Tag: depression

Doubting // To Another Day

jackiewrightauthorLeave a comment
Photo by Elijah O’Donnell from Pexels

This story is only partly true so you will have to imagine the rest.

The re-teller never existed. To you she might seem real…

Or was it all a test?

No, no, I’m quite sure that the narrative is truer than the actual story

And the voice sounds realistic but also too arrogant.

(Has she ever muttered “sorry”?)

To anyone reading this – please don’t jump to conclusions harshly.

If you say that I’m to blame, I will accept it.

At least, partly.

So enjoy the show and take the orchestra home if you can’t sit through.

Because the drums and the violins might hit some chords

Resonating with you,

Too.

***

My head has been bed bound for a decade and counting.

Nothing grows in a ceaseless fire,

It’s a storm of blips. It’s a form of drowning.

The clouds move unsurely through the stickiest nectar.

I imagine this is what death feels like

Because anxiety is my faithful specter.

My limbs are tranquil while the chest goes full Urie

And the focus is stolen from me,

The emptiness is filled with fury.

What about the jury?

Are they still out and about, ignoring the verdict they are going to serve me?

I look around. “In the time of need did they all desert me?”

Helplessness locks my senses, the room turns black. I bow to the unimaginable.

Not the first time someone called my pain unfashionable,

Even easily eradicable.

Yes, my head has been bed bound for a decade and counting.

And yes, I can take another day of drowning.

I can take another head recounting.

But please take away all the shouting.

You’re not understanding what you are doubting –

And I’m simply looking for mounting,

For someone who doesn’t suffocate by shrouding.

-JW

The Revelation

jackiewrightauthorLeave a comment
Photo by Francesco Ungaro from Pexels

It feels irrelevant to feel the rut I’m feeling, but it’s still true –

My mind is rumbling, I can’t hear the chorus through the blues.

The fences are getting higher and I don’t want to manage,

And every day I don’t, my brain gets twice the damage.

I didn’t know you were listening to my story all along.

To you it might seem that I’m visionless or not that strong.

To you the picture has been painted through a distorting mirror.

But I don’t care –

Come, take in my suffering from the cuts, almost like a killer.

Then he whispers:

“Step away from the catastrophe for a second, let me ground it.

I know that the truths you’ve been hearing sound astounding,

And somehow you keep on beating the current as if it’s your cure –

But there comes a time to realize that you will not be judged

By the pain you endure.”

-JW

Leaving Ante: Part III

jackiewrightauthorLeave a comment
Photo by Dark Indigo from Pexels

Trauma

How do you embrace the darkness, the fog lingering in your thoughts?

The guides have dropped dead and my mind is haunted, covered in moths,

So I’m praying to hills, I want to get past this mentor-less journey alive

But the wheels are turning to the uncharted territory, pulsating cyanide.

How to forget the grave they made me dig for myself, scarring me to agony?!

Yet – the actions are excusable because only the young and terrified will write a symphony,

A melody submissive enough for their listening pleasure, a hymn for the masses.

My shoulders still ache but I never sung the lullaby,

The one veiling plastic and hourglasses.

And how do you know there’s another side to the endless, smoke filled path I’m balking?

I’ve been penniless and dull, however, never have I felt like sleepwalking.

The dust is sitting still in the unforeseeable, contaminated air I’m chasing.

I know the fog is a part of the ride, perhaps – even the seatbelt, but really…

How do I embrace it when it’s easier to forever erase it?

-JW

August Days

jackiewrightauthorLeave a comment
Photo by Luis Quintero from Pexels

Finger painting my own reflection, deflecting.

A voice is calling me but I find it vexing.

Palms covered in sparkles as temperature raises.

I’ve survived burns, I’ve survived blazes

But somehow this moment pierces my skin.

Do I fit the box that they put me in?

Colors on colors pour down my neck, down my back.

When I turn to look, it’s once again painted black.

Cryptic signs appear in the mirrors as I lay dying…

I’ll never get the picture just right, there’s no denying.

–JW

Antidote To Sentiment

jackiewrightauthorLeave a comment
Photo by Maruxa Lomoljo Koren on Pexels

It is a never ending task to bring together the two coasts of the sea.

The reddest of reds will fill the shores to conjure, to fulfill the prophecy.

Three winters ago the waters froze so deep it felt as if we’ve never seen spring.

Three winters ago I was a bird with an injured wing. All I could do was sing.

But the waves kept crashing on my knees, they were begging me to stay.

Two coasts of the sea sunk more and more into the foolishness of dismay.

Picking one was the destiny, staying on both was a suicide, by hanging.

The antidote to my own sentiment is buried under the corpses I left without thanking.

-JK

Out Of Touch

jackiewrightauthorLeave a comment
Photo by Skitterphoto from Pexels

The tenderness has evaporated and all I’ve got is rage.

I was dying by the mic but you took over the stage,

Not thinking twice. Isn’t it funny?

I do the work and the overtime but you get the money.

I travel to the scariest corners of my sanity,

Surprised of how calmly I treat your vanities.

