The Poisoning of My Mind

There are days the sun drags itself across the sky like a wounded thing, and I follow behind it, meek as a shadow no one asked for. My feet walk the same road to the mailbox, rocky and too long, and still I walk it. Beside me, the hemlock grows. Tall and soft, almost beautiful. It does not beckon. It does not need to. Some days, I eye it the way others eye lovers. It stands there in its stillness, whispering in a world that shouts. And I wonder if quiet could be a kind of mercy. It is hard to exist here. Harder, maybe, to pretend I want to. To stitch meaning into mornings, to answer the question of “why” with anything but silence. Some days, I am all ache and effort. Some days, I am nothing at all. And still I walk. I walk, and I glance at the hemlock. I want to stay. I do. But wanting is not the same as being able. And some days, I feel like I am made of glass and apology. I am tired of both. I often see the hemlock, I see how easy it would be to drink, from the root, from myself. No spectacle. No hero. Just stillness, at last. I know how bitter it would taste. But bitterness is not new to me. I have swallowed worse. My greatest fear is one day replacing my reasons to stay with the venom from the hemlock. That I will deflower it just as the world has deflowered me. I will fill my cup half full, and as I sit beside the road, I will drink. And as I swallow my fate, no cars will pass, no one will come to save me from the poison I pulled with my own hand. And that will be enough.