Ghosts
*I love poetry and the ability to use it as a coping tool, a healing tool. I've dealt with mental illness for a long time, many years of which were spent undiagnosed. I have been writing like crazy lately as I'd really love to publish my work someday. Here is a poem I let happen (only one revision so far) when I was so frustrated that my words would never be good enough after reading works I was certain I'd never live up to. Once I got it out on paper and read it, I thought, okay, it's not so bad, and it's mine.*
Here are more words put down on paper
Words that need to live up to the expectations
Of those who came before me
Great minds of those harboring a love for sadness
A gentleness for anger and a taste for death
My words should speak volumes on the woes
Of my mind and the weakness of my heart
But I can’t find the metaphors to make you see
That ghosts live inside of me trying to take control
That they don’t want to live they just want me to join them
My words should show you the cracks in my skin
Carved by razors and the pain of a past
Still my present, my future, unwritten
But never to be written by me
My words will never be mine
They belong to ghosts with stories to tell
And maybe being a ghost doesn’t sound so bad after all