Leaving you
Parting is such sweet sorrow. Please forgive me.
I've been quietly packing for weeks, replacing items in my closet with clothes I never wear.
This isn't your fault. There's nothing you could’ve done.
I'm the one who’s broken here. Diseased. And you deserve better.
I touch her tummy one last time. You kick against my palm, saying goodbye.
[50]
Last Call
You know it's coming, but you're never prepared.
The call light. The alarm. Your training takes over.
Each time cuts deeper. You weep less, but it hollows you more. Professional distance, they call it.
Their hand reaches you at the threshold.
Strangers you've known intimately, crossing alone except for you.
[50]
The Angel
You know it's coming, but thought you had more time.
The memories flood—the regrets, empty pursuits.
Each face you've loved flashes by. You remember everything but say nothing.
An angel takes your hand at the threshold.
Family you've disappointed. Friends. All absent now except for her.
Your beautiful angel.
[50]
The Language of Dust
Your body sheds itself constantly—eight pounds a year, they say.
Skin cells spiral into heat vents. Hair strands weave into carpeting. Nail clippings nestle between floorboards.
Even clean rooms speak our silent, biological biography.
We mark our territory in microscopic monuments.
Genetic graffiti, spelling "I existed. I lived here."
[50]
Corrections
The obituary said, “Loving father.”
I was nine when you left. But not before you broke me: heart, mind, body, and soul.
I emailed the editor, "Correction," I wrote. Then stopped.
They say obituaries are for the living. "Let the dead bury the dead."
"Correction," I continued. "He was survived."
[50]
Exit Interview
People always ask why.
“Why didn't he call someone? Why didn't he reach out?”
“If only I had known…” they say.
That’s what no one understands.
You can call it selfish. And I suppose it is. But to the one who’s suffering?
If people hate you, they’ll rejoice. If they love you, they want you to be happy. They don’t want you to suffer. They want what’s best for you.
I’m at that point. That point precisely where I don’t need any help. I finally have it all figured out.
And do you want to know the best part?
I did it all by myself.
Didn’t have to beg. Didn’t have to burden anyone with my troubles—because I always have troubles, right?
Not anymore.
Every day, trying to get it right. Every day, failing. The constant weight of disappointing everyone. The invisible labor of always being wrong, always creating a mess for someone else to clean up.
I sit in the tub, the water warming my ankles and rising slowly around my calves.
For the first time in years, everything makes perfect sense.
The box cutter's perfect weight, the way steam rises from bathwater in lazy spirals, the sudden clarity.
It's not desperation. It's mathematics. All the variables are balanced. The solution, so elegant in its simplicity.
The water reaches my knees. Steam fogs the mirror.
People always ask, “Why?"
I need you to understand the dichotomy here.
We all feel helpless when someone takes their life—like there was something we could've said or done to stop it.
Ironically, this is precisely what I’ve felt every day of my life: that there was something I should be saying or doing to "stop it," to start over somehow, to get it right.
Don't you see?
This... cleaning up my own mess. Finally…
This is what I can do to "get it right."
I finally figured it out.