Depression
By Yuliya Charnyshova
no magic
but a simple breakdown of your hormone system
when your cracking edges
come to an emergency switch
or a glitch
and when once a year it gives you freedom
to breathe
you’d better not oversleep
that day
there is a countdown for all of your good days or
maybe hours – you’d better not check –
in case it gives you no more than a sec
to feel life for the very first time
to feel the wind in your hair
before cutting it
and to feel someone’s hand in yours before
cutting it
there is a second, a minute, a month,
I still feel, and I tell myself, “this must be real”,
cause I’m sick of hands-holding with ghosts
and their faint kisses do nothing but harm
when they take me to lunch.
I’m not soft – I’m repeatedly punched,
and those phantoms of love haunt me to the grave.
I’m not brave. I’m numb, so I don’t feel fear and a bunch
of other things.
till I realize,
the clock has been ticking all the damn way.
there’s a countdown till I look at you and see through your fading away.
and then I wake up in that cage once again,
on all of the photos there’s only I
with my demons, the only ones who ever held
me, and my memory resets to the default.
*
what a hateful device my head ought to be
to demolish me year after year,
and how many heartbreaks it takes
to stop ever trying.
cause the army of ghosts in my head won’t ever go
or let me go to sleep, screaming they love me – no lying,
even if half of the time I am ugly crying and wincing,
while my wrists tell that the concept future is too unconvincing
to take anyone down with me through the pain.
sorry, darling this is just lame.
I wrote you one hundred letters or more, just a bit.
they were so tear-stained
that you were unable to read.
so we shall bid farewell
at the bus station
or at the railway station
or at the airport
for my exchange term,
which gives you vacation.
so that I’ll be fine and healthy, safe and sound
so that you’ll be far so that I’ll be well
isn’t this why they call it a “farewell”?
and one day my head is no longer a self-adjusting hell,
since I’m no longer a substitute for something above.
I want to shout till I have no voice to confess non-stop. to be clear,
I would rather die at the gates of my mind than let you burn your hands
by touching its doorknob.
this might be why I smell of smoke all the time,
one does not need a lighter when one’s scorched on the inside.
so we shall bid farewell
at the bus station
or at the railway station
or at the airport
for my exchange term,
which gives you vacation.
so that I’ll be fine and healthy, safe and sound
so that you’ll be far so that I’ll be well
isn’t this why they call it “farewell”?
and one day my head is no longer a self-adjusting hell,
since I’m no longer a substitute for something above.
I want to shout till I have no voice to confess non-stop. to be clear,
I would rather die at the gates of my mind than let you burn your hands
by touching the doorknob
of it. this might be why I smell of smoke all the time,
one does not need a lighter when one’s scorched on the inside.