Depression

Depression

My Helen days
I call them

those days when I barely warm
my own skin, lift my own

limbs, when the barista
mishears, writes Helen on my cup,

the hard K of me
swallowed

as I'm lost
to the spiral

handed down from dark wintering drunks. The few people
I've told imagine I dread her

but I don't.
Helen shuffs off

illusion, sits in one place,
guards me better than I guard myself.