There’s an Old, Rusted Key

Depression serves you the roughest nights of your life on an icy plate. When you’re feeling the worst you’ve ever felt and can’t muster an appetite, Depression puts a knife in your shaking hands and whispers “It’s okay. It’ll all be over soon.” I wrote this on one of those nights. And yes, the knife in this analogy is still a knife– stolen and hidden away under a pillow, only to be revealed once everyone else in the house has gone to sleep.

Through a stream of tears, I held the paring knife less than a half-inch from my chest, ready to plunge it through my vital organs. Some otherworldly force suddenly urged me to relax the blade, pulling it away from my chest and sitting on my bed in silence and heartbreak. I opened my “Notes” app on my phone and wrote this from start to finish in the next hour. Every single word of “There’s an Old, Rusted Key” is completely unadapted and unchanged from when I closed my Notes app on that night and wound down to sleep.

That boy, no matter how dire things were in his life, lived to tell the tale. He now has the freedom to read that poem as many times as he wishes and to remember the hardest moments. He pushes harder everyday as an homage to his past iterations that navigated the toughest storms. Most importantly, he’s bought himself enough time to write many more poems and to discover nights filled with contentment and free of pain.