Re:lied

Days pile on top of each other. They're suitcases at the end of a conveyor belt where no one picks them up, they land in a jumble, shoving and breaking yet no one can slow the tide. I drag myself through heavy mornings, force miles out of my feet that do not come willingly, go through the motions of every doctor's order and still this unwillingness for survival instincts to kick in. My skin itches, trying to escape itself. Trying to leave me. Depression looks quaint in books, you see, but in reality is mostly a large brick wrapped in cotton balls and sewn into your gut: nothing means anything. I try to think of the happiest, the saddest, the most anything I can imagine and it all comes up numb, like vague recollections of a dream you do not care to remember. An entire life passes before my eyes, it doesn't matter. They say the sun rises earlier each day, they say keep your chin up, they say nothing at all because who wants to stand so close to a leper, best wait until this blows over and Pollyanna returns, why isn't she here yet, we are tired. I wake by late afternoon, drag jugs of pathetically cheap wine to the typewriter, and cannot even scoff at the trope I've become. These things look prettier in retrospect. Weak fingers move across the keys; hold on to each letter like a lifeline, see meaning build itself with each verse. You can do nothing about the suitcases, they will keep coming, you can do nothing about the lead and the cotton and the crawling skin, they live in you just like your lungs, like your blood.

Put one foot in front of the other
one word after another
Write yourself out of winter
Eventually you will wake.