Underwater, 2014.

(Poem written for a university project, adapted from The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath)

esther,

a girl made of words and light

in the sea of life,

growing in all directions.

they told her,

"don't let the wicked city get you down"

she tried to open her eyes to

the flicker of lights,

the glitz and the glamour

served on a silver platter

but it went unnoticed

behind vacant eyes

and a veil of apathy.

she had worn out the everyday,

fallen out of the routine of this

and that.

moving through a haze of white noise

across twenty-four hours,

the days walked over her.

the sea that once cradled her

and promised to fill her calender

became a distant memory.

it had beckoned towards her,

a welcome bouquet of

line

after line

after line

and a bag of sharpened pencils 

waiting to be held.

the empty days now stretched before her

like a vast sea

and she didn't know how to swim.

she swallowed darkness like

prescribed pills,

wanting to leave

the lacklustre behind. 

the large expanse of sky
in midnight blue

that lay before her

cracked open 

and a sliver of moonlight

crept into the crevices of

her tired bones.

the air that once filled her lungs

dissipated with the light.

saltwater pooled at her feet

as her head leaked

the remainder of the ocean

she had soaked up

until she became an airtight mess,

unable to let the sunshine in.

"the more hopeless you were,

the further away they hid you"

she became one of the beings
shelved into a system
of routine pharmaceuticals,

punctuated by a label of insanity.

they tried to buzz her back to life

as though the electricity 

fizzing through her veins would

awaken her mind

and melt away the dullness.

the ground beneath her cracks

from the weight of living

and all the things she has yet to do,

threatening to swallow her whole.

the light in her eyes,

the fire in her heart, 

faded with the summer.