Writing: Beth Davison
Illustration: Paola Valentina
CW: These poems contain discussion of mental illness and suicide.
(daytime sleeper)
Some nights I am driving a car,
Always from the passenger seat,
Always my mum’s car.
And I never reach
Wherever
Or whoever
I am searching for.
Some nights I take the wrong exit,
Lose control, lights blurred, curbside compact.
Most nights I am a cyclist,
Faceless, always hurt.
I don’t mean to crash,
But in fighting my demons,
I kill myself twice.
On Tuesdays,
I anticipate elevator corpses
Coldly hung like fairground prizes.
I’ve never seen a real dead body before,
I wonder how it would feel
To see a sultry, soulless being,
Hollow. An outward introspection
Of the depressed mind;
Solitary solidarity,
Animation illustrated.
I want to leave this car behind.
Jump out, bold, onto the runway,
To no longer be the passenger,
But the one I love, the kisses I breath,
The blood that will always bleed.
(ruminations 2)
Sometimes I forget how to walk
My legs, disjointed,
weightlessly weighing me down.
With you I am breathless,
safely scared, minutes from leaving.
In my sleep I run to you,
insufferable marathons
along cliffs of despair.
Hope, memory, longing,
I no longer dream.
(ruminations 4)
Sometimes I ask myself
If you are a weed,
Accidental beauty,
Superseding overgrowth;
Nature’s unwanted messenger,
Twisting yourself into my garden
Of mortar and thorns.
I feel the warmth of your breath
Though I can’t see you.
I am alone in the clouds,
Distant, content.
I wish the sky was clear,
Wish to find myself lost
In the luminary darkness.
I am plummeting.
How can I float so high
But fall so hard?
Am I not me?
The present seems
A distant memory.