Of ghosts & choices

To look at the sky and see a dark tunnel, to inhale air and choke a little,

to listen to all that breaks people and makes them human,

To nod and keep the conversation going,

alongside attending to four different voices in your head,

to sleep like those bones were breaking in and the eye sockets were drilled in with expectations and fear and drowning packets of prayers that never made it to the gods of humanity,

to wake up like a body that was dismantled and put back together in a rush to avoid letting them see the missing parts,

to smile and question the right to smile for hours later.

To draw a line and see it disappear only to draw it again and again and again until it stops disappearing into the fog of a brain wired to malfunction,

to hide behind locked doors and excuses.

And to show up again,

knowing that the demons within await to feast on you,

is what it means to live with a brain wired for self-sabotage in a world that thinks depression is a choice and suffering, a ghost.

--Tanya Nilofar