Art Commission by - Desiree Lynn I'm with my husband and it's a rainy Friday and suddenly I can't breathe The clouds are drifting outside and they look like they are smiling despite the sun desperately trying to shove it's way through their heavy grey thoughts I'm mid laugh and an article I read reminds me Depression is looking in through the window and smiling and suddenly the rain is just as beautiful as before, but it would be so much prettier if I were in a bath tub On my knees Like a prayer, but something lost to the razor blade I am desperately gripping in my hand, Because in the end No one is really listening I look up from my pancakes to see him staring at me, looking concerned "Are you there" he asks me and I realize I never was There was something I had forgotten in those few moments and while my eyes shift to meet the reflection of who I had become in his wake, and in my desire to be too real, too perfect- I realize I lost myself Not the me that I had created to appease people Not the one that smiled and waved and shook peoples hands like a Ring Leader at a circus does to earn his keep No, This was a smile hiding desperation Help me I would say behind glass teeth and a shattered laugh But they never heard it Please make the pain stop I would cry and they would laugh with me while I made a joke about the heat outside But not once when I looked at him did I ever see comfort Nor did I see the plain of a mountain in the distance with it's multi colored flowers and the petals that held so much pain I had hidden away Not once, did I imagine he would ever understand how I really felt My mother didn't My friends didn't Why would he? I found comfort shortly after I saw myself in the syrup of the warm pancakes I sought reassurance in And she came in the form of someone who had lost herself too, Someone who couldn't find the beginning of the burned thread that ran too short of the dynamite stick that held all of her emotions The ones she wouldn't show And I took her to the mountain in the snow and together we remembered what it felt like to breath again Not restricted by the heavy hearts held down by the anger of the other selves with shining weapons and a fondness for pain No We found the children, the ones that remembered riding horses and being lost in the wonder of invisible friends and crying when receiving a puppy for Christmas one year We remembered that they had a pink rabbit, that they liked to play in the grass and listen to grampas stories in front of the fire in the dead of Winter The ones that were lost in the ashes of who we had to become by growing up too fast Getting lost to the world, too fast I cried one day because I saw depression in it's long black dress and it was following me. The day was perfect, The sun was smiling away and attempting to wrap its warm arms around me and I just couldn't I couldn't remember how to fall into him and instead I sat outside by the man made lazy river in my work complex and cried until mascara ran down my face and cleaned the palate so it could be painted another day Then I went home and he Blamed himself He whined about how he could never make me happy It was never about him It was about the searing need to find a happiness that was too far down the hallway and around the corner to even begin to search for Because I was blind and it was too dark and the noise became nothing but a hushed whisper telling me to go the other way, a place where an exit never existed I tried to tell him and instead he let his own demons catch hold, dragging him back into an argument I found myself leaving before I could say much else, scream or cry, I mirrored the silence on the inside I fell into her bed and into her hands and they combed through my hair Her digits and her small creased smile was a comfort among the screaming that had begun, it silenced the self that wouldn't stop, the one that I could never control Her eyes were a quiet ocean in the midst of the moonlight on a cool Summer Day, An Empty Beach A Safe Haven And suddenly I could breathe again. ~ The Bone Collector, October 1st 2:00pm
