DO I HAVE TO DO THIS ALPHABETICALLY?

By Anneli Knight

Anorexia takes your joy,

It makes you doubt every meal,

Every bite,

And it makes you wonder

If you know how to feel hunger?

Autism takes your consciousness,

You can see every leaf on the tree

But you don’t know it’s a tree.

You can count to thirty,

But what is thirty?

Anxiety takes your function,

It stops you and holds you,

And takes full control.

It is the sweat on your palms,

And the shaking in your bones.

It is darkness, but it can creep in.

Depression takes your spirit.

It makes leaving the bed or the house

Utterly useless.

It makes your kindness dry up.

And your interest invalid.

It voids you.

Epilepsy takes your lights,

It makes you jump, and trip,

And fall on paving stones,

And bite holes in your tongue

Whilst you lie on your bedroom floor.

Whilst it seems more don’t appear,

I will end this thing here.

Mental health is not a joke.

INSIDE THE LOOKING GLASS

By Keila Cruz

Waves of wintry water whelm me –

I freeze. My body clenches

like right before a sneeze

with no pleasurable release. I’m lost. I’ve lost

my soul. Where is it? 

Will it pay me a visit

again? This time I’m on the train – no 

I’m inside my midbrain, it’s

a lurid labyrinth I’m lost in, I’m 

buried under my own skin, I 

ask another soul: ‘which way is back 

home?’ 

‘Uptown or Downtown?’ they say, 

with a voice that echoes sixty miles away. ‘Back down’ 

to my vessel that for a split-second sails smoothly, before

it’s jolted by the surging sea, robbing me, 

of my sanity. My home I love 

and loathe it. Here, 

where colors sting like shards of green grass. Here, 

behind the looking glass, the world is made of pixels, 

arranged in orders strange, they’re pieces of a puzzle 

my eyes can’t seem to rearrange. 

‘Here on vacation?’ they ask. ‘That could be said. Though really

I’m looking for a way out of my own head.’ 

‘From whence do you come? What is your name?’

I search and search and search, 

but none of those details I find in my brain. Desperate, 

my eyes dart to a vacant face flat on the train window, 

a face whose eyes I do not recognize,

a face that falsely claims to be mine. Some people

get high to feel this way – I

live with it every single day. 

The screeching 

stops, at last. I hear my stop; it stops my heart, 

racing I bolt home. I 

see the door, reach for my key,

inside my purse, is empty. 

I search and search 

and search,

Is this a dream? I fill my lungs, 

then pinch my arm 

and bite my tongue. 

That’s when I see

the key to my home

is right inside of me.

I reach for it, 

I hear the click – 

inside my home

is dimly lit. 

ABOUT THE POEM:  "This poem in particular is meant to encapsulate my personal experience of derealization - a mental state that causes a person to feel detached from their surroundings."

ABOUT KEILLA: Keila is a native Dominican poet based in Brooklyn, New York, currently working toward a career in art therapy in hopes of sharing the healing power of poetry with others. She has self-published other works through her social-media and website platforms.

W: www.lazulipoetry.com/poetry

TREE CRUCIFIX

By Bhagvati Patel

Dead? 

Laying on the ground 

At least all Winter long.

How it fell, who knows?

The pure white Geese feeding 

in the wild lush grass, 

Witnessed!

Collectively, aggressively, 

Hinked, honked! hinked, honked!!

Raised their long regal necks 

And ferociously flapped feathers, 

I imagine,

Yellow beaks up to the Heavens. 

Waddling fast, six bums past.

Frightened by the depth 

of the huge sudden sound 

of crackling sap, 

exploding from its trunk.

Two jagged edges, one rooted, 

one horizontal, 

A-cross earth.

Like lightning strike, unjustly cut,

Cruel fate in thundery night?

Spring arrived, with wonderous light,

Clouds filled with showers and rain

Pouring, drop tears touched, 

Whispered to the fallen bough 

Through the wind

“Your time on Earth is not yet up”.

Warm encouragement, 

Thorney branches grew

A March-ed bloom, as Easter rises.

The re-birth for New Life

Natures’ colours in daffodils, primroses, bluebells

Flourish again, flourish, flourish…

Creating its visionary celebrations.

In tune with an orchestra of bird songs

Oh, what a jambourine!

Riches for all our Spiritual senses

The tree is very much alive!

ABOUT THE POEM: I've turned to writing poetry for myself to literally save my mind as I try to own my journey of mental illness. My poetry writing started in earnest during Covid and the first months of lock down. Living in isolation, with little vocal conversation it was a stressful struggle. Turning into my negative thoughts and feelings of loneliness, I'm able to breathe deeply and write about a "thought event". I know that once I've written about whatever the subject is, it's out of my mind."



REALIZATION OF DESPAIR

By Divya Paliwal 

The essence of human existence is rationality

But my rationality is fading away from my existence.

Is the world that is waiting inevitably to be unfolded before me

Worth living?

This wariness has progressively gripped my mind

And now my personality.

Sorrow and happiness are equal comrades in the journey of life

But pain has become a closer friend of mine.

The miseries of today will never cease to exist

They modify their form and simply transit.

The life of everyone I seem to know

Is a testimony to prove what my rationality endows.

This is the realization of despair

And it makes my existence impaired.

Let me tell those who are curious to know

The evident source of my unwarranted realization.

It is the desperate need to become independent.

To make my life truly mine.

As the unbroken rule of nature entails

A fledgling to leave its mothers nest to make its own.

I will learn to fly

Only after falling many times

And with this conviction

I live my life.



STATIONS OF THE CROSS

By April Bulmer

My janitor, Monsieur Rondeau, greets me with a Mademoiselle. He wears a thin undershirt. 

