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 on my digital escape room
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 a 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
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
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
What would be worse - drowning or burning?
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
To shake off 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
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 on my digital escape room
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 a 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
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
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
What would be worse - drowning or burning?
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
To shake off 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
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
