Kaleidoscope

Snakeskin

This is what coping with depression feels like:

Everyday I'm like a balloon
that wasn't tied in a knot at the tail.
I'm full in the beginning but the air
starts leaving me and eventually
there is nothing left

but something resembling a human snakeskin,
discarded on the floor.
I try to get up,
but gravity has more power over me
than my free will ever had.

So I stay there lying, unmoving, empty.
Empty empty empty.
My words mean nothing, while
I seem to be feeling more
than it's possible for a human being.
Maybe I'm not? Not human.

I wasn't born with a scream of life on my lips.
I wasn't hugged by my mother after she gave birth to me.
Instead I laid all by myself for five hours screaming,
so the World would know that I'm here. I exist now.

Because that's how you welcome the World,
you scream and it sees you.
I screamed and yelled and screeched, but I stayed invisible.
Sometimes I still feel like I have to scream in order to be seen,
but I don't know how anymore.
I haven't let my heart speak for so long
I don't know if it still remembers how to do it.