I Can’t Get Up

Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe

There is a gravity
that lives in my bones,
a heaviness that pulls me
into the mattress
like the earth itself
is tired of holding me upright.

I used to wake
for small miracles—
the light moving across the wall,
the kettle’s soft hiss,
the promise of a day
that might surprise me
into feeling alive again.

Now the light feels
like accusation,
the kettle like noise,
and the day like a door
I no longer remember
how to open.

I tell myself
to reach for the things
that once lifted me—
music, movement,
a warm mug in my hands,
the thrill of creation.
But from where I am,
even joy looks heavy,
like an object carved from stone
and placed too far
for me to reach without breaking.

People say
Just try. Just get up.
as if my body isn’t already
a battlefield of exhaustion,
as if wanting to rise
were the same thing
as standing.

But depression rewrites physics.
It turns every motion
into a mountain,
every breath
into a negotiation,
every hope
into something faint
and flickering
and mostly unbelievable.

I lie here,
flattened beneath the weight
of a world I can’t feel,
listening to the clock
tick its slow insistence
that time is passing
whether I move or not.

And I want to rise—
God, I want to—
but the wanting isn’t enough
to lift the gravity
that has claimed me.

So I close my eyes
and whisper the truest thing
I can manage today:

It’s not that I don’t care.
It’s not that I don’t try.
It’s just that right now—
I can’t get up.

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