Use Metaphors to Describe Your Depression

Lincoln published poems in the Springfield paper
dripping with daggers and cries in the dark
 
Styron filled pages with treacherous weather
howling tempests and horrific gray drizzle
 
for me — it’s a dime-store black plastic mask
I wore as a child on Halloween
the kind with the two impractical nose holes
and the unreliable thin rubber band  
I was thrilled by the concept of being anonymous
but I just couldn’t get enough breath

— CRAIG PATRICK

Craig Patrick is a Washington, DC area writer and musician. When not writing poems, titling unwritten novels, or naming fake bands, he writes a newsletter about the creative process called Thinking about Thinking and records guitar-driven, synth-tinged, multi-hyphenated pop/rock music under the name Giants of Diving.