People are a burden in the sense that gold is heavy

After many years in denial, I spend some time stuck in anger. The violence and the pain reach back and shake me. I respond like a child. FUCK YOU, YOU DON’T GET TO LEAVE. YOU HAVE TO STAY. YOU HAVE TO STAY FOR ME. You certainly don’t get to take other people with you. How dare you. How dare you.

You should have stuck around. You should have asked for help. You should have met my children. They’re pretty great.

I loved you. I love you. Stay.

I wonder does your

     death feel like failure to everybody who ever

           loved you as if our collective cpr stopped

too soon, the defib paddles lost charge, the corpse

     punished us by never sitting up. And forgive my conviction

           that every suicide’s an asshole. There is a good reason I am not

God, for I would cruelly smite the self-smitten.

     I just wanted to say ha-ha, despite

           your best efforts you are every second

alive in a hard-gnawing way for all who breathed you deeply in,

     each set of lungs, those rosy implanted wings, pink balloons.

          We sigh you out into air and watch you rise like rain.

Mary Karr