Featured Poet - Faith Graham

MY DARK ROOM

I lie in my dark room, as if suspended somewhere between life and death. Not at large, but a morsel of a person trapped in the area shaded grey, slowly developing pictures from the brown film holding stories that refuse to be untold. 

Heavy with depression, I mostly feel my chest and stomach merging with my back despite the organs in between; a deflating balloon, losing air, and life, in slow motion. Atom by atom, I feel the dying.

I am in a dark room, trying to develop pictures of light, where people smile, not from saying cheese, but from their insides. This dark room whispers my stories, in colours of sadness...even the happy ones.

In my dark room, I see slight glimmers of light and try to guess the shadows on the wall and ceiling. From time to time, I wonder what it must be like outside, a place I once loved, a few ‘yesterdays’ ago. 

I have not heard nature's musicians in a while. I thought they had disappeared into the background, but instead, their music turned white to protect me from the devastating screams inside my pictures. 

I close my eyes and continue to hide under my sheets, while praying for the courage to get up and bang rapaciously on happiness’s front door.

ABOUT THE PIECE: Bogged down by severe depression and in bed; yet trying to summon the will for recovery.

~

ON THE FLOOR

The force of gravity pulls me into the floor, and I embrace the knowing that I can no longer fall. Lying there, I take time to breathe, to listen to the silence and feel it wrapped around me. 

An innate traveller, my mind searches for something else to break the peace I get from being on the floor. I wrestle with it because I do not want to go off to somewhere else. 

Staying floored and connected to my breath, gives me the strength to resist the rope that is a noose, girded with my guilt and readying to stifle, choke and hang me. 

I tell myself to stay right there, in mindfulness, in the now; breathing…

A tear drops. A razor sharpened. A vein cut. I bleed out, on the floor.

ABOUT THE PIECE: In deep depression and suicidal.

~

UNDERNEATH-NESS

I am burning inside from lack of hope. Even though I get up every day, even though I talk to you, even though I go about my day, I suffer silently in the ‘underneath-ness’ of depression. It stings like the moon jelly.

I feel the distance from you, from myself, from everything. I wonder if you can see that the current is sometimes so strong, it washes me away, filling my lungs with salt water. 

When the vampire comes for me, it moves menacingly like a cryptic snail, takes me hostage, and then unleashes its wrath until I become a snail; load anchored firmly to my back.

Nevertheless, I crawl excruciatingly uphill, in search of the place where happiness lives … or dies.

ABOUT THE PIECE:  Struggling with the ever-present underlying low.

~

NO MORE

Forgive me for trying to be free

of you, of me, of us, of time.

My breath will waltz to the tune of the flute

and thereafter I will escape.

No more.

No longer will my life be twin to my death.

Forgive me for succumbing to the vampire.

No more.

ABOUT THE PIECE:  Weary from depression and ready to give up.

~

IF EVER

if ever there was a day to be grateful 

that would be today

if ever there was a time to be joyous 

that could be right now 

If ever there was a day to love

that would be everyday

if ever there was a time to sing praises

that would be always

if ever there was a day to count blessings

that would be everyday

if ever gratitude was an elixir

then I would be okay

if ever depression was not a monster

I would not run away

if ever they could understand, the battle I fight each day

if ever help was not also a threat

I would not have taken the pills that day

my world could be such a beautiful place

without the constancy of malaise

if ever I could say my last words to you

would you want to hear my truth?

I hope not to be judged or misunderstood

because depression is not ingratitude.

ABOUT THE PIECE: Often persons in depression are told that all they need to do is be grateful or to recognize that others may be worse off than they are, and that they are depressed because they simply choose not to be grateful. However, in my view, gratitude and depression are not mutually exclusive.

~

SPINNING OUT

Numerous, sudden emotional jabs over time leave my face unrecognizable.

My eyes no longer tell me the answers, they only seek answers to who I am, or where I went.

My shoulders ask me when we got to the hunchback palace, and I shrug and say it must be osteoporosis, or perhaps psychosis. 

It seems I have lost touch with myself … maybe playing peek a boo. Maybe, I am stuck on the go-round, not so merry. Maybe neurosis spinning my head on a nauseating carousel, not like my favourite record on the turntable.

Those were the good old days when I wondered how the singing magicians got into my records, how they became so little, while singing to me with voices so big they made the little girl in me feel larger than life.

I close my eyes to visit my imagination and become a not so nimble ballerina on ice, my growth frozen in time. A Thumbelina, spinning around the little finger; the one stiffened by needling stabs to the soul.

The shell of the tin thimble offers no safe shelter. It cracks, crumbles, chips and disintegrates into a wintry infinity.

No more individuality, just the rock or the hard place, could I please get a teeny bit of grace? 

Show me the path out of the madness, how to dilute all this sadness. Spin me out of control, but not into bits and pieces. Please make me whole. Free my potential happiness, restore my fierceness … my self-assuredness. 

Cause me to remember that I am not broken; or turn up the madness, quicken the pace, and blow my mind to outer space!

Play me another song …I will not wait for long. One. Two. Three. Bang.

ABOUT THE PIECE: A depressed adult trapped in the mind of her wounded inner-child. It feels unnatural, painful and causes immense confusion and insecurity from which she cannot get clarity or comfort. She feels lost and interprets her experience as madness. For her it is unendurable, and she would rather die than live in the turmoil.