night swimming

i wrote this poem about how no matter what i do, my mental illness seems 2 follow me. i tried to develop the ideas of sickness and darkness here and running from myself. it happens!

Night Swimming

It’s nothing new.

I got sick of myself again:

That old familiar cough set in my lungs,

The black tar that pumps its way through my blood,

Born from that cage I call a chest,

Had crept in once more, sticking the folds of my mind together.

So, I decided to take my elders’ advice.

I followed the typhus-ridden authors of old

And took to the sweltering countryside.

I then spent my days briskly,

Taking in the clean air and sipping away the hours with lemonade.

In a true feat of delusion,

I convinced myself that the pucker of my lips only assured of its sweetness

And stared at the Sun when the mirror across my table showed otherwise.

My heavy heart followed me to the hills, however,

And I would still wake in the night, slick with sweat,

My chest heaving from the weight of the air meant to cure me.

Last night, hidden by the new moon, I tore out of my bedsheets 

And ran to the water laid at the property’s edge.

The faded horizon blended with the ripples ahead of me;

I took a deep breath and dove under the sky.

Below the surface, I opened my eyes, 

Hoping to find the glimmer of planets and faraway stars,

Some sign the natural factory of my time here could have meant something,

But I involuntarily gasped, and could only see the empty space

That emerged from my throat as it infected the water around me.

Somehow, I found myself shivering on the shore again like a wet dog.

“Perhaps the albatross around my neck is just my own hands,” I thought.

My wet footprints traced this revelation across the dark, empty fields.

I could feel the cough stutter in my throat.

I’m going home.

∾