Between
The past shifts: smoke
parting
to reveal an image
then lost
to obscurity; one moment
I see your face
—remember hope, remember
love—and the next
you are gone, and I
recall a world
where hope was never
justified, was only
a tool to imprison
the weak. I
hover uncertainly
in this ether, not knowing
if you belong to that past
or the future,
not knowing
whether I should turn away
from this mirage: escape
as I once learned how
through the bitter scarring
of trauma,
and heed the calls
of warning sounding
in the deep,
or whether, instead,
your gentleness
is the truth,
and that wayward hand
that is reaching out for yours
really knows you better
than I.
Paths of Depression
I wander along all the paths
of the forest, and then make new ones:
winding up to a breezy lookout, and down to a marsh,
over to a calm lake, and
deep into the underbrush, never
satisfied, never
appeased; somehow
the comfort of nature coexists
with my agitation, my
need for answers, my lack
of purpose.
Sometimes I smile
at the birds and stop to smell
the rugged scents of forest; sometimes
I forget, get caught up
in my surroundings, the surroundings I have chosen
for just that reason, but I never
stop for long; the moment
my thoughts return to life
I feel the despair, the lack
of faith that there’s a point
or that any of this
is worth it.
Depression was the guide that brought me here
to the edge of these old twisted trees,
while Hope and Need
urged my feet to wander
these forgotten paths,
but it is Fear that prevents me from stopping, Fear
of the future, and that it could turn out
like the past, fear
that one of these days my legs
will wear out, and I will collapse
in the long shadows beneath the trees, lost forever
on a trail with no end, as the light fades and the cold seeps into
my flesh, forgotten even by the person
I once was.
When We Changed
When he loved me,
the world felt like it was born anew every morning,
like it was full of miracles and nothing
could touch me through my joy, nothing
could hold us back, and our promises flowed
as clearly as crystalline
water beneath
a summer’s sun.
When I loved him,
I learned so much; we had secrets
that we could convey in a wink
across a room, and both of us
worked honestly on becoming better
people. For my part I learned that I
was too demanding, too
detail-oriented, and I
had a problem keeping confidentiality
because I told my friends about him
in the beginning.
When he started getting angry,
I knew it was my fault, because nothing
about him had changed; his eyes
still drew me like the brilliant light
of the moon on a dark
winter’s night, and while I
was struggling to better myself, he
excelled in his learning, and already
seemed perfect, and when I
apologized for my mistakes, he
would gather me in his arms
and kiss me tenderly, until any
doubts I might have had burned
away like mist on a morning
lake.
When he hit me,
it was because of how stressed he was
at work, and because I
still wasn’t trying hard enough, was still
antagonizing him. Love
takes work, he would remind me, and love
always requires sacrifice. We
cuddled on the couch and watched
romance movies, seeing ourselves
reflected, and I
was reminded of the beauty
of forgiveness and the importance
of staying true to those you love
through the worst
of times.
When I started wearing long-
sleeved shirts, I did it
because no one would understand
the bruises out of context, and I didn’t want
to admit how badly I was doing at self-
improvement, or understanding his feelings
before they overwhelmed him to the point
of rage. I
am the same person that I was
at the beginning when we didn’t
fight, he reminded me, and I reply:
I know.
When I
was devoted to him and yet increasingly
uncertain, I found
my mind starting to wander, like a fly
that keeps buzzing around a light and can’t
rest. He
was the light of course, he
was everything: my project
my love, my other
half, and sometimes
I felt so confused: confused
as to where things had gone wrong,
and when that easy smile
he still flashed at strangers stopped
being directed at me, that smile from the person
I’d fallen in love with, who I only
loved more now, because I needed
him now too.
When he threw kitchen cutlery at me
and stormed out—because I’d forgotten
again what he wouldn’t eat
for dinner—I picked up
my phone to call a friend for help
dealing with the blood and the cut
that probably needed stitches; I couldn’t
risk going to the hospital as I was, because they
would ask too many questions and all
the wrong ones, would surely
leap to conclusions without
even listening to the real
story first.
When I realized I had no one to call,
my mind stuttered backward,
like it were following the uneven track
of a deer through a forest: unpredictable
and chaotic enough that you lose
your sense of direction entirely. I
remembered it had been years
since he had suggested changing
my friend night into date night, had wooed
me with dances beneath the stars and candlelight
dinners he made himself, with stargazing
while lying on a blanket with our arms
wrapped around one other; it
had been years since I had snapped at my friends
for continuing to ask questions about our private
relationship, despite my new boundaries, years
since I’d started texting him what I was doing
at all times for my own safety, because who
could we trust these days except
each other? It was his
idea, I only realized then,
that I wouldn’t have anyone
to go to
for help.
When I told him that I was struggling and asked
for a therapist, he asked why
I wanted to tell a stranger about
our relationship, and I ended up taking out
books instead to help
with my problems, while he
made friends and didn’t invite me
to their parties, saying
it wasn’t good for my health and besides,
he’d already told them I didn’t want
to go. The books
didn’t make things easier, though: they
held different secrets, ones
which made me afraid, made it
difficult not to tremble when he
touched me in the night, even
though his eyes were still beautiful, and his smile,
as rare now as a sunny day
in early spring, still
made me smile
back.
When he abused me and I
faced it, a filter
was removed, and I
became terrified of what I saw,
of how close
I lived to the beast; there
was no way out, no one
who wasn’t his friend
before mine. No words of mine
could soothe him, and when he hit me
he would cry
and apologize and say
he never wanted to, and I
would comfort him as I wondered
how two people could exist
in the same body, considered
that maybe his love was a curse: instead
of drawing his cheer, as strangers
in the grocery store did, it only
brought too much attention, a kind
of attention that drained the strength
from my limbs like the kiss
of death.
On the day I loved me, I ran and never
went back; I followed
each step of my plan like a pilgrim
climbing the cut stairs of a mountain,
taking a path they never wanted
to need, each step
the loss of a blessing, the loss
of his winks across
the room, the gentle touch
of his hands in apology, our relationship
flashing before my eyes like the question,
Are you sure?
over and over again, until
it felt like every dream I had
had been shot down out of the sky,
and my heart ached for him: him
the man I’d fallen in love with
at the start.
When I lay down in my shelter bed,
and looked up at the ceiling, pausing
the thoughts that were always
solving logistical issues, I
had so much doubt. I knew
then that he
was abusive, but I didn’t know
if it was my fault, or if I
was too; my memories felt hazy,
like I couldn’t trust them, only
what he had told me
about them. It takes two
to have a conflict, he always said,
and he was right, I thought,
maybe I had failed at bettering
myself, was too
judgemental, too
focussed on the negative, and yet
as I lay there, I found
my breath deepening, listened
to rain against the glass, and while some memories
were distorted, I could remember clearly
those days of gold, when the world
was a river that flowed
into oceans of love, when we
were one and happy
and everything I ever
wanted, and yet knowing now as I never
wanted to know, that despite
how broken love could become
it could still
be filled with
always.
After/Thought Literary 