I really was depressed at uni
Memory makes itself known like the sting leftover from stinging nettles
Being showered by praise is like a shower of dandruff on a black top
I immediately brush it off in embarrassment
I’ve grown up inevitably ugly like fingerprint smudges on phone screens
My oily thumbs leave snail trails of my digital wanderlust
The other me I carry in one of my pockets
The same dull ache you get from looking at a screen for a long time
Was how my days drew themselves out
Complete with the accompanying fatigue and sensitivity to brightness
Nights were harder and left me paralysed in a state of resignation
As if I was a rope bunny but without the masochism
Nor the thrill of letting go of control
My rigger was a jacked-up bodybuilder with steroids coursing through their veins
Whose pity came with a sauvignon blanc dry humour
Sex was at the forefront of my mind like a dangling carrot before a donkey
I mistook dark, empty corners for portals to anywhere else
I smoked to make signals to a higher power to quicken life
Some people listened or at least got me to talk - I remember them vaguely
I timed the passing cracks on pavements
When I looked up, the sky was liver red
Water rushing out of a gutter pipe in the heavy rain made the greyed-out sun gush
What would be worse - drowning or being burned alive?
I don’t know
But going down in a plane crash would be so easy
I sat in an empty front row of a lecture theatre
But really I wanted to curl up in a ball and sink into the carpet -
A heavy, itchy blanket that would marinade me in my own sweat
A cannibalistic stew to offer in return for a way out
Coming home was lonely
If you could call it a home
Coming back to the place I lay at night was dark silence
Always the same lignified shoebox that threatened to lift off its top
I peeled off my ridiculous clothes
And shook my ridiculously dyed hair
As I disposed of the idea that I was fancied, desired somehow
Without fail, coming back to my solitary cell was awful
Days gone by turned into notches of a tally
Circumventing the walls I carried with me
Around and around - lines stood like morse code
Sounding like a monotone drone
Or a barcode for a payment of the barcode
A Russian doll of an increasingly infinite loop
A feedback mechanism that left me starving
Or more like it left me empty without an appetite
I don’t want to experience my own death
Like parenthood
I couldn’t endure it - I want the fact of it but
I don’t want the it of it
And life - in it’s cruel heartbreak after dread after sheer effort - has become the opposite
I take my time carefully tasting it and letting in the it of it
Being showered by praise is like a shower of dandruff on a black top
I immediately brush it off in embarrassment
I’ve grown up inevitably ugly like fingerprint smudges on phone screens
My oily thumbs leave snail trails of my digital wanderlust
The other me I carry in one of my pockets
The same dull ache you get from looking at a screen for a long time
Was how my days drew themselves out
Complete with the accompanying fatigue and sensitivity to brightness
Nights were harder and left me paralysed in a state of resignation
As if I was a rope bunny but without the masochism
Nor the thrill of letting go of control
My rigger was a jacked-up bodybuilder with steroids coursing through their veins
Whose pity came with a sauvignon blanc dry humour
Sex was at the forefront of my mind like a dangling carrot before a donkey
I mistook dark, empty corners for portals to anywhere else
I smoked to make signals to a higher power to quicken life
Some people listened or at least got me to talk - I remember them vaguely
I timed the passing cracks on pavements
When I looked up, the sky was liver red
Water rushing out of a gutter pipe in the heavy rain made the greyed-out sun gush
What would be worse - drowning or being burned alive?
I don’t know
But going down in a plane crash would be so easy
I sat in an empty front row of a lecture theatre
But really I wanted to curl up in a ball and sink into the carpet -
A heavy, itchy blanket that would marinade me in my own sweat
A cannibalistic stew to offer in return for a way out
Coming home was lonely
If you could call it a home
Coming back to the place I lay at night was dark silence
Always the same lignified shoebox that threatened to lift off its top
I peeled off my ridiculous clothes
And shook my ridiculously dyed hair
As I disposed of the idea that I was fancied, desired somehow
Without fail, coming back to my solitary cell was awful
Days gone by turned into notches of a tally
Circumventing the walls I carried with me
Around and around - lines stood like morse code
Sounding like a monotone drone
Or a barcode for a payment of the barcode
A Russian doll of an increasingly infinite loop
A feedback mechanism that left me starving
Or more like it left me empty without an appetite
I don’t want to experience my own death
Like parenthood
I couldn’t endure it - I want the fact of it but
I don’t want the it of it
And life - in it’s cruel heartbreak after dread after sheer effort - has become the opposite
I take my time carefully tasting it and letting in the it of it
