I Choose to Die – poem

I can still hear my silent cries for help
I can still feel the warm grip of death as I began to breath my first sips of sweet air
if I touch my throat now, it still longs for that first grip of strangulation that it carries as its first memory of life

Yet I chose to live this way
I chose to fall in love half a dozen times only to fall out of love with heart break
each loss is an arrow to the heart

I chose to hang for dead
To wind up in the hospital bed
my wrists blood red

I remember crying that forsaken night I spent lying in the woods alone, stripped naked and barely breathing
Each tear a memory to let go off and to offer to the earth
here mother, feel my pain

I remember the way she took my breath away
as she moaned for more
the sweat rolling down her face and meeting her lips so that I could taste her sweet release
I remember fucking her against the wall with my hand in her mouth,
biting flesh, screaming for more
I remember making love to her under the warm light of candles
moving slow to feel more deeply
With our eyes locked and body as one, we transcended

we chose to say good bye
we chose to let love die like the flowers and fruit, left to wither and rot where the maggots live
for not all that is, is meant to be
sometimes children are meant to die

I remember why I came here
I chose to suffer in this way
I chose to be born in this form
this fading grace of skin and bone
this temporary flesh
this dream of mine

I remember why I chose to die
I know why I said goodbye to life and love
and left it all behind
I know why birds sing in the morning and grow quite as night falls
I know why a sick dog will go into the woods to die alone
I know why some mothers will die to save their children and others drop their still young babies in a garbage filled garbage bin

I know life like a painter knows an empty portrait
I know life like a child knows wonder
I know life like a bird knows the empty sky
I know life beyond this body

There are some things you cannot know unless you give up everything
There are some answers you must die for
There are truths so pure and white that they are pure light
and in this world of shadow, hope and truth is a candle flickering warm and illuminating the darkness of the dream