Depression Diner by Aleeya Wilson

Kyle Brown CC


Depression Diner

Always left on read,
                zero new texts
because I always leave my phone on ring,
                 Y do I do this to myself?

Contrary to popular belief,
                 Xanax is not easy to find when you need it.

Don’t tell anyone I said this, but if
                worry hard enough and it will come to you like
Ecstasy at a rave; 
                 very glassy cliché of club kids everywhere
find it on your friend & say “thank
                 U very much” if they ever come around again
guarantee, bet on it, just flat out hope,
                 think of something else besides the
hurt your liver could be feeling
         
   “Sundae, you need a sundae order a sundae instead”
I need to do that mom – trade alcohol for sugar,
                 raves for writing.
Justify that in your notebook again, this time to the right
                 quite like handwriting practice, just down the page & hook a little left.

K, I hear resets your brain –
                  press rewind and it’s back to 0:00 or 12:00    
like depression hasn’t been my fave for 10 years like
                 “oh my god, it started when I was 12, right before
my birthday didn’t it:?”
           
                  No, that’s still too fresh.

Not like any scar fades
                  (mom told me that & yes, it’s true)
“Omg it’s never going to stop – I’ll buy my therapist a new house”
                   like, how is that not true?
Personally, I don’t see a way out of this
                   (kicker is my doc agrees)
Quite the relationship I guess
                   (just kidding).

Real talk:        
                   I know depression is my best friend
She isn’t moving out.
                   Here to stay like:
too many receipts in the drawer or a
                   guarded jar full of quarters by the window.

U don’t want to know what this is like;
                   feels like drinking magma;
Volcano to the face
                   emptying out to you, searing off yr skin, yr everything.

Yet I
wonder what my friends are doing. They don’t get
                   depressed, they just take an
X & let it dissolve all slow & sublingual
                   could be something else,         
yet I need something,
                    but I could consider something
zesty or bitter.
                    Anything

Bio: Aleeya Wilson is originally from Denver Colorado, she moved to San Francisco to study in the MFA program at the University of San Francisco. Some of her poems have appeared in Teeth Dreams Magazine and Suspect Press. She is currently completing a manuscript of poems. 

---