Anxiety and Things that Shatter

Saving a Friend From Suicide

One:
You want to help.
You want to smear the cracks and blisters in the world with liquid gold and make the darkness offload its terror.
You want to weave the ends of cruelty to look like a perfect braid
but the texture of the earth feels like unkept African hair; kinky and rebellious,
So you settle for a menacing afro.

Two:
You don't know how saving works because you too are searching for a saviour.
How do you gift comfort with arms which never received any?
How do you save a building from burning
when your fingers are made of ashes?

Three:
God sounds like a really good place to direct a sick patient to;
I learnt he is a physician.
But what happens when religion is no longer a therapist's door
but a cage where we are controlled puppets?
What if it was always a cage?
Yet you hold on to religion because somehow it brings you hope.
I hold on to religion with slippery fingers
because I love mother with all my heart.

Four:
You would never understand their story when you never pick up a chapter to read.
When you view the world and judge from only your experience,
ignorance becomes an unknown crown you wear with an alien pride.
You think a mind in a perfect condition would lust for death so selfishly?
I heard a story of a boy who jumped off a bridge to his death.
.
While alive, he was scared of heights.

Five:
You learnt that when you repeat words, you do so because of emphasis.
"I want to die."
"I want to die."
"I want to die."
I learnt this game from Phil's mom that when you repeat something over and over again, it loses its meaning.
You've repeated those words in your room for so long
until the echoes began to shed their strength,
So when the words leave your tongue, nobody hears a sound;
All you can do is lay surrounded
by the pieces of a defeated silence.
.
"I want to die."
"I want to die."
"I want to die."
You don't want to die.
You want to end the misery.
You don't want to die because you don't know what death is.
But isn't that bravery?
How do you carefully guide a knife into your heart and still be tagged a coward?
They don't understand that you're not scared of living.
You're not scared of living,
you're tired of living without hope,
Yet they misconcept what cowardice means
because they take pride in believing they are stronger.
But then, being brave still doesn't mean you're making the right choice, does it?
.
You keep telling them that there are worse people out there
but what happens when they are the worse?
How do you tell them the world doesn't care about their suicide notes without sounding like you're part of the world?

Six:
The sky is a pendulum clock
where the moon is unable to dangle.
The air in your room treats you
like you don't deserve to breathe
so you keep a jar of wind beside your bed while you're asleep.
A jar of wind is not made of wind
but of glass, yes, a bottle.
Same way the mind is not made
of what thoughts it holds inside.
But I possess no antidote to heal the contents,
those thoughts that haunt your house of cards:
All I have are poems that cannot cure my own disease.
So when I say I don't want you to die,
When I say to my friends,
"I don't want to write a sad poem about you,"
The corners of my mouth become bittersweet
like my words were dipped in a cup of lemonade.
My shoulders become two fragile counters
struggling with the gravity of my own weakness,
Because truly, you cannot save anyone from drowning;
You are no lifeboat, no healing poet, no magic spell--
Not even a sufficient friend.
But hey, we can at least try, right?