CW: Depression and self harm.
in my vision, I taste happiness. I watch the sun’s dance & listen to the music of laughter. I run through a garden & somehow, I am a child again, trying to catch butterflies but they keep slipping through my fingers; like happiness, like love, like everything else I chase. Sometimes I wonder if my depression is a result of wishing for too much. Maybe if I lower my expectations, I will be happier. Maybe if I stopped searching, the good things will come. Maybe if I stopped experimenting with colorful pills & sharp razors, I will find peace. Maybe the happiness I seek in the bodies of strangers has been within me all along. Maybe these butterflies I try to catch are all ghosts of the past & maybe it would be better to forget, to move on, to bury the past, to strip the butterflies of their wings and reverse their metamorphosis, to make them caterpillars once more, then eggs, then nothing, until the past turns to a graveyard.
I cannot know freedom. time blends into itself & all is forgotten.
This poem was inspired by an indescribable longing for the past and a search for meaning that is part of every mind. It reflects my state of mind at the time I wrote it—dark but holding hope of finding the light that cast the shadows.
