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[calypsosemptypockets]

Failure To Comply- 1/21/23

as it turns out, i am wildly decomposed.

my therapist tells me i’m doing everything right.

she tells me i am brave and responsible and caring

i pick at my cuticles and chew down on my words until they are messy pulp on my tongue

i offer you love you will not accept

and i feel

as if my heart will burst out of my chest

due to fear or shame or guilt or an overwhelming combination of all three

when reading out loud, a period is your cue the sentence is over.

your cue to breathe before continuing speech

there is no cue in my life to pause. nothing to nudge me and go,

“take a breath. do not speak until there is air in your lungs once more.”

i am burning chopsticks in the hope of starting a bonfire.

i stoke a wildfire instead.

i am trying to put out my fires. i am trying to use the right kindling for the right sort of flame.

i play pretend with children far younger than me. they will never be this age again. i will never go back to their blissful life, where open wounds cease throbbing after the gentle kiss from another.

where open wounds were tended to with any care at all.

i am the only one who can kiss my wounds now. or rather- i am the only one who hears my sniffling and i am the only one to soothe it.

i am the only person to hear my pain because

i dare not speak it out loud.

dreams come to me sporadically, am i the new prophet of this self destructing universe? surely not.

[calypsosemptypockets]

Things are getting bad again- 8/2/21

i find myself romanticizing my depressive episodes from time to time.

little things, like thinking back on those moments almost fondly, like a mother recalling her child in his rowdier days. “he was such a handful”, she’d say, shaking her head, but there’s a smile on her face as she says it.

bigger things, like lying in bed and thinking, “i wish i could settle here and never leave. i wish it was winter again and i wanted to die.”

it always seems to be winter for me. a shame, as it’s such a beautiful season that brings out such sorrowful longing.

longing for what, i’m not quite sure. death, maybe- or perhaps some semblance of peace.

a hibernation of sorts- tucking myself away and checking out of existence for awhile.

there’s something soothing in wanting to die. something comforting in the fact that one day i could wake up and be 11 again, back where it all started, hands shaking and skin too tight with constricting lungs to match.

one of my fondest memories is a cold day in fall- winter fast approaching- in which i had skipped school, the thought of being acknowledged practically sickening.

i had been cold, not just because of the outside temperature, but a sort of cold that settled deep into my bones, bones that at the time, i wasn’t even sure belonged to me. bones inside of shaking hands and curling around too tight lungs.

i had gotten out of bed late- after deciding i wasn’t alive enough to brave school, i had gone back to sleep for some hours- and the fact that i had even made it out of bed was something of a miracle for me.

i had taken to the shower immediately, the day was cold and there was no sun. i remember that distinctly, the dreary cloudy day a perfect caricature of how foggy and clouded my brain felt.

i’d turned the water as hot as it could go, maybe if i was lucky, i could thaw out my slowly beating heart, draw myself out of a bout of disassociation, the first i can ever recall having.

i’d sat in the shower, knees tucked into my chest and chin resting dutifully atop them, head bowed in a mourning ceremony for myself.

i’d stepped out of the shower icy cold, freezing from the inside out, hair dripping and teeth chattering miserably. i still wasn’t even sure if i was real.

nothing felt real at that time, no actions to my consequences, no feelings besides apathy and exhaustion.

i looked at my shaking hands and saw right through them. not my hands, i decided passively, and then they weren’t. they were simply hands that i used, limbs that i had borrowed.

i stepped out of the shower only to start up a bath. scorching hot of course, the air was cold and nothing else existed in that moment.

the fog over the windows and mirror were welcome, the distorted blob that was reflected was much preferred over being met with the grim reality of my declining state.

i remember texting my older sister while thawing out in the bathtub, something along the lines of, “do you ever feel like you aren’t real?”

i don’t remember her response, but i think it had something to do with my grandma’s bipolar disorder.

how funny, i’d thought to myself, skin red and brain broken, that my grandmother and i might have something in common. i wonder if my mother will hate me more when she finds out.

i don’t remember getting out of the tub, i know nothing of water swirling down the drain, but if i had to wager a guess i had simply put on the same pajamas i had been wearing and went back to bed.

what a miserable time in my life. what a blessed, glorious time in my life.

sometimes i allow myself to slip back into the comfortable embrace of depression, i think him to be a friend these days. at least he’ll never leave me, i think to myself achingly, at least i’ll always have him.

he is familiar to me, embodied in cracked and bleeding lips, dehydration, oversleeping and dreamy thoughts of death.

i put on the playlist of music i was obsessed with when i wanted to die, reminiscing as if they were my glory days, and i wasn’t a scared freshman watching blood bead up in lines down my arms.

it’s comforting to curl up into my bed, my nest of blankets and pillows, knowing that things are getting bad again.

depression curls around me and hooks his chin over my shoulder, sticking his nose into my neck.

