Suicide Letters Turned Breakable Excuses.

Like any good daughter, I move my body forward.
A sacrifice on the table of family gratitude and weep when
I watch them fade like mist on a summer’s lake.
I pull my shrunken body up, drowning in a river
overlapping with grace and drag it
-by the hair-
over the sands to start the effort
of fixation.
I hold the razor again to broken skin, skin, red as the
passion that made me, and slice - again-
in the way I’ve gotten so used to doing.
I watch the ribbons flow.
1
2
3

4

Like any good niece I smile as best as such
frail skin can hold blood vessels together.
My eyes lit with tears in the hope
to be mistaken for wanting.
I hide the cuts under thick woollen sleeves
and hold myself warm- hold myself insignificant-
In that same way tragic beauties smile red folded
lips,
white dresses like torn lily petals ripped
violently from the stem.
I nod my head, Smile for pictures.
Try not to walk in the road the time the next car
comes, its wheels singing hymns of the dead whose
eyes like mine, stare up at a bloodshot sky.
5
6
7
8
Like a defiant human, ill from self-infliction,
I punch the shards of
each smiling attempt and screech like a robin
who’s shocked at forgetting how to fly.
Forget. Forgetting. I want to be forgotten.
I move forward towards a light, a coffin sized
escape so reachable it burns in the places
iced over from smouldering doubt.
Please. Stay.
Dragged back, kicking, screaming.
No! Please. I don’t want to…
9
10
I am so Sorry.
11
12

The razors are clean despite my dirtying attempts.
The smiles broken, frail, poor masks hiding eyes
sliced open from sorry.
I face it. My cathedral, ribbon swollen, bloodied
bliss like an Arabian sky, burning like a sun
on yet more unbearable fire.

Like any good daughter- I hide the evidence.
I think: I love my family much.