see how my best parts tremble

like the ears of a rabbit.

The years I’ve lost to my mind

haunt me like a bad memory.

I’m stuck inside the throat

of forgetfulness.

(I’m still naming my mistakes

after cities I’ve cried in.)

When you take a blade

to your past, where do you go

to bury the hatchet?

How do you forgive your name

for being your name?

& whenever I talk about It

I feel dirty, not because

I have It but because I’m

convinced that I’m a liar.

I google imposter syndrome

and hide behind my advocacy

for better representation. Say

“MENTAL ILLNESS DOES

NOT MAKE ME WEAK”

while feeling like a fraud,

parading my illness around

in a flashy cape, hoping maybe,

just maybe, somebody will

see it and feel lightened by

validation rather than buried.

it’s like, there’s a transparent layer between

my actual self and my physical body.

i can see myself moving through the world

but i’m also separate. watching from

behind the glass. nothing is interesting.

it takes all of my energy to move from the bedroom

to the kitchen and get something to eat.

then i need to go back to the bedroom and take a nap

before i can do anything else. or, that’s what i want to

do. but then anxiety wakes up and i can’t fall asleep.

why am i wasting my day? do you think you have

enough time left in your short life to waste your day?

so i lie there, awake, scrolling through my phone,

because apparently that counts as not wasting the day.

eventually he comes in and kisses my face,

and has me take a walk to clear my head.

so i find myself kicking leaves away from my feet

during a depressive episode, counting reasons

to stay alive.

1.i am already alive.

2.i don’t think it’s always this difficult to breathe.

3.i have so much love in my life and

i am becoming somebody i don’t mind seeing

in the mirror.

4.i don’t want to die anymore. my thoughts trick me

sometimes but i don’t want to die anymore. i don’t

want to die anymore. i don’t want to die anymore.

the sadness feels like a weighted sweater

pushing me further and further into myself.

not every day.

but enough of them.

Depression has so many faces.

And yet, somehow, I am still

every single one of them.

SO, WHAT CAN YOU REMEMBER?

Not much, which makes me greedy for anything

that sounds like it could belong to my

body.

I hold the past in a handkerchief and wash it after

every touch, like if I linger with the memory for too

long

it’ll make me sick. When I put on my grandmother’s

rain coat for the first time after she died, I shoved

hands into

the pockets and unearthed two balled-up tissues of