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.