Depression 2016

Husk body, you have betrayed me.

Solid flesh, miles of it,

Moored to sweat and cell-stained bedsheets.

You pin yourself here with the weight of your thoughts,

Each rumination heavy as lead;

You fall like a tree in the heart of the forest.

This, my unwitnessed descent into mania.

Indomitable exhaustion demands elusive sleep,

Clammy as a fever dream.

You cannot sleep; you watch the light show projected on the back of your eyelids:

Red vein phantasmagoria,

Pulsing light socket vision.

When you rise — red-eyed, catatonic — you are heavier than even your thoughts,

Sluggish neural pathways congealed into stagnant rivers,

Nerves firing in some far-off dimension.