and the pain unfurls on the ink page like a shuddering scream, a flower so small you can see it only on the tip of a finger held to the sky as if to view a drop of dew. and in the end it grows to such proportions that it begins to stab into the side and just a bit under, and pulls from the very depths of one's chest what once may have been living. and it begins to ache there, see; for this pain here now can only be that which suffocates and feeds on need, on greed, on every smallest insecurity. it binds at the slightest touch of the wind, on the faintest of breaths, and feels love for the first time in the beating of another heart. and it is at this point that the pain which had bloomed so sluggishly, so tenderly, can stand on its own and plunge into its own depths.

and so it is like this that one may wish, perhaps, to end a life of such suffering.