• So often as the poet, the shadow narrator,
    I speak of a longing for death.
    Those words show the self and its desire for destruction.
    I seek through such destruction a reprieve from the endless questions,
    The endless guilt, and doubt, and self-loathing.
    What a sweet relief it would be to cease,
    For there to be no nerves which my pain can travel through,
    No beating broken heart for it to reside in.
    Yet, death ignores me.
    It unspeakingly tells me my suffering shall be paramount.
    It tells me that I don't deserve peace.
    It tells me so many things,
    Which it whispers silently into my ear,
    In a tone that betrays madness.
    That quiet voice... where does it speak from?
    Do I simply imagine it?
    Would it ever answer me, were I to say the right words?
    Or is it endlessly deaf, regardless of what I might say,
    Or the things I feel which make me say what I say?
    If I felt worse living than I would feel in hell,
    Is it truly blasphemy to deny the almighty?
    For he has marked me his whipping boy.
    Because in his infinite power,
    He has decided to give me constant confusion,
    And utter suffering.
    I am the target he throws his darts at, am I not?
    If one would argue that he is not so cruel
    That he would treat me this way,
    They need only refer to his treatment,
    Of his supremely devout worshipper,
    Job.
    So I plead for death.
    I plead because I cannot find the courage.
    I cannot find the strength to live,
    I cannot find the will to tear my wrists open,
    I cannot find the clarity to absolve myself of blame.
    Such cowardice which rules me,
    Such apathy and numbness.
    And I beg death to extricate me from beneath its tyranny.
    Yet I suffer on.
    Death begs to differ when I say that existence is meaningless,
    And that all reality is an illusion.
    It argues silently an unspoken rebuttal.
    And I suffer on.
    Am I proud to think I have the right to command death?
    Maybe.
    Maybe my pride is what death finds most abhorent,
    Why he turns a deaf ear to my pleas.
    Maybe I'm mad to say this,
    But maybe...
    Maybe I was never alive to begin with.