description of difficulty

life leads me
here; to a flickering screen,
lilting music, an unmade bed
and it's almost noon.

it is hard to forgive myself
for the days i cannot move.

it is hard to remember
death, and not skirt around it
like an awkward edge, a raw wound.

it is hard not to scroll.
not to smoke. not to sleep.
far too much.

it is particularly difficult, also,
to allow myself to not understand.
it is a physical yearning in my bones
to be able to assign meaning, find
answers, organise thoughts, write.
(it is hard, so hard, to not be writing these days.
it is also too hard to write. too fucking difficult.)
i am trying to keep hope alive
like a tender plant. i am afraid
to water too much or not enough.
i do not understand.
i do not understand.
life seems like an insane carnival,
and the bags under my eyes threaten
to give me away. i am an observer here.
i am a lost traveller. i have nowhere to go.
everything seems absurd. in the mornings,
i am disoriented. all day, it doesn't leave.
poetry follows me like an unwanted spectre
reminding me that i do not understand.
i am like the sea, i am rising and falling
and reaching nowhere. even the sandcastles
that seemed stable are now collapsing under
sheer weight of water. everything is ruins.

if i call these scary feelings
Art, perhaps it will not be worrying.

my bones are made of lead these days.
occasionally they lighten up, and i can float
to the surface, make a joke, do my laundry.
too often, i am submerged too deep to emerge.
and the thing is, underwater - undersadness -
it is hard to breathe