Not Falling, But Not Rising Poem by Annie Horrigan

Falling.
No, not falling
Sinking,
Sinking into an ocean,
Except thicker.
Sinking into quicksand,
Except deeper.
Sinking into blackness.

Yes, sinking.
But not far enough,
Never far enough,
To be numb,
To not care,
Or feel.

Sinking,
Sinking through the darkness,
The pain grows.
Not a sharp pain,
But still a pain.
It's inside,
That I know,
But there's no telling where.

Something between throbbing;
Between stabbing;
Between burning;
Between festering.
Or maybe all of them together.
Like old friends,
They gather;
They reunite;
Embracing so closely,
You can't separate them.
The sinking,
It helps the friends
Become so close.

Sinking,
When characters in books sink.
They are saved.
A friend,
Even a stranger,
Will see,
And pull them up.
But here,
There are friends,
There are strangers,
But there's no saving,
No one to pull me up.

Sinking,
It's not like falling.
Falling is fast;
The end comes quickly.
Sinking is slow,
You adapt to it.
Reaching the lowest point,
As far as you've ever gone.
It's not "rock bottom".
There's no rock,
And certainly never a bottom.
Sinking is bottomless.

Sinking,
I'm sinking again.
The darkness,
It isn't coming,
It's been here the whole time.
The friends,
They're running to meet each other,
And there's no one here;
No one to pull me out.
Or maybe they're trying,
But I was so naive.
No one can pull me out.
I never got close enough to the surface.

Sinking,
Some people have bottomless sinkholes,
Some people have puddles.
Those lucky people.

Sinking,
In blackness,
Monotonous black.
And black goes so nicely with red.

Sinking,
Already farther than I thought.
But not nearly far enough.
That's the real tragedy;
That I can still see the light,
Shining on the surface.
But I can't do a thing about it.
The light is disappearing,
Because it's called sinking.
Not rising.