Myth: There is a typical profile for a person who may attempt suicide—all people who kill themselves are obviously depressed.
Fact: Many suicidal people appear to be happier than they truly are.
Rain lashes down at our roof, wailing; it is a gray sky, a heavy morning
The clouds hang low, nearly touching ground; it is as though they’re in mourning
When the door shoots open, our hearts dart out of our mouths like mindless bullets
We know it has arrived—the un-promising, our undoing, our amulet of regrets
Synchronous heads turn towards the fourth bed in the room (the screws in our heads rattle faster)
It is empty but for the stifling presence of absence, an overflowing of questions and a letter
We pretend not to know what it says, we hope the news will be nothing that it promised—
An un-promising, a not enough, a too tired, a gone too soon, an undoing
They tell us: the noose was the perfect size, the stool the perfect height
Even as we suffocate beneath this blanket of grief, we can not hold each other’s eyes
The questions fill up the room until they start to flutter and crash into one another
What are we going to tell his mother, his pregnant sister, and his brother?
Did he ever try to tell us? Did the signs sing? Did we miss it? Did we listen?
The barbed questions claw and claw their way but we hold them in our throats, already bloodied
Torn enough from years of disuse, what’s the use now?
Bright as a star, forever larger-than-life, our own brother has taken his own life.
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