Hope

When my legs begin to twitch and my chest begins to heat, I will be reminded of the way your body twines around mine and the way the fibres of our skin braid us into one breathing pulse. I will be reminded of all the reasons that love can survive breathless underwater and how if your phantom kisses are sealing my lungs, I can too. I will silence these voices that attempt to thieve the calm pooling in my very cells, and gag these fears that attempt to paralyse my patience. They may say many things, but they do not know the power and stamina and hope that floods my veins. They do not know the durability that keeps me anchored in transit, waiting for the rise of every morning. They do not know. So they may whisper and lie and tempt, but they will simply find me each dawn, humming the earth closer to the centre of gravity.

Depression

Depression is humiliating. It turns intelligent, kind people, into zombies who can’t wash a plate or change their socks. It affects your ability to think clearly, to feel anything, to ascribe value to your children, your lifelong passions, your relative good fortune. It stops your healthy ability to cope with bad days & bad news, & replaces it with an unrecognisable sludge that finds no pleasure, no delight, no point in anything outside of bed.

You alienate your friends because you can’t comport yourself socially, you risk your job because you can’t concentrate, you live in moderate squalor because you have no energy to stand up, let alone take out the rubbish. You have become pathetic & you know it. And you have no capacity to stop the downward spiral.

You have no perspective, no emotional reserves, no faith that it will get better. You feel guilty & ashamed of your inability to deal with life like a regular human, which exacerbates your depression & the isolation.

If you’ve never been depressed, be thankful, & lay of those who take a pill just so they can make eye contact with the supermarket worker. No one on earth would choose the nightmare of depression over an averagely turbulent normal life. It’s not an incapacity to cope with day-to-day living in the modern world; it’s an incapacity to function. At all.

If you & your loved ones have been spared, much love to you. If depression has taken root in you or your loved ones, much love to you. No one chooses it. No one deserves it. You cannot imagine what it takes to feign normalcy, to show up to work, to make a dentist appointment, to pay bills, to walk your dog, to return library books on time, to keep enough toilet paper on hand, when you are exerting most of your energy trying not to kill yourself. Depression is real. Just because you’ve never had it doesn’t make it imaginary. Compassion is also real. A depressed person may cling desperately to it until they are out of the woods, & they may remember your compassion for the rest of their lives as the one force greater than their depression. Have a heart.

Judge not, lest ye be judged.

JONATHAN DARIAUX

Vast

Oh, and how there is a vastness in this space. There is so much between us — words left unsaid, tears left unshed, emotions left to smoulder — a depth and an emptiness and a loss, all at once. Her face lights up my thoughts, my mind, every day. Every day, her shining beauty radiates through my being, and I am centered. I am centered by her. And as day darkens to night, the stars come out and are joined by my thoughts, and my regrets.


MASAHIRO MIYASAKA

Petrichor

The aroma of sweet petrichor flooded my mind & senses, as soft, dew-like pearl droplets caressed my tender face. Though I prayed for the mist to rinse away my anxieties, I carried the marks of one so low readily on my countenance, and in my stature. Tiredness overcame me, as did the loneliness, discovered the deep corners of my mind, shadowed with cobwebs, filling the cavern with a restlessness I could not escape. A monologue, a personal libretto I could not distinguish came to pass; I sang a joyless homily. A discourse went. I am.


SUZIE CHANEY

You

I gave you my insides: my lungs, breath, nerves; my guts, soul, brains, blood. I gave you my words and all the time I had. I still feel you in the spaces between my bones. You're denser than any heavy metal. I'm afraid I'll you in my tissues, toxic until the end of my time.