To Be Dead, But Not To Die

There is a difference

Between the two states of being.

They seem like a paradox

On the surface.

Yet under the cataclysmic waves

Of sorrow

And longsuffering,

They are emotions

Known to everyone

With unrelenting demons.

/

I wish to be no more,

For my mind to finally quiet.

For my restless soul

To fade into the void

Of nothingness...

Of intangibility.

Yet the thought of pain --

The last moments of life,

Spent in agony,

Grasping for release

Of either life or death,

Feeling or numbness,

Miasma or chasm,

Is unbearable to imagine.

/

The weight of stones in my pockets,

The weight of water in my lungs,

The weight of burden on my mother's shoulders.

I wish to be weightless,

Free of earthly hungers,

Free of the world's expectations,

Free of the lecherous hands,

Wanting to take every last

Fleeting moment of joy

In exchange for profit...

To line their pockets;

To line my coffin in stolen blood.

/

I can't see a future

Where I am not hanging

From a noose of my own making,

From a chain attached to men that own me,

From a braided rag of institutional white bedsheets.

/

You can want to be dead,

But not to die.

The act of dying is more terrifying

Than finding out what's on the other side.

If there is an other side.

What if the soul doesn't die?

What if I drift apart from mortal flesh

And I'm cursed to live an unlife?

What if I'm reborn

Into another cursed life?

To only repeat the same sins

And suffer again?