When someone close to me flirted with the idea- and indeed made their best attempt- to leave this life, I felt helpless. I wanted to connect them intravenously to the beauty of the world, to flood their veins with art and nature and light. To give them everything I knew to be good in the hope they’d change their minds.
Anyone who’s been in a similar position before knows the sense of magnified desperation, the yearning to shake cells to the point where there is a vibrational remembrance of all that is magic. A visceral plea to make someone you love want to stay.
This is not something I’ve written about before. The memory I’ve tucked away in a tidy corner titled “things to not talk when meeting new people”. Or perhaps, things to not talk about at all.
So when I sat in a circle of writers and was asked to write on something we hadn’t looked at before, that felt personal or uncomfortable, I picked up the cardboard box full of these memories, pierced it with a shard of light and remembered back to the day I got the phone call.
The beautiful question then being, on that day, what were the words I really wanted to say?
For some reason, this poem chose to be a rhyme. I told her that that wasn’t my usual style, but she was insistent.
I share it with you now in the hope that in our dark moments, we can all draw on friendship and imagination to help us take the next half step, in whatever direction that needs to be.
I knew what you meant was you’d run out of ways to live. When I answered the phone and they said you’d tried to die, I knew what you meant was you’d run out of ways to live. Let me talk, I said, they put the phone up to your ear. Listen closely, I tell you, there’s one more thing you need to hear. Untie your umbilical cord, place it down, remove the price tag, rip it off, throw it on the ground. No more paying for an item that someone else checked out. It’s ok, go gently, we can definitely work it out. You feel blue? Here, I have a paint can, crack it open! It’s yellow like the sun, we’ll make green, the colour of unbroken. I’ll take a paintbrush, slap it on, I’ll cover myself too. Oh wait, listen again! Another thing I want to do... Let’s break free, go run across the fields be a new species, an undiscovered creature, they’ll write about us in their stories, rub their eyes, promote you as the feature. Lift your feet, stare at the ground and tell me what you see. New shoots? Those started with stories in a seed. Take that line of thoughts making mysteries in your mind, throw them out in front, let them form an orderly line. We wield your words, with them together make a bridge. I’ll use mine too! Starting with please stay, you have a place here, and I love you. Go on, step! You’ll find those words, they can shoulder anything. Let’s inch our way across make our way to edge of everything Here! Hold this, I lassoed the sun for you. Now take my hand and jump, you’ll find your wings will come to you. You’re afraid? I get it. It’s only 20 stories down, a super natural free fall we’ll land softly on the ground Quick! Take this straw, and plunge it into the earth. Drink in soil and damp and grit, quench the emptiness confused as thirst. I’ll wait. We can stay. Til we’re tipsy on gravity. High on the fumes of an Earth so solid it’s been begging all along to let it hold you. I’m here. I knew what you meant when you said you wanted to die was you were tired of not really living And when I said we’ll find a way This is what I meant right back.