I am new to Montreal: take my shoes from a carton, wipe the face of my clock, hang cherubs on the wall. 

I live on Rue Lambert-Closse. 

I stock the fridge with cheap food: chicken dogs and margarine, a loaf of white bread. 

A burglar steals my television and antique brooch.

I stammer for help.

The psychiatrist speaks with a thick tongue. I pick at a hangnail; he makes a note. 

I am low, but in letters home I loop my M with a deceitful flourish.

In Saint-Henri: a good diner. I take café au lait and lithium pills. I am mentally ill and malnourished. 

A statue on rue Saint-Jacques of Louis Cyr. His story is heavier than his barbell.

On Saint-Laurent, I buy a smoked-meat sandwich and ceramic Madonna.

I fear the women on the stairs at Chez Doris. Their brutal rouge and eyeliner.

I visit the cross on Mount Royal. I wish it revolved.

At Buanderie Albert, I avoid the washing machine at the end. A heavy, outdated model. Silver like an iron lung.

My breath is shallow at Le Malade Imaginaire by Molière. I attend the play alone.

I pray the stations of the cross. I beg for health, worship the Saviour’s toes. 

Men find me boring. I practise small talk in the mirror. The flat reflection of il fait beau. 

On Sainte-Catherine, a clown tells fortunes. My heart, a red balloon, inflates. I spread my palm wide. He studies my line of fate. 

ABOUT THE POEM: “'Stations of the Cross' is a poem based on notes I made 40 years ago. I found them recently in an old file folder. In my early 20s, I moved from Toronto to Montreal to study creative writing at the graduate level. The brittle paper I found detailed concerns I had that year, including the state of my mental health. The piece is a litany of confessions and observations. It explores a troubled mind as well as sites in Montreal new to me at the time. In revising my notes, I created a narrator who appeals to the cross on Mount Royal and to Jesus himself. She also consults a fortune teller with the hope that she will receive relief from her symptoms and that her future will be brighter. Her heart, a balloon, is buoyed by this clown."

ABOUT APRIL: April holds Master’s degrees in creative writing, religion and theological studies. Much of her writing deals with women and spirituality. Many of her dozen books have been shortlisted for awards, including the International Beverly Prize for Literature, the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, the Next Generation Indie Book Awards and the Global Book Awards. She won the YWCA Women of Distinction Award in Cambridge, Ontario where she lives.

W: www.aprilbulmer.com

w: www.aprilbulmer.wordpress.com



AGAIN

By Trish Lundy

Sort the colors, count the numbers one through ten. “Repetition is key,” I say again and again. 

Feeling an elephant on my chest, I can’t breathe in. Here come the hives, can’t hide the rash on my skin.

Eat this, eat that. “You’ll never be thin!” I run to the bathroom to vomit yet again.

He loves me then doesn’t, I can’t tell from his grin. Time to dissociate, don’t let the narcissist win. 

Now I hear voices. Is it God, or personality named Ben? The paranoia takes hold of my mind once again. 

The anger is building, can’t find my own zen. A second later there’s a hole where the wall had once been.

Lacking focus can’t sit still, I keep clicking the pen. Can’t stop the thoughts racing over and over again. 

Gripping the piece of glass, puncturing the skin. “What’s one little cut?” My thoughts start to spin. 

Grabbing the glass of ice, he mixes the juice and gin. Liquid drowns my sorrows as I sit at the bar again.

No one sees me jump as the fireworks begin. I fought for my country, one of very few brave men. 

I take hold of the needle, feel for the vein, and shove it in. The drug flows, pain flees, and I’m free again. 

I hold the gun to my head, but I don’t tell you when. My darkness consumed me from deep within.

These mental illnesses I battle, I know you see as a sin. God as my savior, the devil lost once again.



RISE

By Cynthia Foss

People close to me gossiped about how far I was falling.

I fell even more...

They made fun, got a laugh...

I fell more...

I know it's true because I listen to how they spoke about others...

I fell more...

How they spoke about people that were not in the room.

What were they saying about me...

I fell more and more...

Until one day I looked in the mirror and didn't recognize my own reflection...

I fell that far... 

The climb back to myself was so very hard because I did it completely on my own and with God's grace. 

Each small step I rise... 

Every time people judge how I've scratched my way out of my own darkness, each setback...

I rise...

Every night I cried for strength...

I rise...

Every day where I thought I didn't have the strength

I rise...

Every sleepless lonely night...

I rise...

Until today when I look in the mirror and don't recognize myself because I've risen to a point in life where everything is new.

A new version, a newfound strength, opportunities, friendship.

I've never been this amazing version of myself.

Still I rise...

Still I rise...

Still i rise..



COUNTERTRANSFERENCE

By Chelsea Garcia

You tell me a story, a trauma an infliction you endured

I sit in silence listening to each word

I ponder on my thoughts while I also ponder yours

A sudden feeling, a sudden sickness a sudden urge

What is it I feel

What is it I heard

What is it causing our emotions to merge?

I am human to yet I feel invisible to you

I have my own stories, my own thoughts my own sets of moods

I keep them to me until I finish with you

A feeling to revisit in my own solitude

I must ask myself what has caused this feeling

Something that may seem impossible to do

A therapist must look at herself yet again in her own solitude

A space which seems to have no room

And so, yet I ask myself again

What is it I feel

What causes your story to feel so real?

What is it I heard

How do I deal …

ABOUT THE POEM: "I am currently working as a Licensed Professional Counselor. Counter transference in therapy can be so challenging for new clinicians, and even for well seasoned clinicians. My poem talks more in depth about those challenges, and hopes it brings more awareness to them as well!"