| | sheol: a city first built with mud and ladders; then, at the second suicide, scaffolds of bone and fire. and now, now that a third friend has killed himself sheol has become a metropolis rooted at my core. it is a chest of ghosts that will never vanish. look, look how i turn the key. look how they buckle and break. look as they twist down on themselves, smaller and smaller, to burst out again, and spin back down down down as an extant memory.
like the distance of a star that needs triangulation i have had one two three friends that have pointed me in the direction of utter despair. the first used a car and garage, the second a pack of pills. the third the third the third......
tonight, walking home, i came upon two sidewinding children carrying coats. it was breezy and warm. they talked to their nanny about their popsicles about anything. suicide makes everything tremendous. the waft of cheap cigarettes reminded me of decks and useless drunken rabble. of god conversations and risk games. of barbecues in the rain, burst pipes, snowflakes on stairs, god in a closet.. and i thought no matter your spiritual belief josh is now dead and he will never see beauty again. he will never see children carrying popsicles and balloons at the beginning of spring ever again.
(and now, at this moment, a neighbor is beating a dryer below my apartment senseless [it ate her quarters]. he will never experience this again.)
and of course guilt kicks in, flowering a tree only whisky cuts.
once, joshua leavelle and i rolled back an old couch from a wall that was to be painted yellow. he made the first big strokes. shirtless, we contemplated or color decision. after, in a golden lit five o'clock, we saw...
hope? a future? the house was rubble and soggy carpet. like our color choice, moving there was questionable at best, but i think a good decision in the end. the floor of the world was like the floor in our house: it could break at any moment.
he could be moody and sad. he said fuck a lot. but there was a generosity of spirit that was unquenchable. i can't imagine who he became in those last days.
so now is when i pick up the pieces of josh and mold them into a little doppelganger, now there is a heavy turn of a key, now i place him gently in a small golden lit room, the only bright room in sheol, now the door shuts and the key is turned back, now my eyes drop to the floor, voice drops to a whisper, now my shoulders slump all under the weight of my new citizen.
in suicide there is no silver lining. there is no rationalisation. there is a bird in a cage that doesn't understand the bars. there is despair. there is endless night.
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| | Posted 3/18/2009 12:55 PM - 1 View - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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