Depression hits you like a rock.
A boulder that crushes your internal being
to a point where there is too much pain to feel anything.
Numbness.
Not the tingling kind of numbness
where you feel it progressing through the blood vessels of your inert left leg.
There is a different kind.
A ghost that that follows you,
eventually seeping into your
mind, body, and senses
until all that is left is the crown of the tyrannical-phantom
controlling the work of pure nothing.
Gold weight of the crown compresses your transparent soul
down to a deep abyss;
along with its own cruel soul
as it gazes along with your psychotic pain.

My corpse, a servant.
Controlled by the brain hung inside from coat hanger.
Stress-filled rocks constantly contact my hollow head.
A ding echoes through me every time...
until BOOM.
One rock carrying mountains of distress startled
my at-ease brain, which bang banged off all sides of my skull;
sending airmail over seas to my detached hand.
The package, an instruction guide
teaching them to samba and salsa.
For a while this entertained
until the tremors spread to my head.
Soon I would be trapped in a spinning, dizzying vortex
blurring my vision, my life.

Tremors became more serious outbursts.
Peasants would peek into my castle
as if it was a Leaning Tower about to crumble any moment.
Nosey, white-smocked strangers crossed the drawbridge,
chained and strapped down, the white-smocked mob
poked and prodded
until the smudged, rose-red, cracked lips would
declare the words: conversion disorder.
Two meaningless words that have changed my life forever.
Even after counseling and therapeutic sessions with Dr. Goldstein,
spastic seizures worsened into
revolting motions of dictatorship from my coping brain.
Anxiety and stress that pounded on the drawbridge
were successfully welcomed by the jester.
Instead of thinking about forgetting my mind only lives to remember...

Awful groans, piercing screams.
My mouth mechanically moving to the squeals
though it seems impossible as drool oozes
onto the bright white sheets.
Hospital bed springs sequentially squeaking around me.
Who else is there? What could they be doing?
Cries of agony penetrating through my ears:
the ringing dehances my ability to hear
a soothing hush far off in the past...
A rocking chair.
Warm, fuzzy bear arms suffocate my young restless body.
Rocking up and down, up down, updown
to a familiar lullaby...
“Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep little darling. Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep little girl...”
Bothersome sounds and ferocious jerks and twitches
gradually calmed and quieted as my mind plays the song
over and over and over and over,
until dreams begin to arouse
my restless mind.