“I put my heart and soul into my work, 
                               and I have lost my mind in the process.”                              
                                       —  Vincent Van Gogh

                               “I am burning. I am not consumed.”
                                                       Lucille Clifton 

At what point did you realize that life 
        is a room with too 
many cracks? I learnt this early. Guys 

I know step in through the door & then
       vanish, just like that. 
Something was always pushing them 

to the edge, & I swear, they tried hard 
        to stay. Before Rubygold, 
it was Rachel, & before her, it was Akachi.

The same cold drugs reaching for throat. 
       Someone said it’s the
writers that bleed out first, & I thought 

how stupid. How sadly true. In Science 
       there are countless 
studies pointing at depression as the darker 

half of creativity. I remember my own
       scar. When, that year, 
my friend TY walked in for a surgery & 

was wheeled out dead. I wrote several 
       poems to soften my pain.
In each one, I too was dying— the griever

becoming exactly the thing he grieved the
       most. The fact about
writing is that it forces you to acknowledge

your wounds; to reopen them. In his poem,
       Chat History, Akachi 
says I fight every day—  an honest attempt 

at healing. The body, heavy-laden, asks to
       be drowned. But we 
must hang on to whatever is left. I'm saying  

there’s a calmness that follows a storm & I'm  
      learning to wait for it. 
I’m learning to survive, & if not, to attempt again.