did you hear about the depressive belle de jour?

she tried searching for medications in the cupboard

until she realized they never existed

like the apparitions she sees in the stained mirror on her four walls

all mirages, all hallucinations

like the boogeyman she used to fear as a little girl


well guess what she's all grown up now and

there's a bigger skeleton in her closet

i'll tell you a secret: that's where she keeps her demons

when her fist-sized heart ran out of space for broken bones

to make room for anhedonia and a ménage à trois

with Grief and Apathy


months later she still wakes up with her limbs

almost sticking out of her skin

haphazardly lying on a pile of sweat-stained linens

after a prolonged foreplay with her lovers and the only 

petite mort she achieves is insomnia


but the smell of a third paramour she hasn't met

now clings to her body

she wears his scent like an intoxicating perfume

unaware of its effects on herself because this

new opium has something to offer that 

others don't: the sweet promise of closure


she still doesn't know that his name is Death