I sat in the golden afternoon light
On the street next to a dandelion
Bursting through a sidewalk crack, roots cracking concrete
“How are you alive?
I survive, the dandelion said.
“How?”
A long pause. Then, the dandelion
Said; I always want just one more day.
“Why, when it’s so hard?”
Because… don’t you want to feel the sun again?
Almost a year before:
I sat across from the police officer
In pajamas, without glasses
And I squinted at the blurry man
Who asked me, Have you had any suicidal thoughts lately?
My parents kept glancing at each other, as I said yes. Yes, I had.
I don’t know why but
Slow tears rolled down my face
And my mother’s, too.
I sat on the bathroom floor with a plastic bottle
And I read the back of the label.
Everything looked duller.
I stared at the handful of pills and I felt them,
Boring into my soul
Little blue eyes.
I put them away and went to bed.
Have you felt the urge to end your life in the past couple weeks?
The doctor said I can talk about anything I want.
The words dripped out slowly at first, then all at once;
And as I talked I was not alone.
I stood on the bridge, and I looked down
And I thought about the last time I’d stood here
How I’d thought about jumping, without really feeling anything at all.
I looked through the chain link fence
Which I could have climbed, if I really wanted to.
I didn’t want to, though.
I don’t want to.
I want so many more days—
—I want to feel the sun again.
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