You are pregnant
I know it now
I did not know it then
I am about six years old
You are a young mother
I look up into you
the way one would shoot
their eyes into a starry night
You’re caramelized glory
hair tied back
every strand accounted for
bouquet-ed by a floral hair band
your top is cut
from the same cloth
and the flowers bloom
across your belly
Your hands are busy
over a stove
but your attention is stolen
by a landscape
framed by a tiny window
In a tiny kitchen
You are not crying
but I sense
your sadness gathering
I knew it then
I know it now
You speak to me
assuming I don’t understand
but I understood then
and I understand now
I am leaving him you know
I believe you
because I’ve heard you scream this
at him and into vacant nights
I can raise you and your brothers
by myself
you are full of running
but you never leave
You thought I could not see you
I saw you then
I see you now
you spent your life
in tiny kitchens
looking through tiny windows
that framed landscapes
you would never reach
I spend my life
Running
for the both of us
Depression refuses to be a pretty poem
It bullies my lines and stanzas
And gives my beautiful images the middle finger
It doesn’t want to be subjected to any reflections or rhyme
It won’t sit on couch to talk about how it is feeling
Depression refuses to be romanticised
It hates fairy tales and happy endings
It feeds on wounds, and it wants snot and tears
Depression keeps a record of all my heartbreaks
And never hesitates to share excerpts with me
It is boastful of its ability to steal my joy mid-breath
Depression digs a grave in my bed
Other times it takes over the command of my body
It once sent me to train stations at 6am
So that it could flirt with suicide
It often tells me that I would not be missed
Depression refuses to be a pretty poem
It bullies my lines and stanzas
And gives my beautiful images the middle finger
It doesn’t want to be subjected to any reflections or rhyme
It won’t sit on couch to talk about how it is feeling
I am a leaking bottle
I am a leaking bottle
I tell her
I am decorated with holes and cracks
Life broke me
Filling up seems futile
Joy quickly seeps through me
I tell her
You are a watering can
She says
Where does the water that seeps through you go
What happens when sadness comes
She asks
I would rather be a dam
That is full to the brim
I tell her
Are dams not man-made
She asks
Wouldn’t you rather be a river
Fresh water passing through you
To others
She asks
Wouldn’t you rather be in communion
I constantly need patching up
I am a rainbow of patchwork
I tell her
Don’t people point in wonder at rainbows
She asks
But these cracks hurt
I tell her
But is that not our magic
That we feel so much
She asks