Typing on my keyboard
It’s a long term suicide note
Made up of keystrokes backlit red
By wounds that have yet to open
Anxiety pulsing through me like
Neon in Blade Runner, a synth
Soundtrack pounding at the base of my skull
Thump, thump, thump goes the bass
A fist pounding on a door
The rhythm makes me want to dance
Along a New Orleans funeral parade
A lavender coffin with white gardenias
I saw it backed by a brass band filled
With the loved ones I lost
Grandpop Spence on Trumpet,
Grammy singing her heart out,
Droops on Tenor Sax, wicked smile on his face
Lauren at the front, marshal staff in hand
Adam keeping the steady beat with a few flourishes
The grave looked like the amber walls of my room
The dirt was well-trod wood below my feet
The coffin was my childhood bed, bookshelf left dusty
The cause of death was an acute apathy attack
The eulogy was delivered by Anthony
It was just a song, press play and let’s all move on
Winter falls and the falling snow no longer blinds but
Becomes the white mist of the world outside
You forget what it was like to look ahead
So instead you look back, you fall into yourself
What other distraction do you have
You unpack boxes that have never been opened
You find secrets you didn’t know you had
There’s a hidden room that just grew a door
When you open it, all that is in there is a shadow mirror
You see yourself and follows the ribbons of black thorns
They wind their way up your body and pierce your arms
Brambles breaking blood in tiny dots
The mirror becomes a window. You step through it.
Reflection no longer, dark twin no longer
You carry the shadow with you
It is small at first but its tendrils hold fast
Feed me, feed me, feed me
The shadow grows and grows until the thorns become vines
The roots become plants and the saplings become trees
You are the blackened tree left at the ruins of the burned out farmhouse
A reminder of what used to be here, left to rot and unable to see forward
The snow swirls around you, the white as thick and deep as the shadow
You step forward across a frozen lake, you know there is water beneath
No idea of which step will plunge you into the lake’s frozen depths
But you know that the ice is thin and you will fall. It’s just a matter of time.
Poetry Overdose 