Suicide; society tells me it’s a ***** word
Blackens your tongue and brands you an
Outsider to your beloved community;
Tarnishes your dazzling reputation and
Takes a beautiful, cherished, short-lived, soul.
But why did society not raise me like the
Painstakingly adored roses amongst
Its garden of thorns; why can’t I be
That happy girl. Why have I been
Doused in fertiliser, a wretched ****
Amongst a garden of beauty, growing
Faster than lightning, roots of gnarly
Agony and shoots of grey, blurred hatred for
Every atom of my being- screams for the ****
Killer to embrace me by the neck, apply a-
Seductive dose of love-dripping pressure
And set this crow free; unchain my bruised wings
And I promise I will leave you be, I will never
Bring misery or misfortune again.
But suicide; is a ***** word, a cheek
Burning, soul smouldering, darkening
Shadow on the pretty plastic cases over our,
Mechanical hearts. Not for the great pain of
Losing a barely, blossomed flower- took one
Heavy dose of white-pain sunlight and
Wilted away into the black, bottomless soil.
Not for the gaping loss of a singular
Fertile crop in an endless year of draught and
Famine. Suicide, is not a tear-wrenching,
Palm-sweating word for the, heavy and huge hole
It leaves in society’s newly plastered walls-
But it is an unspeakable word for the pure
Shame. The surly shadow of unspeakable
Shame that it leaves like a, stain of red wine
On the pretty, sensible woman’s white blouse
Like a ****** tattoo on the arm of an infant.
We do not grieve their death. We grieve our pride,
Our bruised and bleeding pride at not preventing
The stench of failure as a race of people, in the death
Of one melancholy drowned person, we practically
Placed the boulders in their pockets and said drown.
And I am holding my breath; tight roping this
Misery that smothers me at sunrise, see I am
Permitted a feigned slumber of peace in the dead
Hours of night yet I awake to the,
Asphyxiation of pain, eyes bulging in terror of
What awaits me when I run out of time, oxygen fast-
Fading and the orange, pink of dawn lights a
Fire in the honey pools of my eyes- small, mocking fires
That sneer at my desperation to cease, at my plea for peace-
Tight, burning stabs that tingle in my throat and
I’m running low on air, on time, almost there-
Deliria, ecstasy, glee dripping from my limbs
And- the noose I fabricated in my non-
Functioning, disabled mind slips away, faster
Than I can catch it and refasten, and I am, cold
In my bedsheets once more. Welcomed again,
To the now bellowing daylight of, depression
Another flightless, fruitless day of carefully,
Hand-stitched smiles and sinfully pre-tuned
Laughter. The world tells me to stand on the
Pinnacle of misery with one broken leg and
If I dare fall, I am a branded shame on the surface
Of the earth, I am the centre of all failure in the
Universe so I, valiantly ride into no-mans-land,
A knight in shining armour except, I have no steel
And no bronze to, protect my heart from the cannon fire
Of pain, I have no shield to shelter me from the
Poison gas of self-hatred. But I am perfectly okay being
Defenceless in the brazen gunfire; I am still breathing,
The titanium arrows of misery protruding neatly from
My mangled limbs and my broken heart.
And that word, sombre and dark as ever
Flashes once in my head and I swat it away with
Deep-rooted disgust, and a dire hunger for such a desire.
Suicide;
Society tells me it’s a ***** word.
Possibly the first time i've ever written explicitly about this particular, raw and deeply personal topic.I always seem to skim stones and step over pebbles when integrating this into my poetry. But at 5:12am today I said, **** it, the world needs to hear this.
