What is the form of your thoughts? A poem for my body, this vessel of life. Sacred embodiment, yet struggling still. How to not forget. The shadows and the light. The undulating fields of color and the walls of sound. My restless mind. Or perhaps it was something else? Was it inside or outside? How [...]
*Trigger Warning - Suicide* I am 70 years old. My story won't end stigmatization. It was around in the earlier years of my life and it is still around. It doesn't bother me much 'cause I don't wear a flag'. "Crazy" is not 'who' I am. Schizophrenia is my diagnosis. In Canada, the disorder [...]
*Trigger Warning: Self-Harm* I never felt like I belonged. I grew up in the hood and never had a home. Literally. For some reason it was just me and my mom. She was very abusive. I kind of know why now that I am older. She tried. She was severely abused when she grew [...]
It's been 6 years but the memory of my first panic attack is as fresh as it happened yesterday. It was my first day to my job after graduation and I was travelling to work on the metro train. Suddenly, I noticed my chest was getting tightly grabbed from inside, there was no pain just [...]
*Note: These poems are not a series but rather individual poems that stand by themselves* Pinwheels Purple clouds spin like pinwheels I shoot my crimson arrow droplets burst my soul falls with them still my ego is drenched with sorrow. I shoot my crimson arrow I am high as that child’s kite still my [...]
Trigger Warning *Suicide* In 2012 I put a gun to my chest and pulled the trigger. That was when I realized that I had a problem. For years I’ve suffered with severe depression, bipolar disorder, and drug/alcohol addiction. As a queer non-binary man living in the South I had always had issues with self [...]
TW: Abuse, Eating Disorder, Suicidal Thoughts I am 18 years old, but I feel as though I am just finally figuring out my place in this world and my identity. All my life I have lived with social and generalized anxiety disorders, as well as depression. It was not until I reached high school when [...]
Marble I hold a green and blue swirled marble in the palm of my hand. This fragile sphere is a miniature earth—I am larger than life. Sophia Falco is the author of The Immortal Sunflower (UnCollected Press, 2019), a winner of the Raw Art Review Poetry Chapbook Contest. The Immortal Sunflower is a [...]
In the spring of 2015, after a stay in a psychiatric ward, I was diagnosed with a psychotic disorder. For a long time, I struggled to accept my illness. I was ashamed of it. The very idea of talking about it to anyone was embarrassing to me as if having a mental illness made me [...]
*trigger warning - self-harm* When I first became mentally unwell, I never thought I'd be here now, sharing my story—a survivor of my own minds torment. I was 16 when I was first diagnosed with clinical depression. I was in such a dark place, scared of the thoughts in my head, scared of what people [...]
