Have you ever wondered who will come try to save you from killing yourself?
Or, furthermore, who will be the person to hear your dying words?
Or, furthermore, who will read your suicide note?
Or, furthermore, who will show up to your funeral with a tear in their eye once you've gone?
Have you ever wondered who truly cares about you enough to do all these things?

Have you ever wondered who is going to cry when they find out you're dead
and who is going to be just fine?
Have you ever wondered what will become of the ones you love once you've moved on?
Will they suffer in turmoil and angst,
Or will they live on as if you never left
or possibly, as if you never even came?
What about once they find out how you died? Will they suffer then?

What if your death causes another death?
What if the person you thought your whole life would never love you back
was thinking the same about you?
What if you being gone is too much to bear?
How would you feel if you knew you dying would **** someone else?
Would you still do it without any regrets?

What about now?
If you had all this information stored up in your pocket,
would it be enough to throw away the razor?
Drop the knife?
Unload the gun?
Take the noose off the ceiling fan?
Back away from the cliff?
Could you survive simply because you understood how much people really care about you?
Or would it not be enough?

It's unfortunate that we don't learn how much we are loved until after we are too dead to know.

{alaska}

At first, I felt like an invader. A trespasser in these spirits’ home.
The stillness swirled around me, as if it were trying to dizzy me away.
The tombstones didn’t want me there. I was abhorrent.

But then, I felt a kindling inside of me.
And as I sat in solitude under the withered old tree between the graves at 2am,
I couldn’t help but feel like the tombstones were my friends.
I couldn’t help but feel like a tombstone myself.

All I was was a symbol for what I had once been, a memory of who I once was.
What was inside of me, though, was just ashes of the past.
Sometimes people visited, dropping off a flower of hope or love or anguish,
But once that flower died, I was dead.

I started to cry.
I cried for these people, these new friends of mine.
I cried for their pasts.
I cried for my own.

And in that moment, I realized,
I was meant to be a tombstone.
People were meant to visit my grave. People were meant to cry for me.
I wasn’t meant to have a happy life. I was meant to have a memorable death.
I was meant to transform into a tombstone, for the world to visit and cry for.

And that was okay with me.

{alaska}

He is everything I remember
and everything I had once tried to forget
rumbling engine and tires on the wet street.
I am shoes in the grass, kicking leaves
walking through cold drizzle and gasping wind, dark sky on a moonless night.

He is the blue pickup truck with the window down
his face lit by a cigarette drag,
something I’ve seen a thousand times before
handsome face warmed by the orange glow.
I settle into my spot beside him as stagnant cigarette film settles on me
silently clinging to my clothes and swirling into my hair.

Our fingers brush as he hands me that glass pipe
smoke wisps twirl out of our lips and mingle together
rushing out of the doors into the night sky as we walk together under it,
now we’re inside and he is the touch I’ve been anticipating.

The last thing I see is brown eyes and I feel
his kiss bristling my face, consuming me like we will never experience this again.
He is blonde hair and a brown beard, he is strong, he is tall. He is everything I wanted.

I am satisfied, carefree, if only for a moment.
Studying the lines of his face, how they have changed, the startling
way he is his grandfather’s face, showing through those dark eyes.
When he leaves, he is a kiss that dissipates
with the sound of the engine turning down the block.

I am alone. The mirror displays a flushed, smiling face
with tones of pink and peach, silently studying the details.
I see my mother and grandmother in my own reflection
I see their age making way down my skin.
Marbled green eyes, dark in color,
mine yellow flecked.
my mother’s mixed aqua.
my grandmother’s deep green.

My pulse rushes with the realization that it goes so fast
My eyes fill with tears as I imagine looking into the eyes my own children and theirs
I picture those deep green tones reminding me of generations past
I breathe in realizing what I’ve seen and what I feel I need.
I am the details and complexity of life, one of many heirs.                                           {360 words}

I wanted to love every space
and every missing piece -
I wanted to see.

From the moment your
warm hands held mine
I felt safe, and I knew
this would be more.

I needed to know every
wonderful secret
every dark thought,
I wanted to know you.

To stick my fingers in
the little gaps of your
soul, I wanted to feel
everything you felt.

I wanted you to feel whole.

I desire to know every
dark nightmare,
the smell of blood
still thick in your mind.

Every dream and
every regret
I wanted to feel it all.

But-
I hesitate.

I need you to know
the love I've felt
and hidden,
for your sake.

I wanted to gently mend
every flaw you saw
in yourself, I wanted
to make life beautiful.

To let you in?
I wanted to try. I wanted to feel.

I wanted to be there to share
when the demons come breathing
down your neck and every sick
thought stalks your head.

I wanted you there when the
tears wouldn't stop
or couldn't start and
I wanted to catch all of yours.

But you feel I've done wrong.
Pain that ripped through my core
and begged me to scream out
every truth I've concealed-
terrified because my love is so deep
yet I never bothered to reveal.

I wanted to tell you
but the words are so heavy and
emotions so real.
Someday I'll tell you.

War in my mind as real
as the war you have seen.
Silence leaves me wondering
if you would fight for me.

I would fight.
I will fight.
I will fight for your love
until I can't fight any more.

I fell in love with you
that was my first mistake.

Empathy that shook my core
I wanted to feel all you felt.
I wanted you to feel what I felt.
(Because I knew you felt it, too.)

I wanted to give myself
until there was nothing left.
I wanted you to love me.

Winds whipping certainties into,
Tiny hurricanes,
Spinning around every drop of thought she
Disowns, discounts.
This turmoil, the only survival she's ever known,
Keeps her in the air, suspended, ambiguous, beautiful or terrifying?
So she shakes and cries in fear,
Of the day she stops spinning.

Surrounded by biting cold fronts,
Pushed around by sparks of warm relief,
She's a hot mess, sticky, humid, and alive with electric charge.

Her pleas bellowed into thunder,
Static shock breaking her voice,
Into something massively engulfing.
The kind of sound that makes a grown man feel small.

You can feel her coming from miles away.
She knows the weight of her presence better than anyone.
So lonely and heavy is her grief,
So bright and menacing is her capability.

Ironically, just the right balance of
Hot,  
           And cold,
                                 Positivity,
                                                     And negativity,
Swiftly reacting, turning, changing her,
Into this rain ridden,
Angst swollen,
Ferociously complex storm system,
Stealing the heat she can,
Clinging to any energy she once drew on.
Never releasing her festerings.
Standing above a world she cannot touch,
Without destroying.