The Colors Have Run

This poem won $50 and 1st place in the Carol J. Hatchel Poetry Contest on April 29, 2014.

The emotions all run together inside me,
Like melted crayons, the colors blend
And make a perfect mess

Each emotion has its own color;
The happy memories, the sad tears, the anger,
Yellows, blues, reds.
Separately they're vivid and beautiful,
But fuse them together,
They become dingy and ugly.

That's how I feel without you in my life,
The emotions no longer have a force to separate them.
I tried to clean up the mess,
But the more I tried, the worse I made it.

I'm handing you the paint brush.
Here are all the supplies.
Make the dingy vivid again.
Make the ugly beautiful.

It's you who turns my canvas into art.
I'm waiting...

Having bipolar, I'm often very depressed. Sometimes the emotions are so intense, I just can't handle them. There have been certain people who have been capable of keeping those intense emotions at bay. They don't stay around long because those emotions begin to tire them out and I'm again forced to struggle alone with my emotions running together again.