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