Featured Poet - Tamara-Lee Brereton-Karabetsos

EQUATION OF EMOTIONAL BALANCE 

I tried to quantify stability.

Let

m be the hours

between medications,

h the weeks

between therapy,

s the sleep I failed to keep,

and w the weight

of unspoken thoughts.

E = (m · h) / (s + w)

The larger the interval,

the smaller the equilibrium.

Miss one dose

and the denominator thickens.

Miss one session

and time stretches

beyond what it can hold.

Soon,

balance tends to zero.

Some days

my mind is a system

maintained by approximations.

Not cured.

Just stabilized

within acceptable error.

ENTROPY OF MORNING

ΔS > 0

Disorder increases.

Laundry spread

across the chair.

Messages accumulated.

Plates settled

in the sink

like sediment.

The system drifted

toward randomness.

To shower.

To answer.

To open the blinds.

Each act required

an input of energy.

I called it weakness.

Physics called it natural.

Recovery began

with small amounts

of deliberate work.

Gathering myself

one molecule

at a time.

CENTER OF GRAVITY

Depression shifted

my center of gravity

into the chest.

Everything leaned

toward it.

The body compensated:

shorter breaths,

slower steps,

eyes lowered.

I mistook this

for laziness.

But when the mass moves,

the structure adjusts

or collapses.

Healing was not

becoming lighter.

It was learning

where to place

my weight.

ATONE SHELL

Inside me,

particles misbehaved.

Thoughts orbited

in unstable shells.

I lost sleep,

then appetite,

then language.

Touch me

and I sparked.

Leave me

and I drifted,

positively charged,

looking for what was missing.

Still,

the nucleus held.

Dense with memory.

Bound by habit.

Heavy with all

I could not say.

Slowly,

what had escaped

began returning.

A word.

A breath.

A morning

without dread.

Electron by electron,

I became less reactive.

Around me formed

an atone shell.

Not armor.

A way

to remain intact.

OSCILLATION

y = A sin(ωt) + c

My mood moved

in waves.

At the crest,

I believed

I was healed.

At the trough,

I believed

I never would be.

Both were distortions.

The curve continued.

Even at the lowest point,

it was already

turning upward.

I learned

not to trust

the height

or the depth.

Only the pattern:

what falls

can rise.

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