The longer you've been gone the more I forget what your face looked like, I thought it'd be etched into my vision forever.
I've almost forgotten what your voice sounded like,
how your lips curved around my name.
I almost feel guilty for forgetting,
as if it means that I never cared enough.
Almost like the guilt I have for having felt too self important to reply to your messages,
as if you being so far away was an excuse for emotional distance,
almost like the distance of our physical bodies paralleled with the distance I wanted to keep from you with vulnerability.
Maybe that's why when you first talked about suicide,
I didn't try hard enough to keep you safe.
I didn't want to be so close to someone that I be the thing that keeps them alive.
But I still tried,
tried to make sure you were okay.
That was when you promised me that you would never hurt yourself, that you were just stressed.
Who knew that five months later you'd be dead by your own hand.
I wonder what your thoughts were as you slid the blade along your wrist. He says it was an accident.
That you were just trying to relieve a little bit of pain.
But I imagine you sitting there,
with this thing that's almost as sharp as the pain you felt,
and I know,
I know that the extra pressure you used was intentional.
I know you.
I know the pain you felt.
I was there.
And sometimes I feel guilt for being the survivor.
As if one of us had to die.
I think sometimes about what it would be like to take your place,
to be nothing.
But as I sit here and ponder what could have been,
I know that I'm glad to be the one alive.
Because if the roles were switched,
you might have to feel the pain I feel now,
and this gut wrenching sting that's arising in my stomach.
Maybe if the roles were switched,
neither of us would have made it.
Because maybe you wouldn't have gotten the help that I have now.
And while it hurts that you're gone,
I know that you'd be proud of me now.
Because now I am alive,
like I never was before.
I'm just sorry it took your death to bring me into hell
so I could climb back up to life again.
In loving memory of Aleigha Gutierrez.