You Can't Write Poetry About Depression

You can’t write poetry about depression

You have to feel it

It has to seep out of your bones

It has to leak out of your eyes

The poetry is in the becoming

the shifting feeling

the falling breath

the terror of monotony

the naked desperation

the losing of hope

and the long wondering if it will ever return

You can’t write poetry about depression

You have to experience it

You have to know it like a brother

And you have to hate it

so much that

you use it

you terrorize it

for what it did to you

until you see the sudden strength

hidden within the darkness

until you become the darkness

and in so doing

you realize

you’ve always had the light