Fog

A prose poem about my personal struggle with depression. It reveals how difficult it is to drag yourself out once you've spiraled deep enough.

The sickly grey spins and swirls, obscuring all other surroundings. There may have been something else, long before, but that matters no more; no, now there is only this. Only the fog.

It twists and turns, it blows, it dances, it mocks those whom it envelops. It curves cruelly and ensnares its victims, seeming to take a substantial form for only a moment before it dissolves under their touch.

Moans fill the fog, begging, grunting, but never screaming; no, there is no strength with which to scream. The groans are involuntary admissions of pain, drawn from the lungs of their emitters as a syringe draws blood from a vein. The disconcerting fog strips the ability to orient oneself, to find the others, to find the source of the pain.

Ambling, lost, pained, soul after soul finds itself losing its hope, spark, will, even fear. For fear cannot exist in a world where there is only pain; in the end, the lost souls have nothing left to fear. Even the most abominable monstrosities would be welcomed as they came crawling out of the depths of an infernal abyss, if only for the sake of a brief spell of cruel company.

Alone, solitary, forsaken. Forlorn, unaided, detached. The only companionship that exists is the unattainable sound of strangers' pain; strangers who are perpetually out of reach. Eyes cast down, the damned drag on; cursing the pitiless and unsympathetic ground that they can never seem to look away from. They suffer, yearning, pleading, begging, imploring the fog to grant them a new sight, a light, a warmth in which to rest.

If only they had the unheard of, beautiful, wicked, taken for granted ability to lift their gazes to the sky.