through the depression. 

I felt, without a body, something in agony 

 

or maybe a body without a soul, stiff 

and too heavy to pull from the bed. 

 

Yes – an obese body, my own flesh and grief, 

too heavy for my body to lift. There is 

no other way to tell you: I woke up 

afraid I was going to live. 

 

There is no other way to explain 

how I was overwhelmed 

by the most mundane things – 

dishes, the shower, breakfast. 

I could not be anywhere. 

 

I ran from Saint Louis 

across the rolling ground to Colorado, 

where I found the mountains 

could no longer offer me their comfort, 

to my mother’s house in Pennsylvania, 

where the red wolves used to hunt and stalk, 

to Chicago. 

 

From Chicago I crawled back 

to my heavy, tired body, to find 

that where the soul had been there was 

now a hard river stone – 

small and cold and flat. Many suggested 

a hospital stay, but what could doctors

do for a stone?

 

I craved a body I could crawl into.

 

Read the rest of Kait’s posts here.