fretful and restless, i listen to the incessant ringing. groping with an inexorable pressure, it abrades my sanity. the air is thick. choked by the dust of my being, i flounder. breathing. yet clamouring for air with every heave. the room brightens with emptiness and i’m too exhausted to change out of my pyjamas.
Is there another world for this frail dust
To warm with life and be itself again?
Something about me daily speaks there must,

what’s the point? work, play, love. nothing can slake an existence unworthy of life. an imploding hollowness. insipid as familiar pleasures seep through my fissures. it hurts to get out of bed. guilt hurts. guilty for everything, guilty for nothing. the deep dark abyss crushes me as remorse swallows. a bottomless plunge with a heartless thought: “i don’t deserve the right to feel sad!” i despise myself, becoming hopeless in my unbecoming.
And why should instinct nourish hopes in vain?
‘Tis nature’s prophesy that such will be,
And everything seems struggling to explain
The close sealed volume of its mystery.

but for You, i will hold on. for You.
Time wandering onward keeps its usual pace
As seeming anxious of eternity,
To meet that calm and find a resting place.

years ago, i asked myself: “If I die in my sleep, what is the one thing that I want my friends to remember?” Poetry, i decided. i never looked back.
E’en the small violet feels a future power
And waits each year renewing blooms to bring,
And surely man is no inferior flower
To die unworthy of a second spring?

Used with permission: ‘The Instinct of Hope’ by John Clare.