Two Poems // C.W.
Updated: Jun 12, 2019
overediting my suicide note
my spotify premium subscription runs out the same day
i cover my chalkboard in a suicide note
and it’s not a coincidence.
but the chalk breaks in half
and squeals as it touches the wall,
so the apology for trying to kill myself becomes a lot more concise.
by this i mean that right before i die i’ll be standing
or sitting or laying or whatever
and my brain will be heavy with everything i think i forgot to say
which will be laced with everything i said wrong.
i want to die cleancut- think person sized x-acto knife-
before i can start deleting and retyping, respelling,
rewording. adding and subtracting commas,
equations floating in air, trying to best place emphasis on
the waiting
before the reading.
my psychiatrist tells me my body is all mine and i am the sole tenant
and i don’t tell him he’s wrong.
instead i drive home with eyes soaking into the road but
thinking about math or commas or the space where either could be,
and i know that my mind will only ever lend itself to
sheer expression while my hands watch, and occasionally,
rewrite a suicide note.

a home for roadkill
i look at the wolf and say tear
me apart, look at the boy and tell him to
kiss me right here right now. the blood’s only
bad if it’s yours so cut me
open and lay me out on the kitchen table,
the bathroom floor, the road outside.
the wolf starts at my stomach and
leaves me empty. the boy starts at my
chest and doesn’t leave. the blood is mine or
there’s no blood at all and that’s what we wanted.
the blood is mine so i say thank you and i
sit up and i nail another notice
on my front door for all the local carnivores.
and i am saying thank you now,
and i am saying thank you every time after.
C.W. is a poet from South Carolina that spends equal amounts of time writing and talking about writing. She's been or is to be published through Over Yonder Publishing, Maybe Later Press, and Tongue Tied Magazine.