Brittany Allen's untitled poem describes what it feels like to be overtaken by depression, or something very close to it. The speaker begins with the idea of "the weight of the world" and makes it literal: the dark presses on her, gets into her lungs, and leaves her breathless, sleepless and empty. She says she has fought it for years, and sometimes even let it in, but this time she feels she has no say.
The most unsettling part is the loss of identity. The "demons" have taken her over so completely that they feel like home, and she can't say who she is without them. People look at her, and she doesn't know who they see.
The closing image of mud filling her mind, thick and blurring her sight, captures the feeling of sinking with no way out. The mood is bleak, exhausted and claustrophobic, and the poem offers no comfort at the end, only the dark's "embrace of nothing."