Molasses

It slips into the shadows of your subconscious,
Gnawing at your joy until there is nothing left but crumbs and you,
kneeling,
Trying to pick up the scraps of what once was
To force the pieces back together, but
You can’t fix something unless you have all of the parts
And depression,
He hid them all.
I know they’re still here, somewhere,
In the crevasses of my mind yet
I’m too tired to look for them.
But tired isn’t even the right word,
It’s not big enough, it’s too full.
It’s as if you’re drowning,
Your lungs are taking in air but
You can’t catch your breath.
Everything is moving in slow motion,
Like molasses dripping from a tree trunk in your childhood backyard
Except you’re not a child anymore,
And you realize now that the tree is bleeding.
It’s having a chest full of answers
When someone asks “are you okay?”
But your tongue stills when you try to spit out the words
And suddenly ‘tired’ is all you can say
Depression is a monster
But not the kind you read about,
He doesn’t make you want to die
He just makes it difficult to survive.
Depression isn’t scars on wrists, it’s
A bright young woman with a skip in her step
Exhausted but unable to sleep
Staring vacantly at the wall praying to feel something,
Anything,
And then depressions quiet murmur
“Be careful what you wish for”
All at once, emotions flood in
It’s been so long that you forget their names.
They whisper around the deafening silence
Trying to get your attention but
The only one you can distinguish is anger.
It’s an accumulation of tears in your chest,
Yet you can’t form a single drop
Even though there is a tsunami of emotions trapped beneath the surface,
You’re bound to them,
Hovering in overwhelming emptiness,
Unable or
Unwilling, you don’t know which
To rescue yourself.
You were the strongest swimmer in your class,
Like a fish in water,
Arm forward, swing back, arm forward, swing back, butterfly kicks
But your bones are so heavy now and it’s so much work to keep afloat
So you let yourself sink
Your brain on anesthetic
you barely notice the current pulling you down,
Into the shadows.