when for the first time,

I washed blood down the drain

and tears from my eyes. 

“It’s just a phase,” they said

the first time I cried:

“I hate my life

and I want to die.”

“It’s just a phase” they said

when the thoughts in my head

became far too cruel

for my mother’s arms to mend.

“She’s just in a phase,”

the therapist lied.

“She’s still very young,

she’s going to be fine.”

It was still “just a phase”

when I was no longer a child,

and with SSRIs

I was soon quite wild.

“It’s not just a phase,”

college friends soon confirmed.

They said “you need to get help.

We’re getting concerned.”

It was not just a phase,

and it’s still my controller.

An angel with meds

soon called it Bipolar.

Friday Mourning

In the darkness I lay broken,

as the ashes fall around.

My hope shattered into pieces

on the unforgiving ground. 

Helpful strangers gather ’round me

slogans ready on their lips.

“Why can’t you stop and find some joy?

You should try to feel the Spirit!” 

But a bitter cold is blowing,

there’s no sun yet here for me.

Sunday, they say, is coming

on the Friday’s dark and deep.

I know that when that day comes,

I will laugh and shout, and leap.

But for now I’m much too lost to try,

so at the tomb, I wait and weep. 

You should know that I am ready,

for the darkness to retreat.

Don’t try to force my healing,

just stay and wait with me.

Ghosts

My ghosts live in your old bedroom

where you once laid your head.

They stand there in the doorway

and with my trauma, they are fed.

I greet them in the morning

and they torture me at night.

I can see them in the daytime

and the daze of purple lights.

I peeled colored paper off the walls,

and found scars still resting there.

I wish I couldn’t see them,

my mind is far too bare. 

We lived such different lives here,

so close, yet not at all.

We ran away into the world,

and in hard times, we fall.

I say that I don’t blame you,

I know it’s not your fault.

But when the night has gone too long,

tears and anger burn my heart.

I stare in your old mirror

at the splotches on my face.

And as the ghosts come near around me,

I learn to face my fate.