete with the past.
Nostalgia-
Misrepresentation
False recollections
I was always happier back then.
And when today is no longer present,
I’ll miss it the way I miss her now-
Oh, how she laughed
How she soaked up the world.
She smelled of purple flowers
Unmistakably beautiful.
But purple turns to black decay,
Wilted and crumbled on the bathroom floor.
She was so different from this lost girl.
I wonder when I began to notice such things.
I began writing
Compulsively scribbling
On the back of old take-out menus
On the corner of my bedroom walls
On my smooth, untouched skin.
I had to capture my emotions
To know they were real
To remind myself I’m human
Before I slipped away.
A tangible-
Physical representation of existence.
It was crucial to see these letters
And not just see them, but feel them.
The truth, stinging, on the page.
The pen purged my pain.
My self-hatred.
I learned not to turn on myself
I almost learned to love myself
I cleaned my wounds
With silky baths
Milky thoughts
And blue ink.
As bright as my big blue eyes.
The sun painted the wide sky pink.
Clouds covered the horizon
Filling the emptiness of the pale blue air.
The summer heat
Became my blanket
I threw my nightgown in the attic
And woke up that morning to a periwinkle outlook-
A different shade of blue than I was used to.