Chopping Onions- Katy Garnham Year One

Hi, here's my poem. It performs better than on page, in my opinion.

Chopping Onions

Depression,
makes every emotion like chopping an onion
You’re alone in the kitchen
the vapour at first stings a little in your nose
makes you sniffle
Then you feel it seep through your sinuses
that fucking onion blooms
behind your irises and then
and then
and then you’re just stood

Alone in the kitchen with a knife
and you’re sobbing
and it’s tempting to
hack away just trying to get through,
bleary eyed

(Like the headlights from the car
speeding through the intersection
that hasn’t seen you yet
the rain makes a cloak
and your arms outstretch
the impact sends you flying
only five feet
not enough
struggle to stand
take his hand,
pull him to the ground as you run around
hop in the warm seat
now you feel the heat)

blinking it all away
until you look like the eye of a speed camera
(the shutter seizures
chasing that car that shoots
off the verge into the sky,
Ninety miles an hour too fast over thirty
soaring over the cliff into the forest below
crash lands into the horizon,
wrapped around a tree
make a nest with birds
as you hang like a marionette
from your seatbelt)

(Or you look like your mother
at your funeral
she can’t bear to look
walks around the parlour with her eyes closed
doesn’t even wake at your wake
a constant flow down her cheeks
as she walks around blind
her tense lids twitch with every
patter of dirt that lands on you
now six feet under and she
still can’t see)

And eventually you just keep going
with your eyes squeezed shut
as tight as you can
Panic panic panic
Is that the onion or your thumb?

the tears from an onion mean nothing
you’re just reacting to an irritant.