Why do I have to suffer for a dollar while you keep yelling

That money doesn’t bring happiness – unless I’m buying what you’re selling?

The treatments aren’t making me better, they’re making me dizzy.

When I’m drowning faster in sinking sand, you’re rooting for the scene to get grisly.

Every death threat sings me your name like a symphony –

If you snap my neck, will it be my tyranny or bigotry

That made you pull the trigger? Sure, it will always be me that’s out of touch.

“No mercy for an inconvenient lady,” you said.

“Let’s take the volume up a notch.”

But there is still no tenderness left. Just wrecks.

No empathy for those who sharpen knives on other’s necks.

I was dying from your cuts but you took over the stage,

Not thinking twice. Isn’t it funny?

Animals live on pedestals while I’m stuck in a cage.

-JW

Bittersweet Melody

jackiewrightauthorLeave a comment
Photo by Axel Vandenhirtz from Pexels

How do you live being soft-spoken? No shrieking, no debilitating insomnia or an axe in your chest?

How do you go on another day not feeling broken? Do you wake up after good 8 hours more stitched together than the rest?

It’s not a walk in the park to explain how my anxieties and other ticks make a day worse by the second.

Not to brag, but I want to leave my mark: crawling to every finish line with anxiety on my neck,

Yet coming in second.

The moment someone realizes I’m not kidding when I say I’m depressed is a bittersweet melody to my ears –

What a time to be alive, we’ve progressed. What a time to be alive… Now they know my worst fears.

Hope they ignore the tears. And open tears.

-JW

Fantasy of Teal

jackiewrightauthorLeave a comment
Photo from Pixabay

Your words flow like a river. They spin me out of control, they carry me down

To the lowest points of the shore. Make up running, making me into the clown

You know I am – deep below the surface. So you keep shoveling the soil, faster,

Or as Fitzgerald put it – we beat on just to fall back into the past, to become a disaster.

There is this immeasurable darkness inside of me when I see your face, I feel reckless.

You are the one to sympathize, but you also beg me to wear a hangman’s knot as a necklace.

How full of oneself can a person be? When does the pride begin to overflow?

Just as a shallow basin you drip on the floor each night before you start a row.

We argue about the system, we beat each other black and blue for the thrill.

People say that I look happier but we both know you kick in like a bitter pill.

The high you give is worthless if you keep dragging me deeper in the waters –

But I guess that is what you get after years of ditching belief in holy fathers.

I never trust a story with a happy ending because there is always the next chapter.

When you first fell into my nets, they called me a serial cheater and a captor.

Look at us now – selling our act on the street corners for a dime. You – closing the deals,

Me, kneeling on the red brick road, making sure that my psyche heals

Before you once again keep my head underwater with your heel.

What’s not to love about life spent in a fantasy of teal?

-JW

The Violet Lotus

jackiewrightauthorLeave a comment
Photo from Pixabay

It is another Sunday morning where you sleep in while I watch the news –

Our apartment building is quiet, yet it bubbles as if it never gets the blues.

At 9am you have made my side of bed into your dream sanctuary. I do not notice.

My daydreams are getting harder to bury. The throb in my chest does not let me focus.

It is one more Sunday morning – you sleep in while I am dyeing my hair.

The neighbors have left for the weekend so that is one more glare I can spare.

Before 10am you are building a fort out of pillows. You do not notice.

The nightmare will hit once you open your eyes. They will jump to a note and a violet lotus.

It is the same Sunday morning – you cannot sleep but you stay in bed, silent.

Four white walls you own and nothing else. Blindsided. But never violent.

After 11am Monday morning you enter the office. They do not notice.

Insomnia has taken you under her covers. She lets you be restless while the world feels hopeless. Bogus.

You remember the note by the lotus.

***

“If I ever stop loving you, please don’t wake me up.

It’s been 8 hours since I walked away

And it feels like a cover up.

If you ever stop caring, please don’t let me know.

It’s been 8 minutes since I wanted to return

But time is a one-way flow.

If they ever learn how I broke you, let them eat me alive.

It’s been 8 seconds since I’ve closed that chapter –

And they’ll let you know that I survive only when I connive.

Let them contrive.”

-JW

A Hearse

jackiewrightauthorLeave a comment
Photo by Dark Indigo

My arms are twisted from the heaviness of your lust.

Without your stare on my neck the world seems unjust.

I don’t want you. You make me worse. You’re my hearse.

But your passion for violence feels like a blessing

And not a curse.

We’re both trying to swim in this hurricane that is raging up north.

At the end, what will it all be worth?

Is this another tale where I was a fix up for an unruly mind?

Is this a contract that we both signed to get fined –

So I could crush my ego, and you could throw out your principles

To feel less invincible?

Less cynical?

Let’s not pretend we can make it alone. And let’s not be naïve –

If we hold on to each other for a moment or less,

We will slice one another in order to aggrieve –

To inflict more pain than necessary, to commit atrocities

Just to later heal the bruises with some sumptuosity.

***

I guess this is destiny. Never believed in one, never will,

But looking at you makes me feel like there’s no time to kill.

Be still, my beating heart. Be still.

-JW