yellow veil
By: Paulette Hampton
Years ago, when I hobbled through this world unmedicated,
I was at constant odds with my thoughts, daring me to do and say things I could never take back.
I quieted them most of the time with sacrificial compulsions until “it felt right.”
Finally, when my weary brain couldn’t take anymore, a gauzy yellow veil
slipped between my eyes and the rest of the world,
staining life like the discoloration of an old photo,
a casualty of the acid I’m made of.
Yellow was the color of derealization,
of my anxiety in full bloom; its pollen clinging to my existence.
Every day became too much, and I hid from life’s scorching rays,
seeking dark quiet places where my mind could be cooled by Maastricht Blue dreams.
There I stayed until medication lifted my coarse saffron shroud,
revealing reality’s grounding spectrum.
Paulette Hampton holds a Masters in Reading Education. She is the author of the YA paranormal novel Of the Lilin and memoir When Life was Yellow: A Memoir of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Her poems have appeared in Immortal Hymns Rewritten Realms, Secret Attic, and elsewhere. She lives with her husband and two cats in North Carolina. https://paulettehampton42.wixsite.com/websitex | website