I have an uncle we don’t talk about
Or rather had
See some time ago he lost his wife
And soon after he took his life
Such an asinine euphemism for putting a fucking bullet in your head.
And while he had to he acknowledged
Because I was already alive
There’s so many things we don’t talk about
We don’t talk about how my father’s father probably OD’d because he was tired of being sick
We don’t talk about how his brother’s depression killed him years before the cancer did
We don’t talk about how his youngest brother was stopped from buying bullets for a gun he hadn’t fired in years
We don’t talk about the semi-colon on my cousin’s collarbone that she could only get because her mother found her in a pool of her own vomit.
We don’t talk about my little sister’s antidepressants
We don’t talk about my older sister’s anxiety and so I haven’t seen her in eight years
We don’t talk about how I was apparently the last chance for anyone in my family to be happy.
We don’t talk about how my family mistook quiet for happiness
We don’t talk about how at ten I learned to be quiet
Because my parents were stressed
Because my siblings were louder
Because I was supposed to be the happy one.
So we don’t talk about how my sister never saw me cry for twenty-one years
We don’t talk about how my depression far predates my breakup
We don’t talk about all the times my ex had to talk me off the ledge
We don’t talk about you Uncle Shawn
Because if you had been here maybe I would have learned how to live with depression
Rather than be consumed by it.
Pseudonym Poetry 