XVII

Maybe Tomorrow Won’t Be The Same?

I think I’m going to die alone,

probably in my childhood bedroom.

My cat will probably eat me.

There will probably be six people at my funeral,

none of them friends.

Just relatives squinting at the service program,

asking if it's okay to leave early.

I don’t know if I want to die.

I think I want to die,

if death means nothingness.

But if there's some bullshit hell,

with fire and guilt and goddamn mirrors,

I guess I don't want it.

My will to live is mostly FOMO.

I still don’t really want to live,

but I wanna see what happens tomorrow.

What if he talks to me?

What if the world surprises me? 

Child playing possum in the backseat,

peeking through her lashes.

Morbid curiosity at its finest. 

Hope is a blade I’ve swallowed clean.

I keep mistaking blood for redemption.

I tell myself it’s just a scar,

not a wound still pulsing under skin.

I tape affirmations over bruises

and call it resilience.

But it’s just rot in a prettier jar.

Each time I hope, I carve a little deeper,

just to see if I’ll feel something this time.

Maybe that’s all I’ve ever done:

etch my name into pain

and pretend it means I matter.

I am beyond hope.

I have spent years clinging to hope

like it was a lifeboat 

and I was worth saving.

I cannot keep clinging

to a rope that keeps burning my hands. 

I’m not going to set myself up anymore.

No more hope.

Hope and disappointment are too intertwined,

And I can’t take another crush.

That really could be my last straw. 

I think I have been bargaining with the void.

“If I just hang on a little longer,

maybe this will stick,

maybe I’ll feel real,

maybe someone will want me.”

But the void isn't listening.

Its just echoing me back, over and over,

and I hate the sound of my own voice. 

At what point do my poems become suicide notes?

I don’t even think this is a poem.

Dorothea Blythe