compendium

lady lazarus

lady lazarus
dying / is an art

After William died I thought, like any other grieving person, that it was my fault.

I didn't protect him. I didn't try to save him. I watched while he went cold and got colder and became nothing at all. I waited while my heartstrings turned to knives and poised their blades against the machine in my chest. William had a little brother and a mother and a father, all who left him behind. I had my own family but I was William's only tether. William used to wake up screaming in the dark from nightmares of empty lungs and his brother's eyes as glassy as if he'd been taxidermied. William had a family, and I couldn't tell if he left them behind or if they left him behind. I had William and William had me, and I couldn't tell if I left him behind or if he left me behind.

The guilt clawed up my gut, my chest cavity and my throat. It ripped me to pieces, to white-surrender-ribbons dancing in the wind.

(Come and take me.)
(I've laid down without a fight.)

Eventually I started to burn myself with that lighter, a fingertip first, searing my own identity from the soft edges of these hands. I burned my left palm with a scar that never left. I burned a white river into the crease of my right wrist.

I almost set my sleeve on fire once, and that's when I realized I didn't actually want to die.

I burnt myself to a place where I knew it wasn't my fault, but that part did not involve a lighter.