a poem about the aftermath of suicide |
In my eyes, you're just pretending to be alive with eyes pulled tight and expressions tinged in grey. The footsteps that echo around the paper walls are dull in the fumes of heartache and silver. You said it was good to be alive before your brain had felt a thing, but with memories, like frozen glass, shattered on the floor; we wait for cement and shards of razorblades in our eyes. With blood leaching colour from the floor and the surrounds; the ink is only black after the walls are burning down. And helpful hands gave you both incentive and method to let your defences down - the semen stains the headrest and the blood is thicker now. The towers you build in this empty bathroom stall collapse in a mess of ivory and bone, with shattered tiles, like heart attacks, a mess of heaving brown. And then we build footpaths and roads through our arteries as we watch the sun fall down; philosophers one and all, but blind to emotion and the stinging grip of coal. Waking up to darkness under bland electric bulbs; the outcast angels in a modern era, singing through the haze, but cameras and computer screens show the truth beneath the flesh. Blue-screen effects and synthesised wings show support and counteract. With greying flesh and tattooed bones, you never really changed beyond sinking below the ground. In my eyes, you were always just pretending to be alive. |