I think I should let you know
I will be leaving soon
To go someplace quiet
To go home.

To live by the ocean:
a choppy expanse of dark sea
roaring declarations of strength.
This place has waited for me in a small corner of my mind
Waited as the epilogue to a halted life.

I will get there by bus
My last breath will cloud the grimy window
cold, in the heavy depth of midnight.
Sunlight has no place in liberation.

It will be dark when I arrive:
the kind of murky-dark that blurs edges.
I will find shelter in a familiar cave;
There is a map that I have traced in pale scars across my skin.

The calming, violent crash of waves
will drown out the shrillness of screams
And the hiss of the sea foam will sing me to sleep after
I laugh with my head turned up, challenging the freedom of soft grey sky.

I will fall down to rest
tucked into a bed of sand and ocean
And when I wake my hair will be saltwater crispy.
I will dance and spin and smile and breathe and feel.

The wind will whip my skin,
Flesh is scratched and scraped away over time: bones.
Hadn’t I always wanted to be a skeleton?

And the ocean, already thick with mortality,
will absorb any energy I leave behind.

This is not a pretty place
It is a place of destruction, of endings, of decay.
You’ve told me my absence will be haunting,
Well I am haunted every day.

How exactly do I go about ending a life?
well there are razorblades and
high places to fall from,
That isn’t what’s important.
I care about the after of it all, the release.

I thought I should tell you about my little foolish rebellion:
solitude
escape.