Sharon Olds And Why She Chose Suicide
It was not one thing—
not a single blade of thought
but a field of them,
thin, dry, whispering
against each other in the wind of my mind.
Morning came like a bill I could not pay.
Light pressed its hand to my face
and I turned from it,
as if the sun itself had asked too much of me.
My body—
this animal I have carried for years—
lay down in the middle of the day
as though struck,
as though it had run too far
without water.
I could name the losses
like bones in an X-ray—
each one bright,
each one undeniable—
but naming did not lessen them.
It only proved they were there.
The rooms were filled with ordinary objects—
a glass, a chair, a door half-open—
and each one seemed to say:
you must go on,
you must go on,
you must go on.
I did not want to stay.
That is the simplest truth.
But something—
not hope, not even strength—
something smaller,
a thread, a tendon, a quiet refusal
deep in the muscle of being—
held.
So I left.
Not because the world softened,
not because the pain spoke kindly,
but because somewhere in me
there was still a witness
who would not leave my body behind.
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