Andrew Piankovski - Red Scarf (detail)

Have I become addicted

to the sadness,

has it evolved into a hybrid

of apathy

of melancholy.

Will it stitch itself to my eyelids.

Will it clog up my narrow veins.

Is this the type of pain,

that drives my buried hope insane.

How do you feel about kindness being filmed like they’re performances. Someone hands a homeless person a sandwich, and boom, the cameras rolling. I’m a good person, they say without saying it, but the thing is a sandwich can only last so long, yet you'll be dining on those social media likes all week. Sure,it’s lovely, helping people. But here’s the thing: It’s sad that the world’s become a stage for doing good when you have a camera in your face, or worse in the face of someone struggling to live each day, they are not the supporting actors in your new tiktok. We don’t just help anymore. We sell the moment. Isn't it lovely though getting credit for being decent when your not just doing good. Your doing good for the algorithm.

I emptied the photo albums and all the pictures from the frames. I took them with me, because life moves fast and time fades most of the past, but those childhood memories I dare not try to erase, least of all your face. Even though alot of the memories are filled with fear and tears I still cling to a time when you where clearer than a faded photograph.

When I think of you I think of red, the red of our kitchen walls, the red that you always chose to colour your lips with or wear with your clothes. I think of my red blood rushing past my ears, I think of the sound it made.

I want to live not just survive, here's to 2025.

I know right now, with everything that's going on in the world, it feels like the night will last forever, it's darkness stretching out for years and years ahead. But I have to say that one day, the soft pull of life will tug at you. You'll find yourself sitting quietly in the summer months enjoying the warm rays and the birdsongs, maybe you plant some flowers or berrys. You'll laugh till your sides ache and your heart lightens. You'll make art and get paint on your clothes and on your carpet. You'll read books your friend recommend and gush over your favourite characters together, maybe you'll write your own. That's what's getting me through, that one day it will be summer, the days soft and I'll have my book finished in my hands and maybe someone will read it. Maybe they won't. But it's things like this, the soft things, that make everything worth it.

Excerpt from wip Dead above

Hope wins every time the sun peaks over the horizon after a long dark night, it softens the day and baths the ground, it warms the air and we breath easier and maybe our souls uncurl a little from that protective crouch we've grown used to, maybe we let our limbs loosen, maybe we let hope sink into our skin, maybe we let it melt our misery from within.

Having a really bad day, depressed, anxious, crying and uncomfortable in my own skin never mind my clothes, so I'm going to get some chocolate. Will this get rid of my depression? No. But will it make me feel a little bit better ? Yes.