TO KILL YOURSELF

Suicide 101

Photo by Rubidium Beach on Unsplash

Before you jump,

how many times did you hear Lucifer fall from heaven, inventing the first belt of lightning that separated good from evil? Isn’t that storied descent familiar with yours now?

Do you seize your breath because you saw the bald man walk with an empty limp and terrifying wrinkles on his face, so you feared that this would soon be your fate?

Have you by your hand escaped your destiny because the choir in your church sing abysmally and you are in a haste to rock voices with the celestials above?

Have you betrayed yourself for nothing because the girl that swore by her last name that you were her body, and she was your soul, yielded her life to another?

Is this nauseous despair wrapping your throat because you have sucked up to a hundred no’s and don't have the guts for the 101st?

Is the wobbling of your gait because heaven grows farther by day even though your grave is just one falter away?

Do you shudder in the shower from the cold zipping through your spine or from all the hunger you seem to never have enough for?

Is this scalding anger smoldering through your ventricles because you have a genetically bad heart or your sacrifice for two decades is repeatedly spat on like Cain's?

Have you failed to sleep before a new day because your spirit no longer can seduce Morpheus or is it so because you have sunk yourself with burdens that are not yours to bear?

Do these goosebumps trace your skin because they love your melanin, or they are the vestiges of your attempted self-harm every dawn before the rest of the world awakes?

Do you refuse to unlock your tongue in praise to Elohim because you have locked lips with Jezebel's demons the night before?

Did you fail to ask the boy shopping with a cart larger than his muscles why he chose to crumple faith into a dozen wraps of Nescafe because you were so busy comparing your fate to his?

Do you degrade at a speed faster than your mother's love can save you? And this is why you insist that your father is everything wrong with your world?

Are these why? Are these why! ARE! THESE! WHY! YOU CONSIDER TAKING YOUR LIFE!?

Of what use is a lamb if not sacrifice? This may be so, but what lamb takes a knife to its own throat? Even cattle recognize that what isn't yours to give, isn't yours to take.

While in life, you have betrayed yourself for nothing, there is no compunction in the metallic darkness of the grave; should you betray yourself again in death. Sinking man, put down your blade and pills; your life is not yours to take.