A good friend of mine makes a tumblr post about suicide.

It’s no suicide note, no blood-drenched will, no razor, no pill bottle upturned on the bathroom floor. It is a black and white confession, an almost passing mention, of the all-consuming intention and understandable-apprehension towards the tentative invention of his own demise.
It is a tip-of-the-cap to good old death himself, his way of saying “I know you’re still there. I know you’re still an option.”

At first, my eyes scan over these lines with the shock and surprise of a horrified mother, but it isn't long until they turn to an old lover’s, they tiredly remember the simplicity and felicity that comes and ends with a thing like death. I once, too, contemplated these thoughts.
I was once the girl barefoot on kitchen tile, eyeing the knife drawer with the objectified observations of the pros and cons of a young life gone, I, recognize the wonder in those hypothetical wrongs. I can clearly recall the thought “How easy it would be to end it all now.” No school, no arguing parents, no temperamental brother and wow, how easy it would be to paint these wrists like the bright red lipstick of a poisonous kiss.

And hey, the internet didn't make it seem too bad, these punk-rock girls with their wrist-ripping fad? I could taste that red horizon like blood on this tongue, but time passed on and I guess life won. 'Cause I’m still around to read this admission, his clear, able-minded self-destructive decision, or maybe it’s not, you see 'cause he knows that it’s wrong, but life has been kicking him for just too long.

In a frenzy, I write him the novel to my mind.

I vomit my feelings into these hands, and my thoughts fall through these cracks like sands, I want to tell him not to go, but how is someone like me to know?

This boy has been through hell and back, he’s come home to a pile of ashes after a war with the devil himself. He is cracked bones filled with acid, and a broken heart on the shelf. He is not slit wrists, but he is “what-if’s” because sitting in front of his computer, there is one empty room in that house, and a mother whose heart has died without her daughter, and a father who has kept strong, but can no longer, and he is the vent to their despair, a chimney built of long-nights, and fallen tears, but the mortar between those bricks is chipping away with the nights spent silent-sobbing, and the not-so-sober days.

Depression is the incarceration of a life that can’t shout; he thinks happiness is the realization that there is a way out.

Once upon a time I fancied myself the savior in this tale. I saw myself the factor that tipped this scale, I once spoke to this boy, months ago, words shiny gold like the end of a rainbow, the self-proclaimed angel with the heart-shaped halo. Smile white, but my intentions not so, I fancied myself the star of a prose, or novel rendered, if I saved this boy I would be remembered.

It’s hard to see that side of me when I look in the mirror, the part of me that wanted nothing more than to fill that hole, but first save my own soul, and now I look at this boy who wants to fizzle out like a light, all-consumed by the darkness holding him tight, and now those months have gone and I am here now, and although I am noble, I’m afraid his time has run out.

Salvation is not the dull thump of a fading life, nor the red rubies dripping from the blade of a knife, no; salvation is in the breath of those who stay.

Your brilliance could make this atheist pray, could repair the torn serenity of a family’s dismay, could save the life of a boy who one day may, end up standing in your shoes; with all the time in the world and nothing left to lose? No, your vitality could keep that boy at bay.

If you stick around in this world for just one more day.