I woke up yesterday feeling a bit better, thinking this bout of depression had plans for a short stay.  I was a fool.  By the afternoon, I wanted to break something.  I wanted to scream and slice myself free of my skin.  I wanted to get lost in the wind, become invisible, silent. 

When I say my blood is gloom, I mean that it weighs me down like a thousand shadows forcing their way into my mouth, filling my eyes with pin pricks of hateful images.  Depression is a slick spill of oil that leaves bruises under your skin, a chemical leak that taunts as it smashes your breath, a stain that sticks to bone.  It is what taints my blood, turns my heart into turmoil; a slow churn, a bitter lip, a death in the eye. 

It became clear yesterday how fat I am, how much space I occupy, no matter how hard I may try to disappear.  My failings, my grotesqueness laid out before me like a book of horrors, but it is a book whose pages I have scoured for a lifetime.  I did not need to be told what I already know.  I am taking up too much space, hating myself for it; no one should know I am here. I gave up dreaming long ago. 

Darkness steals the mere idea of joy, burns it up with a spark from a cruel tongue, my tongue.  When I lie down, I feel my heart beating with confusion, sometimes too fast, sometimes too slow; never easy, never rhythmic, never comforting.  When I close my eyes, I see the lights that come as a harbinger of blindness, indigo triangles that stab and flash and tease.  It is never quiet in my mind.  I cannot move or laugh or love.  Depression has me in it’s grasp; she whispers, she lies, she imprisons me.  My strength is ash that sullies my own hand.