If I Commit Suicide

Uncut Poetry

If I commit suicide, it will be on a happy day. I would wrap the day as efficiently as I would wrap my life. Instructions clear, bank accounts safe, investments earmarked. I would make your favourite dish (stuffed aubergine with sun dried tomatoes), serve it with garlic bread, call in your favourite ice cream (Jamoca Almond Fudge) and have a glass of chianti on the side, as you look on in wonder. I would watch you with pleasure as the sun sets and fills you with its glow. In the end, I would have attempted to give you what neither you nor I could give each other - care. Oh, I am not fussing the good things, which we performed with discipline - we would always end our days with our duty to each other completed to perfection. But we would also be - polite but insidious, thoughtful but sarcastic: we would hollow each other, tired of figuring out each other’s metaphors. For we had become proficient in knowing what hurt both of us, as we talked of making sense and losing our minds. We always thought we would find love right in front of each other, preordained, either as a beginning or as a finality, but instead we found storms brewing in living rooms and broken teacups in the backyards. What is it about ordinary lives that it’s intimations of helplessness are far more severe than the defeat of a cherished dream? Thought by thought, remark by remark, word by word, we were chipped, alienated, distanced. Until we were frightened of ourselves, doubtful of our very place in the universe, and felt undeserving of the sheltering skies or the unquestioning beauty of the world. There’s so much I will miss. Stories of others where they’d found the meaning which had always eluded me, empty chairs left behind after the music was over and we overflowed, the slant of flower-laden boughs as they smiled and encroached into my walk, the careless spread of broken blossoms lying as inspiration, the warm glow of evenings without chatter or insistences. But then it would all be overlaid with the intonations of familiar voices as they slowly entangled me as aural nooses. That’s when I knew it was time. It would be appropriate that I would leave so serenely, as my entire life has been an exercise in evolving quietly in the backyards of my own despair, so much so that I would bleed and I myself would not know. Who says suicide is drama where the protagonist doesn’t know the end? I know. I know you will break, you will be inconsolable - but not irreparable. You are strong and practical. And you will find solace in my note which would unequivocally say it was not your fault. That it was my choice, my choice alone. You will be massively inconvenienced but not irreconcilably. You will regret my guts to give in fatally and finally to my anguish - after all, we had our own happy metre to figure out who made the other more melancholic. I will probably play Maksim’s Hana’s Eyes, as I would lie back and let my life leave me behind as a shell without any sense of presence. I was always a murmur, I will leave as a whisper. I hope I will finally come home to me. If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on death and its redemptions -

• When Breath Becomes Air
• The Things We Become When We Leave
• What Do I Leave Behind

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The following music was used for this media project:
Music: Heart Love by MusicLFiles
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/9259-heart-love
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Music: Sunset at Glengorm by Kevin MacLeod
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/4437-sunset-at-glengorm
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license