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