Black Banana

“Son, end it for me,” he asked. 

 In so many ways, my days, that I carried on in a desperate haze, and hinged on one single decision that let me be one pillowcase away from a very different kind of anxiety than I already live. Kill me, he asked. Don’t. Are my methods unsound and taste like cancer?  Is this madness? Life happens when we’re making plans. 

 At night, I see him. Floating, with a mirage-like vesper horizon blending into the blackness of nighttime stars. Little white pin holes poked into the space sky. The same stars you see when you are pressing hard against your eyes. Death is coming with 700 thread count sheets soaked tears, fearful stress, iron pressed linens, and messy values. I can barely breathe anyways, “end this for me.” This town was cool for one night. Seems like a good time for drugs. It’s so so cold. I keep my right hand out, drink in hand. Feed me more. 

 Death is all around. As soon as we pluck a piece of fruit from a tree, a vine, or the life-giving earth full of nutrients like mother’s milk, it begins dying; as we all are now. Shadows inside. I’m bleeding from the spleen Those roses on Valentine’s Day, already dying. My serotonin is gone. 

 A waste bin with blackened and forgotten fruit is life, is strife, is us. It’s easier to toss over ripened fruit than human life itself, but what’s the difference? A day later it didn’t matter anyways, for now the dirt he lays away, bones slowly falling into dust, even locked away from worms and voles in a cement coffin to hold a wooden coffin. Beneath the dirty, free from all the world’s commotion above. Yours is the first face I saw, and the last I’ll remember. Time to let go. 

Let us all just scream.