Lend her your hope;
she will label it as her own
and attach to you like velcro.
Don’t treat her like a thunderstorm;
she is so much more
than an electrical storm.
She is a tsunami wave
displacement of a water
body that she calls her own skin.
If she writes to you,
write back.
On the nights her wrists
have been opened by a blade,
know how the pain was
a strike of lightening hitting her
telephone wire spine.
When she comes to you with
stained cheeks of teardrops
and inflamed eyes,
open your eyes to her pain,
spread your arms;
open them and show how hugs
say more words than
you could ever speak
to let her know you care.
Do not try to fix her;
she has already tried to
stitch herself up night after night,
but the wounds have been
opened by the woman throwing
words toward her body.
Give her your love;
all she needs is a place to come
home without a worry of
Show her your scars, open them,
un-bandage what has been left in
your past with the dirt.
Tell her you know.
Tell her you know she is not fine
as she’s blinded by what she cannot define.
Tell her she is not the illness.
Lend her your arms;
her mother has bruised her with winter’s scorn.
Megan Tyler is a senior at Sturgeon Heights Collegiate in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She hopes to share her story with young girls around the world to kill the stigma on mental illness. She has been dealing with depression, social anxiety, and self injury for a couple of years now. In the midst of losing friends and becoming withdrawn from the crowd, she connected with her English teachers and turned to poetry. She hopes that her poetry will speak to those who are struggling with the darkness of depression and many other mental illnesses. Following her senior year, she hopes to publish a book of her poetry and to take on any opportunities that the world will throw at her.
Natalie Chyi is an 18-year-old from Hong Kong who has recently moved to London, where she will be studying law for the next three years. She started photography to capture moments and pretty things/people/light/scenes as she sees them, and that idea is what continues to fuel all of her work. Find more of her work on nataliechyi.com, Facebook, or Tumblr.