I Can't Believe I Almost Lost You

Talking to you was stiff at first,
and we spoke with the slight frosty politeness and awkwardness
of two strangers or like ex's at a high school reunion.
Things defrosted quickly, though, and I managed to ask you
how you were. I am pretty sure that I was afraid of the answer,
but it was one that I wouldn't be able to hang up the phone before hearing.
You said, Okay, but of course your despair could not be masked.
I told you that you didn't have to pretend. If things weren't actually
okay, you wouldn't have to say they were, even if it seemed
so much safer to just smile close-lipped to hide your teeth
that were gritted and grinding together with the pain.
There was a hefty silence, and for a crazy moment, I was
frightened that you'd disappeared. There are scars all over,
you said, finally. And that was all but of course I understood
what you meant and also made myself sick by wishing I didn't.
You were just a boy, after all, and already so sick and tired of living.
I remember how, that awful evening before you decided to
reduce the world to nothing but a place you were desperate to abandon,
you had told me to forget I ever knew you, and your voice
was distant with something that I could not quite identify.
It may have been remorse or maybe fear. But I think it was disbelief.
And I'd wondered to myself - and I still wonder now, -
How could I ever do such a thing? Just like the steel edge
that had kissed a nearly fatal path down your wrists...
I was in too deep now