I started off the year I turned 20 on a somewhat hopeful note. I had learned to let go of my demons, but yet they still haunted me. My depression was better, but it was still there. In February of 2018 (two months before my 20th birthday) I hit an all-time low. I was becoming more and more sick, and had fallen to the point where I could no longer work out or do any of my normal exercise.
If in one unfortunate moment
You took everything that I own
Everything you've given from heaven above
And everything that I've ever known

I must do it
On my own
But I have no energy
Motivation wasted on
My sick body
Still I must do it
On my own
I must accomplish
What I’ve begun
My mind is angry
Frustrated by lack of ability
While lack of motion is
Fraught with despair
Still I try to do it
On my own
Til I fall down to my broken knees
Shouting aloud and
Voicing my bitterness
While I ask why I can’t do it
On my own
And that Still Small Voice
Cries into my ear
That it is not given to me

His breaths are copper leaves ripped from a cedar.
She hears the gale in his chest rattle the blinds.
Before the bed can roll over to smother them,
She heaves it off, hearing the storm slam into the window.
She tastes the salt in the downpour, feels
wetness speckle the backs of her hands.
“Abraham’s tree has its foot in the water”—
at this staticky song of the weather report,
she laces her boots with typha, lifts him
in one thin arm, and cradles him over miles of
sharp puddles. They slice at her soles, but she splashes

Here's another of those weekly contests I've doing: I'll share the prompt and the story! 

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Guess what! You get to do a story based off of a painting… and here it is!

http://www.erasofelegance.com/arts/gallery/eleighton/eleighton5.jpg

Fever

Once a bully threw a rock at me, wrapped in just enough snow to disguise its true nature.  Now I feel the reverse of that pain, with my loose skin barely holding the burning embers of my body together. I swallow screams down my parched throat, knowing each tear on my cheek stabs my mother’s heart like a dagger.

Images of dancing flames overlay my vision, sending up wisps of phantom smoke. A voice calls my name.