Dear Jason

Trigger Warning: Suicide

 

Note: The name of the person in question has been changed. Jason is greek for “heal” as was my personal intention for this poem

Dear Jason

My eyes burn from the salt

Encompassing my lids until I’m dehydrated
Shooting a Migraine through me

Expanding my heart as it bleeds

For you
Your family

Because you’ll never feel anything

Do anything

Or see their faces again

I’m broken

I wish you had called
Someone
Anyone
Shared your pain

I wish I’d really known you
Other than those few encounters

 

Because I didn’t savor your melodic laughter

Or ask for your number
So I could call you every once in awhile

Could I have saved you, then?

I remember 15
Lying in sweet, soft grass
That first date
The sun on my neck at Art Fair
As Ann Arbor melted together

My first sense of community

And I remember Homecoming

Hundreds of sweaty bodies jumping

Like there was nothing else around

Fists pumping and hair flipping

Boys ogling the bouncing breasts

Sparking light in the darkness

But you’ll never know

How that feels

Those bodies

That heat

Bumping and grinding

And you’ll never know

How I feel

Broken

A million pieces

Scattered to nowhere

Because the most significant moment
In your 3 days of being 15
Is the pressure of rope around your neck
Indenting a sickening purple

Post-Mortem bruise

Broken

 

Did you think about it, Jason?

The scream of your mother
When she saw you

Hanging there
Begged you to be alive

Memories of her baby

Dying

As she fell to the ground

Unable to fathom his end

Did you think about it, Jason?

The shock of your sister

When she heard at 2am

That she was an only child

That pretty girl who once jumped up on stage
To dance with the singer

Her blonde hair swaying to the music

Now sits alone in her room

Blue eyes fixated on the sun you won’t see

Was there a moment, Jason?

Where you second guessed

Thought of another way to cope

Was it before you could change your mind?

After you stepped away from the chair

Forcing the oxygen from your body

Choking

Or did you just do it?

Done with the world

Blind to its beauty

Confident

I’m not indifferent

To the pain you were in

The nights you must’ve spent

Crying alone

And I’m not angry

That you made your own choice

I just wish it was different

I wish you were here

I saw the sunrise today
Beginning of a day without you

I ate an ice cream cone

Completely unaware

But when I heard

“A student hung himself”

When I asked

“Who?”

When your name fell from her lips

I wished for the first time that I was deaf

Because I can’t say we were friends

But I knew that name
And I can’t say that I knew much about you

But I’d seen that baby face

That smile

Wider than the Grand Canyon

That laugh
Heartier than beans and rice

So I broke

In my eyes
My arms
My suddenly weak knees,
So long of holding me up

Failed

And I scattered

My heartbeat slowing

Body heat rising

Brain cycling for a memory of you

Alive

To no avail

I do not know what happens after death
(Did you wonder about that?)

I do not know who you would’ve been

(Did you wonder, Jason?)

But the pieces of me
The parts you never knew you touched

Lost

Searching for your presence

And this earth

15 shades darker without you

Has got me thinking

 

That perhaps when you pass

It’s the living who are left to die