Dear Winter Rose, 

I asked what story you’d like to read, and in turn you had asked to hear mine. 

You asked to hear how it feels. And so, I began to ask myself where to start.

How to begin describing a feeling buried so deep, yet only just out of reach. 

A sinking feeling, weighing so heavily upon these shoulders I can do little to keep my eyes off the floor. 

When the sun rises, my shadow is all I see. 

When the moon shines, that shadow becomes a sea.

When the rain falls, I cannot tell if the water falling down my cheeks are from the rain, or the pain.  

I walk in silence, each time the feeling finds me. 

My voice, taken from me, by the ones screaming at me.  

I sleep with restlessness. 

Not knowing if they might come for me in my slumber. 

I wallow in that deep sorrow. 

Because in those waters, I find the closest thing to solace.

Because outside of that pain, I realize I can feel little else. 

That pain is like an anchor.

It weighs me down. 

It keeps me bound 

Yet it may be the only thing tying me to this world. 

The only thing that stands between me, and the mercy of violent waves.

With my hands, I try to reel that anchor up. 

Free myself, from this limbo, that I might still make true my dreams to sail that horizon.

But how do I raise this anchor, with only my bare hands? 

How will these trembling fingers hold those chains firmly enough to begin pulling? 

How will my frailty reel in that shackle of steel, against those dark raging tides?

And so,  succumbing to a slow demise feels like the only fate that awaits me. 

To the dropping temperatures in the air. 

To the lurking predators, circling those waters. 

To the growing hunger and thirst, clawing to be sated. 

But it feels like things have already happened. 

Truths, already written. 

I have already drowned. My body has long forgotten what breath tasted like. 

I have cried. My body just can’t prove that it did, and so it thinks it has not. 

I fell, long ago. And my body never even tried to catch itself.  

They say it’s okay to be broken.

But it does not feel like I have been okay?

They tell me to get better.

But isn’t that the only thing I have tried to be?

They tell me to call, if I ever need the help.

But I can’t recall a time I did not need it. 

I feel I have fallen too far down. 

My voice, no longer able to reach. 

My eyes, now void of light. 

My arms, too preoccupied, with holding on. 

Trying to not fall any deeper. 

I can’t ask, because I fear I lack the means to do so. 

Do you think that means no one is coming?

Does that mean salvation is out of reach?

Does that mean that this, is all there ever will be?

You asked me to speak on how it feels; the slaughter of thoughts within me. 

I describe it with these questions, I have yet to bear the answers to: 

How do I appreciate the abundance of the life I was given, if I never truly believed that I deserved it?

Will I be spared another chance, to wake up and try again tomorrow?  

To be better. 

To be free. 

To be everything I have not learned to be. 

And if I was spared that chance, would I truly wish I had been?