Do I Want to Die?

Draft from Death of the Abstract Artist

"I take myself to the beach

to pick shards from the sand,

to pull myself free of the sea foam.

I have never liked the beach.

Despite living in Maine, I avoid it.

'Cause when I finally get my head underwater,

the waves pull at me and I do not sit to take it.

I have not sat to take it in a very long time.

I pull back, stretch the waves out like clay, fold them over twice or thrice.

The ocean becomes malleable even in my cold hands.

Then again, it was never really solid to begin with.

I confess, I needed an excuse for how I always end up caught in the current.

For why I refuse to set my feet on the seafloor.

For why I'm sometimes caught with rocks stuffed in my pockets.

I was born to be sick, the sickness whispers like waves lapping the sand.

So I should take deep breathes under water,

and find comfort when salt clings to the walls of my lungs;

forming crystals that glitter and gleam and soak up blood without complaint.

The ocean pulls certain things free,

loosens the seams of my lips,

and has me admitting that I haven't been suicidal in a long time.

But I still take big gulps of salty brine,

because I don't know when I pulled my limns free from the gears of my disease.

What am I supposed to be with unshackled ankles? My legs surely don't know where to take me.

I could go to the ocean; complicity in everything,

to blame for nothing.

And I could fill myself with enough sickness to sink into the silt at the bottom.

Right now, I float on the surface,

crystals dissolving in my chest.

Water squirming out of my throat

because it knows it does not belong inside of me.

It knows nothing belongs in my lungs but air.

I want to be sick again.

I miss the weight; people say I am so light now.

My lips curl up at every opportunity.

They used to be so heavy that I learned to live without moving them.

My throat was stuffed tight with lumps and words that died never seeing my tongue, but these days

laughter bubbles up before I can stop it.

I take myself to the beach.

And me watching me watching me

watches as I pull blankets from the ocean and lay them on the sand.

When I used to go to the beach, the water was the main event.

I could slip below the surface and play pedestrian as my life interrupted my death;

each gulp of sour air dragging me farther from the fuzzy bliss of drowning.

Youth, springtime of my life, spent asphyxiating,

choking flowering thoughts in salt-drenched weeds.

And it was normal; natural.

I don't want drowning to come more easily than breathing.

I don't want to spend life contemplating death.

So I take myself to the beach."