malalai khan

my sisters say i cry at everything / yeah, i will cry / when depression explodes like a ticking bomb inside / leaving craters behind / that fill up with my tears like rock pools / into which i throw damned seeds of hope / that grow instead into thorns // my friends say i should smile more / yeah, maybe i should / but you don’t get to tell a colourblind person / to look at rainbows / i am barely finding any rainbows now // my teachers say depressed people are faithless / yeah, they have faith / except that they won’t have any in themselves / when the whole world tells them they have no worth // anxiety holds a trigger at my head / adhd spins webs in the farthest corners / and reels all my thoughts into one another // voices knock on the door / i don’t want to answer anything or anyone / but the pounding gets louder and louder / until the walls fall down / and i am left struggling for breath on the floor / trying to keep a roof over my mind / like atlas held the sky in his arms / while my heart shivers and convulses / like a barren tree branch in the  cold wind // they said talking would help me / but i felt more lonely / with people who only saw through me / like a pane of glass