Weathered
After “Night Icicle” by Minor White
As depression traps me to my bed
As my sheets strangle my happiness
I see from inside my room a lonely icicle hanging off a closed window
I see that the icicle is me.
The blackness of this icicle is my tired mind
I am always tired
I want to stop being tired but tiredness and me – A package deal
I Feel that life’s a nightmare
I am tired from even nature not being my friend.
I’m tired of being lonely so
The rain floods me.
The snow freezes me,
Freezes me so much that my thoughts turn into icicles.
My thoughts warrant death, but then my suicide wishes melt away
There’s storm in my mind, a storm in my mind that’s a dark place of weathered loneliness and
depression
After the panic driven storm in my mind passes
Insomnia haunts me.
I didn’t sleep
Through the night till I was 11 years old,
And it’s still hard for me to sleep,
It’s hard to sleep because I’m afraid of getting older.
One more day makes me one day older, one day closer to hell
Insomnia feels as painful as hail pouring from the sky.
But over time I notice the icicle on my window begins to melt
Like the way my sadness melts. My sadness begins to drip down the drain
My pain
Makes me a dripping icicle.
I have been cold, stationary, sad, for a long time
But after, the storm in my mind surrenders
To a calm sense of static.
Ice is a thing that doesn’t last like my past, only my horrid memories burn me
My thoughts are no longer moving so fast,
I am now water, So finally I have a tranquil mindfulness
Finally my sadness drips away like an icicle does as the sun slowly rises.
I am now the sky. I give praise to the sky since she is where we all come from,
For the time being, I can see that the ice has melted and my tired loneliness has finally gone.
Highway to Hunger
My skin is becoming a skeleton
A skeleton in a graveyard that is my body
My body has ribs
My ribs pop out of my pale skin like a peninsula
My body lives by the shore,
The shore that is paradoxically close to a highway
Humans are made of mostly water
But Bones can easily crack
Bones break
My bones of my stomach stick out like mountain summits
And my bones are tough, but it’s like I fell halfway climbing up Mt. Everest and couldn’t ever make it to the top
But I still eat, kind of, so I don’t have an eating disorder
Although my dear friends told me I was showing signs of an eating disorder
Signs directing me down a never ending highway of hunger
And there are no stop-lights on highways.
I want to look perfect
But perfect and unhealthy are synonyms in my eyes
My appetite dies
Dies when a thunderstorm clouds my judgment
I can’t see on the road, so I drive, crash into an ice sculpture
An ice sculpture of a gravestone with RIP written on it
I can’t seem to think properly but nor can the sky
The sky keeps changing her mind
So the sky cries her rain, in vain
The coldness in the air freezes the rainy road, creating ice
Even railings become too icy to be sturdy
Railings are supposed to hoist me up not make me slip,
Especially when I lack energy from not eating enough
My legs can shake like there’s an earthquake in my body
Sometimes i need the support of the railing but
I don’t see a day coming when the ice on it will melt
Melt on the shore
Will my problem drift away in the calm rippled waves of the warm Pacific Ocean OR will it jump off of a
lighthouse jetty into the freezing rocky Atlantic Ocean?
There are rural suburbs and beach towns
There are Valleys instead of Canyons – pain instead of happiness
There are so many hiking trails intertwined in my valley that’s flooded with woods
Valleys are like body fat
My valley’s mountain hiking trails are like bones
But, my body’s hungry flesh and bones, combine to be a haunted trail
And, me, on the trail – I’m becoming a ghost because I don’t yet know where the exit of my graveyard is
Mother nature cried the day she died
Mother nature cried the day she died
The rain sang the blues through the sky
Then I think about how it snowed on the day of her funeral
So the snowy air froze the roads, the icy roads – slippery, My thoughts turned to icicles because
It was my first funeral i went to
I remember how i wished it was spring
She died on new year’s day
Death is horrible, death is just so sad
Why do such good people in this world have to die?
It’s been a year since she passed
I wonder if she knew if it was the right time to die, the right season?
The first day of the year, but how did life go on even though she didnt?… how has it already been one
year without her?
Without her physically here but i believe she’s still with us
I see my friend’s hair now in the grass
Her eyes in the stars
Her arms, held out ready to give a hug, in the tree branches
Her hands in the daisies
Her heart in the moon
Her personality in the sun
Death is human nature; no one can live for eternity but i kind of wish my friend could be as everlasting as
Tuck. My friend’s so wise she earned immortality not death… but Tuck Everlasting is fiction so
Why does someone who’s the kindest person I’ve ever met, so caring, so considerate, so accepting, she
always saw something good in me even when no one else did, why did she of all people have to die at
such a young age? She didn’t deserve to die… she was never mean but i honestly can be a mean person
She will never experience any more tomorrows, i swallow down tears fast
When I look out my window at this time of year, i remember my past
I remember wishing life to be an ice sculpture, i still too wish that
That the snow would melt and my friend would come back to us
But she is gone
Gone in the wind
My friend loved music, musicals, dancing
So I hope she’s dancing gracefully into the breeze, singing to the beat of the wind
I hope the wind – her piano
The thunder – her drums
The sky – her stage
The weather – her symphony
The classical music sings her to sleep… to sleep forever to never wake up
I ponder in somber wonder now is my friend no longer in pain, or are her veins still blue in vain?
I Wonder is she finally at peace?
Leah Rebeka Brodsky (pen name Laya) is 21-years- old. She is a third-year student at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island and is from Scituate, Massachusetts.