suicidal thoughts are kind of like
having a really deep cough.
they’re the tingling sensation on
the bottom of your lungs each time you
start to inhale and if you try to breathe too deeply
they take over, they double you over,
filling up your lungs like water, sloshing,
and suddenly you’re drowning
as you fix your red lipstick.
you’re dressed for the **** and your
hit list stares you down through the mirror every day.
waste of space waste of time waste of money waste of good lines,
a ‘wanted’ ad that specifies ‘rather dead than alive’
because it’s less personal for it to be ****** than to call it suicide.
how sad is it that you peaked in middle school?
that the height of your social and emotional career was
the seventh grade, before all your friends
skipped town in eighth and then
freshman year you weren’t even an ex-friend but
manipulative and they labelled you
‘abusive.’ you find yourself having a
coughing fit every time you remember it,
watery lungs patted dry with paper towels
because yeah maybe you’re all friends again and
maybe they’ve apologized but do they really mean it,
or are you being a victim blamer,
you emotional abuser?
when you wake up at three in the morning
because the creatures in your nightmares are just barely
scarier than the skeletons in your closet,
think about everything you’ve ever done
in the past three years and manipulate it.
give yourself panic attacks over conversations
that have never happened,
riddle yourself with anxiety over what never was,
overexpose the photographs of your darkest memories
until they’re nothing but another lead weight in your stomach.
make yourself sick.
wake up with a throat sore from your
swallowed down screams
wake up with a tingle underneath your lungs
because you know that you’ll never be able to properly breathe,
that you’ll never get a full breath of air without that cough
swelling up and leaving you gasping