Depression

Although depression is a mental illness, its physical symptoms are not limited to the brain. In “Depression,” Sanchez uses imagery associated with other kinds of illnesses to symbolize the pain and severity of depression throughout the body.

The speaker’s eye sockets “sing” when they are bumped into, radiating physical pain. The speaker is sweaty, as if feverish under her blankets. She describes settling into wheelbarrows, communicating that she is physically unable to move around without assistance. Those wheelbarrows are “grotesque with wounds” (Line 12)—they have been physically changed by something painful and the wounds resulting from that destruction are visible. The speaker tells the reader where the symptoms are in her body, as if physically pointing to where it hurts. Her tears come from her forehead. She describes them as “sluggish in pulse” (Line 23) to communicate how much of a threat they pose to her life. Her soul, an intangible part of her, she describes as “spinal” (Line 4), giving it a central place in her anatomy. For the speaker, depression is not just a state of mind, but an all-consuming state of being.