It’s not that I meant for it to happen.
Yet even as my broken mind is forming these thoughts it feels like the biggest lie
I’ve ever told.
I meant it.
Every cut deliberate.
Every action serving its purpose.
I look down at the mess I have created, the mess that
                                                            ­           I am.
My body crumples and the action does not feel like my own.
Truth lies in the blood on my hands.
                                                          ­             Red.
Red streaking the map of my skin, the colors drip and blur.
                                                                ­       North America
takes shape on the tile by my knee. And I concentrate on it.
I see the secrets of the universe written in streams.
                                                        ­               Red streams.
                                                                ­       Red, like love.

Do I know love? I ask.
I never will.
But it’s alright because I have seen every constellation on the
                                                                ­  bathroom floor.
A night sky of red and white and it is more
                                                                  Beautiful
than anything I have ever seen. I am falling into the sky and
I am not myself. Not somebody else.
Just the
             blood falling,
                         slipping silently
                             down the drain.

A dog barks somewhere outside and I feel every wave of noise.
I am inside, wrapped in a cocoon of sound waves.
I am noise.
              I am everything
                        and nothing
                                      and I am free.
Eyes click open. One, two. See Blood.
                                                          ­          Holes.
Holes in my wrists. Holes in everything I have ever known. Holes in reality.
Every pump of my heart pumps my
                                                                ­    spirit into freedom.
Away from the cage of my body.

                                                           ­          Blink, eyes.
                                                                ­     Pump, heart.
                                                                ­     Blood.
                                                                     Pump, free.

I can feel my spirit slipping out.
I have to close my eyes. They can’t come with me.
                                                                ­        No place for eyes where I am going.

Eyelids flutter, they pick out the smudge that was
                                                                ­         North America,
bled into an apple. Bleeding apple. I have tasted the forbidden fruit.
Now I have the knowledge, now I am free.
                                                           ­               I wonder, aren’t all stories the same?
I have had what is forbidden and there is no return.
But it doesn’t matter; not really, because I can see the night sky and
every secret it’s ever held.
And I want to tell you.
I want to tell you the meaning
                                                                ­       of life,
                                                                ­       and of death,
                                                                ­       and of freedom,

but my spirit is already too far from my mouth.
Pumped out onto the tile.
                                                                ­       Free.

My eyes close and I am no longer there.


                                                        ­               Free.