It’s not secret on this blog that Depression takes me over a lot.
That my depression is a chronic reoccurring nightmare that not only tires me, but the people around me too.
Perhaps last year and still through to this year one major reason for such severe blips lately is the delayed impact of losing my best friend in January 2020 .
Yes she was ‘only a little budgie’ but she wasn’t ‘only a little budgie’ to me.
It didn’t help that I didn’t lose her in the usual way either. I lost her due to my own mistake, and that is something I find very hard to live with.
As it is I’m already a person prone to guilt, never mind a mistake where a little innocent life was ruined, or ended because of a mistake I made in the first place.
I had a dream last night that she came back home and then I lost he all over again, and throughout the whole dream I just kept hearing her calls but yet never finding where the calls were coming from.
And I’ve done that in real life too. I’ve heard calls I thought were her.
I’ve sat in the bathroom brushing my teeth and heard a call that sounded like it was coming from behind the extractor fan grid.
I’ve heard calls when walking out into the corridor from my flat.
I’ve heard calls I thought sounded like her when outside but it was probably just another bird that sounded a bit like her. Or maybe she sounded like them.
I see feathers from different birds that have been either moulted or stripped off from a predator and I always stop in my tracks and look more closely, looking for her blue colour in the feather.
Sometimes I see the blue colour and then I look around and say, ‘Charlie?’ As if the feather is hers and she’s somewhere close by.
But she’s never there. She’s never here.
Sometimes I look down at a feather for a bit too long, in the way of someone trying to get past me while keeping a distance.
I look and look, and look some more till I convince myself I see blue, her blue. And it’s hers.
But it isn’t.
Sometimes I look at the feather, look around and then say aloud, ‘I’m sorry, Charlie.’
It might have been a mistake, but I still blame myself.
It might not have been purposeful, but I still blame myself.
And I don’t know if there will ever come a time I won’t blame myself.
I have a budgie I ended up rescuing, he has learnt some funny phrases. And it makes me laugh.
But I still
Blame
Myself.
writing
Dead to the world
Emptiness grows like weeds
Crawling and creeping
Inside of me
Knotweed spiraling around my veins
My roots pulled
Till nothing can ground me
Life thrives around me
But the essence of me
Has long since died
Writing letters
Writing letters with blades
Addressed to you
My madness
Take these veins
And wrap them around my sadness
I am host
To all of these dragons
Waging war on this brain
My island
Dinosaurs teacup
The wind may gush
Naysayers hush
Rain pour over us
Loss become ever present
And silence us in sentence
Lost in the prism of someone’s absence
Tears may come to pass
Despair making maps
But one must imagine
A dinosaurs teacup
That never gets smashed
Prism
It shimmers still
All things perceived
In the prism of your absence
Bleed
Piercing through the sadness
Like trying to shine a light through the madness
But all that comes is blood
Running down, making tracks
A wreckage embroiled on skin
With maps of violence
Filling the silence
Sadness like an unquenchable thirst
Our skin has been shed
outside renewed
this is how it accumulates
like dust on books
inside all the days
and years spread
and every time we scream
it’s wasted breath
because in our voice
our sadness can’t be contained
It simply runs wild
Within our veins
too powerful for outside
Much too strong for us inside
The tears are never enough
for the accidental goodbyes
the shock & horror
always there, always filling lungs with empty
This is how it accumulates
Till we’re undone
one with the dirt
no more synapses producing hurt
All these thoughts
All these thoughts swim
Till they run
Merging and
Words become undone
Falling away
Somewhere hidden
The thoughts gone
But the feelings remain
Without a name
And then a new thought
Falls into view
Only to fall away
Before you really knew
And the feeling grows
But the words, you do not know
And you wonder
Something
Somewhere
The letters of the thoughts
R
u
n
n
i
n
g
.
.
.
.
Chills to the bones
Empty promises ricochet
Between the stone walls
The sound of squeaking shoes
On polished floors
Haunting this place
Full of laughter and evil
Paint on the walls
Dripping with humiliation
Seeped through all the years
A stain on hearts and minds
A reminder that life
Chills to the bones
The lady in the black
Still… I sit
Against the wind
And I wish I could
Sit against it all
Water off a ducks back
Withstand every fall
Without falling to the black
But the whispers of the dark
Always beckon me back
And I know her well
So I’m always one word away
From being under her spell
I’ve tried meditation
All the fucking medication
Tried to find my philosophy
But I always come back
To the lady in the black
A blade on the skin
Feels better than the happiness
That never seems to sink in
Or the confidence
That never existed from within
Shedding skin
Till I’m nothing
It’s the only thing
That I find comforting
When the lady in black
Finds me running back
silverbackgorillapoetry.com 