It's always Depression, always

Denial
Anger
Bargaining
D
Acceptance


---

I line you up
I learned you, memorised you at a darker time of my life.
That little grey of 2015, trying to find myself.
To find solid ground after treading water.

DABDA.

Oh how relevant the first half of you have become.
Horrid.
'Don't do that.'
'Stop.'
'It looks stupid as fuck.'


I remember Denial first of course, the simplest to know,
to note.
Rolls off the tongue, reminds me of my father.

I have a blast saying it.

Then I remember acceptance.
Always acceptance.

Ingrained in my mind, I know how it needs to end. It must end with this. Must.
Thousands of years and my ancestors have always ended on this -
if not by will then by nature.
When they fell, the grass accepted their offering -
a return back to earth: ash to ash.

Black to black.
The acceptance of black,
of blank,
of the big, bad, black, beyond.

Of crying out into open voids and awaiting something other than my own echo.

Then anger, which is easy,
then bargaining, which is even easier.
It takes me one sentence to realise futility. Sometimes it doesn't take a sentence at all.

But I always leave the fourth one blank.
I know it, but it is a distant memory. One stuck somewhere I cannot reach,
a locked drawer,
the space outside my window where the crow lands on the tree.

I scramble and try to recall,
I scratch and claw into my own memories -
I studied for this! I studied! I got that A-!  I did it! I did that!
So why I can't I remember?

Why is so hard, so impossible
to remember?

I google
Denial

it shows
Denial Anger

I type
B

it shows Denial Anger Bargaining


---

I know it begins with a D,
and then I know it is depression.

I know I am sad,
and then I know it is depression.

"If I die, I die.
And I am in pain."

---


I am no longer in pain,
and I don't wish to die.

Now I still 'smile anyway'
but everyday I learn of reasons to do so.