“i’ve got you,” he murmurs, and i sleep well knowing that when i wake up the world will be muted and gray, and i will be 11 again.

winter has always been a beautiful season.

[calypsosemptypockets]

He Loves Me, He Love Me Not- 1/4/23

my father is like every other one out there;

too angry, too jaded,

violence peaking through the cracks,

waiting for the right moment to intrude

his voice at night fills the whole house,

this big empty house with no one to fill it but my father and his temper.

no one there to fill it but my straining ears and scattered pleading for one night of quiet

admitted secretly to my ceiling,

bite the hand that feeds, the hand that withholds, then strikes.

i’d do anything not to be confronted with the fact that my father is not who i thought he was.

never meet your heroes.

never grow up with them either.

i pray for my father to be gentle,

and wake to thunder and panic. no rest for the weary. no light for the wicked

choke it all down and spit it back up when no one’s looking,

leak tears into the bathroom sink hours later

chastise your reflection for their greedy aching.

burn myself to ground to show you a single spark

[calypsosemptypockets]

stalemate- 1/1/23

i have my father’s eyes and my mother’s nose,

and her raging moods that would cloud my childhood home.

and her alcoholism, if you care about that sort of thing.

it’s something i’ve been thinking about lately.

how many times has my mother done this exact thing, this act of laying in bed and staring at the ceiling and drinking to fill the hole that her mother left?

the hole that my mother left me is this:

1. i cannot go to church anymore. the choir haunts the edges of my brain.

2. i am less scared by anger than i am of silence.

anger is a good thing. anger fizzles out. silence, i’ve found, can stretch on for a very long time.

3. i do not cry. i do not cry by principle, because crying means the other party has the high ground. i do not cry because my mother would not let me, and now i have so much sadness that cannot break free, my eyes will not wet.

my father gave me other things to consider.

the grief of being unwanted. the eagerness at being alone. and i was so alone.

my tenth grade was spent holed inside, bitter and young, late nights on the couch waiting for my dad to get home from work, just so i could share dinner with him, nevermind the fact it was one in the morning, and i had school in only a handful of hours.

my new best friends were energy drinks, the beginning of my tentative addictive genes becoming less tentative.

the ache is still there. the loneliness. i don’t know where to put it down.

[calypsosemptypockets]

Thalassophobia- 12/11/22

it’s been awhile.

i’m still here.

it’s been awhile.

the world expands before me like a blossoming flower

my heart spins in my chest,

orbiting you.

always orbiting you.

i am the moon and you the sun etc etc,

we make these labels for ourselves just to peel up the edges

we look to gods we don’t believe in for help with problems we cannot fathom,

i say your name quietly to myself,

just because i like the way you feel on my tongue

there are grander words than these out there,

but my shortcomings are cradled close to your heart,

and i flounder in the open expanse of love

i’ve always been scared of open water

[calypsosemptypockets]

Nomad 9/9/22

i run away from everything.

i run away until there is nothing left to run away from

and i am left with the worst thing of all,

myself.

i wish i could say i have larger moments,

moments where it all builds up and i scream and cry until there is nothing but my own hands and my own bitter tongue and the guilt of being weak

but mostly it’s just-

it’s just this.

it’s just me,

it’s just me and this awful bathroom and my bile in the toilet bowl and my own lies

and the pain-

god, the pain.

i must be the only one who feels like this.

i can’t be the only one to feel like this,

but there is nothing more isolating than my own mind

i make everything about me, even this,

but what are these words but testament to the gaping wound inside me that won’t close,

i grew up with this,

i lived with this,

i live with this,

and it gets harder every time.

there goes the vomit again,

there goes the barely-there-tears again.

there goes the creature who bleeds,

the creature who cries and makes a scene to no one but itself,

break it all down and put it back together,

faulty manteling,

who put this thing together?

who is going to take it apart?

the answer is the same to both, of course,

put it all into words and onto paper so there is nothing left to feel,

so there is nothing left to face,

just an incessant hole that is never satiated,

blood blood tears tears bang your fists against the concrete till they bruise etcetera etcetera

there is no way to tie this up neatly,

no way to make this pretty and fix it into a neat little bow,

nothing nothing nothing,

aren’t you tired of all this nothing?

you can’t answer, of course,

of course, of course, of course,

and the pain-

god, the pain.

the world ends, and the creature ends with it,

small mercies and whatnot.

there is no way to tie this up neatly,

so i will not try.