a confession to us

My poem “A Confession to Us” is about how it feels to lose yourself to your mental illness and to rediscover happiness in the midst of feeling lost. It is an emotional reflection on my personal experience with mental health, formatted as a confession to the part of me that I lost, yet also who I am now. If this poem speaks to you, just know that you’re heard.

Poem: A Confession to Us 

I have lost many things before,

A photo, a memory, 

A friend, family 

But my greatest loss of all 

Was you,

Myself

My heart 

My joy, 

You were like an orchid 

Sensitive, delicate,            easily destroyed, 

Befitting of the name,      “Grace” 

I dress my heart in black and grief 

Because I had hoped that time would

Grant us her company 

For a little while longer 

But        mental illness        was your thief 

I watch you through glass, 

Wasting 

          away 

                  in the 

                        west wing 

                                 of my heart 

I should have known that you’d  

Shrivel up, parched and withered, 

Petals           

                 floating 

down          

like peeling feathers

The aftermath of a vicious blizzard

You would never learn of love  

When you were such an ugly beast 

Using my own two hands 

I sculpted you into something 

I can no longer recognize 

Smoothing out your knicks and pricks 

I would have preferred 

A polished, pristine, work of art 

As close to perfection as un-humanly possible 

Rather than one that looked like me 

Myself

My warmth

My happiness, 

You were vulnerable but

You were never my weakness, 

Never my          Achilles heel 

Just surrounded by too many people 

                  With                      arrows

But of course, hatred’s still a blindfold 

Cursing you for feeling so much,

Numbness has me in a chokehold

And from my mouth spewed words like toxins

Telling you that you could not be loved

Unless you were      perfect

And once again, I should have known 

that hostility

Would never be 

                              a fertilizer for growth 

But instead a sort of pain and cruelty 

You might never overcome 

Crumbling under the pressure of 

My red thumb 

I killed you with my perfectionism 

I thought you were a burden, 

clinging to everyone like a      burr

Then I did not see you as the flower you were, 

You did not cry when I kept you from the sun

No, You found comfort in the dark

And I wish you never 

Thought that was okay 

Your soil as dry as your eyes were of tears,

Nothing left to weep 

Like bees, emotions became rare visitors, 

Nothing left to keep 

I would like to apologize to you  

Myself 

My childhood 

My laughter 

I’m sorry for being the cause of your slaughter 

Letting you wilt away until there was nothing left to water, 

I’m sorry that you were no longer my priority 

Making you believe that your love was a deformity 

I’m sorry that I let the drought take over 

Even when I promised I would always 

Take care of you 

You, who survived in a greenhouse 

With no heat inside 

You see, depression has an indirect pattern 

Back and forth,        

side 

        to 

side 

When the sadness leaves, it leaves nothing left,

A brimming mind,     an    empty     chest 

To hurt is not to feel nothing 

No, vacancy is much harder to digest 

And I’m sorry that I could not fill it. 

                                                                But I have something to tell you, 

From losing you, 

Bloomed    an epiphany

That happiness is perennial and

Although you are lost, a soul dug deep 

Into the dirt of memories 

I see the hints of a sprout peeking through

The ravens take their cue, I planted something new 

And although it hurt, 

Losing you

Left space for me

To regrow

I just thought you should know that 

I love you.