LatinosUSA

Some mornings arrive like closed curtains—
light pressing at the edges
but never quite entering.

I wake beneath a ceiling
that feels miles above me,
as if gravity has thickened in the night,
and every breath must be pulled
through water.

Depression is not always a storm.
Sometimes it is a quiet room
where the clock ticks loudly,
and even hope
is afraid to speak.

I have learned its dialect:
the way it turns mirrors into critics,
turns memories into evidence,
turns tomorrow into a locked door
with no visible handle.

It tells me I am a shadow
cast by brighter lives.
It measures my worth
with a ruler made of silence.

And yet—
there are small rebellions.

I swing my feet to the floor.
I open the curtains
even when the light feels undeserved.
I answer one message.
I drink one glass of water.
I stay.

Some days, staying
is the loudest victory.

There are cracks in this heaviness—
a laugh that surprises me,
a song drifting through a window,
the stubborn bloom of a weed
splitting the sidewalk.

I am not cured by these things.
But I am reminded
that I am still here,
and here is not nothing.

Depression walks beside me,
sometimes ahead,
sometimes whispering behind my ribs.
But it does not carry my name.
It is a weather,
not the sky.

And though the nights are long
and the weight returns
like a tide that knows my address,
I am learning the shape of endurance—
the art of breathing
through dark water
until the surface breaks.

If I cannot be bright,
I will be persistent.
If I cannot be joyful,
I will be gentle.

And in the smallest, quietest way,
I will keep choosing
to live.