Suicide

I can taste the metal, cold as death, in my mouth.
It is something I can’t live with, yet can’t do without.
Thoughts race with my heartbeat as my finger slips in place,
Yet, ironically, time stops; the world seems to quit its craze.

Doubt assails me as my fingers feel around the trigger.
But after all these years of torment, there is not much more to figure.
This moment will not change my life; it will end it for good –
All the deeds that I have done, been so misunderstood.
What is the point of living, when I really died years ago?
Why wonder what could have been – on the world will go.

Thoughts race. Images flash in my mind’s eye
Of times and moments gone by.
They mean nothing to anyone but me,
And who am I if I am not free?

Logic trickles through my heightened senses,
Screaming but seeming silent as the wind.
Reality hits me suddenly,
The heavy, cold barrel permeating my mouth.

My trembling hands suddenly steady.
My finger stands at the ready.
My mind goes blank.
I can hear myself breathing. Hard.
And then – nothing.

The words find their way through the utter void,
Awake, alive, playing my mind like a toy –
Echoing in the mountains of my brain: “You are a coward.”
For I had given up rather than moving forward.

The gun seems harmless as I slowly remove it,
Relieving my tongue of the weight of a bottomless pit.
I raise the barrel, looking it eye to eye.
Yet I cannot do it; it is not my time to die.

I almost got freedom, in all its metallic glory –
Almost surrendered to some cops and a jury.
I had almost become just another tragic case,
Yet, somehow, I’d found the courage to face
The opportunities and challenges, whatever life threw my way –
The heart to be thankful to be given each day.

For true freedom requires clarity of mind,
Something one clang of metal would have left behind.