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Poetry

THE AGE OF DEPRESSION

John Grey


How depressed I was at sixteen.
I let things happen to me,
then wrote down where they hurt the most.

Misery I could always count on.
It was my companion.
Unlike boys my own age,
it encouraged me to take up a pen and write.

I was a showplace for sickness and dejection.
I showed no signs of ending my life
but I was well versed in suicide’s vocabulary.

I was too young to drink
and too old to despise the opposite sex.
My sports came up short
so I was reduced to doing well in academics.

And I wrote…poetry…
on scraps of paper.
Camouflage was unnecessary.
Prying eyes never bothered.

At eighteen,
I started going to readings.

How dourly they shared their work.
How wretched were their lines.

I was surprised to discover
that there was a lot of me going around.

About the Author

John Grey is an Australian poet and US resident who has been published in New World Writing, City Brink, and Tenth Muse. His latest books, Subject Matters, Between Two Fires, and Covert are available through Amazon. His work will soon be published in The Broken Plate, Amazing Stories Magazine, and River and South Review.

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