White knuckling it

 


Let me try to explain.

He showed me how he planned to do it.  I didn't get help.
They found him, drained of blood, leaning against our favourite tree.

She jumped from the 8th storey, the pavement driving her legs into a brokenhearted chest.
They say it took her a week to die.  I wouldn't know.  I'd already left town.

His blistered heart hit him like a train, over and over.  I breathed for him, for a while.
For a short while.  Then I stopped.  It had been our first and last kiss.

She tore at my chest, wanting me to save her.  I said breathe, or don't, it's okay.
But she kept breathing.  So I gave her forget-me-nots, and ended her with morphine.
...

Variously they've called it ptsd,
panic attack, grief.
All I know is,
I'm white knuckling it again today.
Standing here gripping this bench,
as their deaths rush over me
to blame and choke.
They'll swarm me in a steelcold rush,
drop me to my knees,
punching each breath from me
in metronomed atonement.
And I'll hear, again,
that godawful voice,
not recognisable as my own.
Sounds of protest
from this cancerous throat,
refusing to confess.

Every time feels like I'm dying.
But then, that seems right, somehow.
For my sins, my one death could never have been enough.