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Your Suicide

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attempt never quite left us.

There are days, there are nights

when it wears nothing but insides.

That skin is a testament my eyes

keep confessing.

How many times I've wanted to be done

with it, to take the gaze and, with

comprehension, kiss each lid

towards its rest.

This is not to discount vengeance,

getting back, the wrathful tongue.

Never see you again.

That was particularly blasphemous

for you were going to marry

& I couldn't congratulate,

thinking how one month before

you were the first, you were the only,

though of course we were young

& no one understood

the country never before visited

of infatuation & hate.

 

Too late, this returning

& still in the dark about methods.

Memory. Ignorance.

Who's the more knowing ghost

with a picture of your death

superimposed on my face?

 

Still, many exist so,

with simply something that happened,

& it's over, the long ago, the rehearsal

for the other route

we both tried.

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Stephen Mead © 2022