[A/N: I'm working towards gathering three of my best poems for a large poetry contest. This, though my longest piece, I believe is also my strongest. Please help me better improve myself and get closer to publication and money!]
The Weight of Suicide
The weight of life lies heavy on her shoulders.
The body, the breath,
the very beat that keeps her living
are the chains of her soul.
This act of life, this perpetual breathing!
It is at first too much,
then too worthless, to pursue.
It’s easier to make a final effort
so as to rend all apart.
However, even the apathy which leads her on
is too strong to allow this,
or the moment has passed, restrained for now.
All things are still seen through
the arduous sloth of time:
I was, I am, I will continue to be
but time also marks if she will end
and, if, when? When will the thoughts again soak
the once cheerful mind and leave it to drown?
She can feel the passage of time
as well as she can feel time’s tension grow in her chest:
she cannot go on, there is nothing—
save this tension to stop, to die,
to never have lived.
Each breath (how it once was precious)
takes so much energy.
Still – the apathy has too much weight.
If she were to find a way, reduce apathy
to a frightened child and take a final action,
what weight would I feel?
There is, first, the weight never felt:
a hand in hand, a hug, a sob,
the weight of sleep after a long night awake,
listening to heavy music and whispering.
The addition of the weight of hello
and the weight of the experience
results in the total weight of goodbyes.
This weight, however, is a lighter one
for we would both know it is not the last farewell.
And what never felt?
The smooth press of hands compared,
for mine are a child’s and hers,
I would assume, resourcefully long;
the weight of words, or silence between us,
and the blissful burden on our hearts.
Love – it is so heavy!
Then there is the weight of what follows;
not hers, but mine and all others.
Tears weigh nothing upon the cheek,
an angel’s feather at most,
but inside the eye and waiting—
oh, how I could not bear to hold such a weight!
Smiles are heaviest when false
and their weight, perhaps,
would prove to be the worst.
Her weight (all ropes severed)
would become my own,
like an animal who burrows between
my chest to make home of my heart
and feast of my misery.
With a weight such as that,
perhaps I, too, would strive through my apathy
to cut strings and be most inactive.
It is not so.
No, the desired weight was not presented
and no loss has taken place.
Still time is heavy, still darkness lurks,
though lulled or changed for a different kind.
The weight not removed, nor successful;
she still carries it and it still lies on her.
That soul, that lock, that key
which keeps her from breathing a final breath -
perhaps it is mine to hold?
Perhaps there are other things,
like love, which weigh heavy
in the opposite direction.
Does my love not have weight?
Certainly it does. I must hope, then,
all weight being considered upon the scale,
that love weighs more than earthly hell.
