when you get the letter,
you will hold it in your hands with a sense
of dread and excitement and
you will be in class and everyone else will be
talking, laughing; happiness in the air but you must be
breathing a different type of oxygen because you feel
everything but happy, you feel your heart, not in
your stomach but in your your feet which is why you can't
move; you are tied down to the chair, anchored by the
letter that is in front of you, on your desk and usually
your desk is a mess but this time it's clean and the only thing
that lies on top of it is a letter and you think to yourself
this is the worst time to read it
but you can't help yourself; this is the last thing
that keeps you bound to this hellhole called life
//
it starts with an i'm sorry and you're already crying
because this wasn't supposed to be that type of letter but
it is and somewhere along the lines of
by the time you read this i'll be dead you lose everything
and everybody's happy but you don't understand how they can be
but you're sick of it so you escape into the shadows and the
voices in your head are getting louder and you want to
turn it off but you can't so you take out your pen and
start to write a letter of your own
//
you title it goodbye and start it off the same way he did
with an i'm sorry and somewhere along the lines of
by the time you read this i'll be dead
you lose yourself and you know it's too late so you
immerse yourself in the words and you wonder if this was how
he felt, this sensation of drowning but still being able to breathe
and your hand shakes as you write down your
last words and then you grab the noose and put it around
your neck because sometimes to stay alive you
have to stop breathing and as you feel your life escaping
from you, draining slowly like a defeated army you mouth
the same words that killed you;
i'm sorry

(h.l.)