CW: depression.

In response to those who romanticise mental health. Who support it only when it’s palatable, and clean.

• Teeth that tingle.
• Rancid tongue.
• Dry, cracked lips.
• Scars.
• Scars from spots and from scratches.
• Limp hair.
• Not showering for weeks.
• Sitting in the bath until the water is cold and murky and stale.
• Picking.
• Picking at flaws.
• Picking at eyebrows and eyelashes.
• Pulling out hair as penance.
• Teeth biting through lips.
• Licking the blood away.
• Bedsheets, unchanged.
• Pyjamas, unchanged.
• Skipping classes to lie in bed with the curtains drawn.
• Comfort shows for twelve hours straight.
• Ugly crying.
• Blood on pillows.
• All bark, no bite.
• Bite through the same cut.
• Taste metal.
• Punching pillows.
• Screaming into pillows.
• Screaming.
• Without noise.
• Don’t sleep – pass out.
• Sleep for twelve hours straight.
• Find it hard to wake up, again.
• Ugly.
• uglyuglyuglyugly.
• Running mascara.
• Not like war-paint, like funerals.
• Pick. Pull. Scratch.
• Wake up.
• Do it all again.

Image courtesy of Sam Moqadam.