Are we humans the only animals who end our lives
before it’s time to go? Squirrels die from their own
stupidity, but even they get help from the pavement
we pour to roar our cars along what used to be their
homes. And our house cats are fat and lazy only
because they are ours. But humans, we say enough
with this life. I’ll have no more flutter and flurry
of wings at the neighbor’s feeder to remind me I
am alone. I remember despair. I remember sitting
on another porch than this one, no beloved upstairs
slumbering in the cool dark of our shuttered room,
believing the world would not miss me, nor me this
world. I did not want to live but, too, I did not want
to die, just to sleep for a long lovely while until I had
courage to look around and find a reason to stay.
I don’t recall what happened next, the when or why.
Was it like waking from a faint, the swirling in my head
spilling out onto the cold tile floor until I touched again
the edges of the world that held me, hard and fixed but
mine? I went on. I go on. It is what we do, we creatures
with our blood and organs, bone and skin that touches
every grand and grievous piece of all which is not us,
but which we are a part of. This life mysteriously ours.
What is this thing called consciousness, called soul?
Why do we sometimes, some of us, cling tenaciously
to the bodies that house it, while others fling it from us
as if we are not also matter making up this world?
My friend, I have no answers, I only know you mattered
and it matters to the world that you are gone.