12 Poems About Mental Health to Let You Know You’re Not Alone
Courtney Lowry is a photographer, poet, and artist from Baltimore, Maryland who seeks to empower those whose voices are silenced through her work. Her photography series “Generalized Anxiety Distortions” explores and documents her struggle with her mental health while studying abroad in Hong Kong. “I photographed through any material I could find while walking around the city, replacing feelings of isolation and suffocation with anxiety in real-time,” she writes. “My passion for raising awareness of mental health, the disable, and women of color is expressed in these poems.”
9.19.19
I think my rotation around the sun is complete.
I’ve tasted the sweetest water from the purest of rivers and run my fingers through the kindest of soil.
I have danced with the spirited birds and sauntered through the grasslands with mammals who love more than humans.
I think my rotation around the sun is complete.
I have seen the rains and felt their fresh touch against my balmy cheeks.
My feet have touched the asphalt of my ancestors.
And my back remains broken from the baggage I constantly carry, pressed against my spine.
I ask the children after me to please take my place.
I think my rotation around the sun is complete.
9.15.19
Summer’s sweet sugar spoils,
Turns bitter,
Rotting in the heat,
And dehydrated from holding out false hope.
Little hands grip tight to nothing
Gripping skin and digging into
Palms to feel something when nothing is there
Tired of being controlled, placed in a box, wrapped in a bow
5.28.18
We were too
Young to realize
The venom that
Laid within their
Eyes, eager and
Hungry…we remain
Guarded, high castle
Walls. And when
Intruders came along,
They ask us
Why we can’t
Open up, but
They weren’t there
When grimy hands
Covered our mouths,
They silenced us
For good.
4.11.18
Poking amongst the
Meats, my body
Becomes a supermarket
For male consumption
And dehumanized for
Female scrutiny
Leave me with
No identity to
Define me from
The rest of
The black girls
Manipulate and strip
Me from my
Craft like play-doh
Mold me into
Your white aesthetic
How good it
Feels to be
Told that Or
How you Do
Your art
Is wrong
–art school kids.
5.27.18
Sometimes freedom doesn’t
Taste as good
As we hoped
Freedom from love
Tastes bitter, but
Freedom from pain
Is sweet, like
A candy you
Rarely find in
A glass case
Unless you look
Hard enough and
Ask the store
Clerk what flavor
It is. Freedom
From pain tastes
Like a vanilla
Sky. Freedom from
Love tastes like
A Freudian theory.
10.9.19
I used to listen to music while I read
I used to say “I’m sorry” a lot
I used to never reveal the swords that people drove into me, instead just let the blood mix with the purl of my knit sweater
I used to attribute everything to their pain and not their actual actions
I used to be a doormat
I used to claw at the empty well, while everyone around me drank from Dixie cups
I was never offered a drink until my throat was bone dry
Then they poured water on me
And left me there, almost to die
Still to this day, I do not hate these people.
10.10.19
I love the rumble of the heater in the morning
I love the fresh crack of a good book, pages still untainted and crisp
I love letting go of poison
I love how the sky turns yellow orange around 3:30 instead of 6
I love that everything has this golden cast over it
So quickly how nightfall comes…I’m still getting used to that, even though it’s happened every year of my life since birth
I love that I only care about a few people still and go unbothered by the ones who’ve shown me otherwise
I love how easily I take breakups, I think that is my superpower.
10.25.19
there’s an anxiety in my chest
when I realized that the blanket I keep pulling up to my face fell in the street earlier this week
I feel
Infected
Tossed the blanket
Off of me
As the plague burns me from the inside out
I had two alcoholic drinks this week
That might kill me too—my liver
My heart was broken because I didn’t handle it with care, no “fragile” label
Slapped on the front and I may be closer to death than I think
I walked with my jacket open too many times
9.13.19
things they don’t understand
walking into a room and feeling searing eyes
being denied service at the door in hong kong
showcasing my work to blank eyes, glossing over my heartbeat, but never stopping to listen
never feeling beautiful because of my wiry hair
professors always telling me to make projects about what it was like to be black
when on most days i’m tired of talking about it
the teasing because i didn’t listen to rap
the judgment when i started listening to rap, but it wasn’t their rap
mocked because of my proper speaking
outrage because i’d never eaten a chitlin
defeat, as I came to terms with maybe being black just wasn’t for me.
8.22.19
take my medicine with a straight face
swallowing my pride
tiptoeing on the bed
careful not to stain the sheets
a pain in my chest
a chill down my spine
its been so often this pain. this much
11.14.19
She holds her empty cup out to the world
Expecting every rain to just fall inside
The privilege of just asking for it must be nice
Us black girls can’t do that
Us black girls have to stand in the back
We didn’t even get cups
We go thirsty and no one cares
9.2.19
the well of my self love
refills after running dry since may
and the days before
it fills slowly with water from
the holy spring of a clear
mind and a focus on myself
instead of the things i
can not control
god hears my weeks of praying
asking him to open
the rains above to fill my well
it fills slowly, but it fills.
