GRAY

Age 15, St. Louis, Missouri

GRAY
BY: MEGAN WINDLE

Your body is a stuffed animal,
Shoved into a wooden coffin,
Put on display
For hollowed eyes
The color of
The ocean and the sky
And everything blue and sad
In this world.

And my eyes
Pour water
Down gray stone cheeks
The way that the clouds
Heave loneliness and despair
Riddled with rain-soaked tears.

And my chest
Is a collapsing house
With a worn sofa
And dusty mirrors
And old, creaky floorboards.

And my heart
Is an abandoned house,
Covered in cobwebs
And echoed memories
And death.

And death
Is you,
With your mahogany coffin
Lined with gray silk,
Because black
is not the color
of death
But rather gray.

Gray is the color of death
And sorrow
And depression
And of mourning you.

Gray is being angry
And not knowing why.

Gray is being lost
And not knowing
How to find yourself,
Because when you died,
My spirit must have went with you.

Gray is being soul-shook
And staring into the blankness
Ahead of you.

Gray is the color of you
And every shadowed memory
That faded and crumbled
When you did.

Gray is the color of
“I’ll never forgive you,
But I guess I’ll try.”

Gray is the color of f@!k you
For leaving me behind,
For letting yourself go,
For not just walking about,
But rather running away,
As fast as you could,
Until you finally fell.

F@!k you
For killing yourself.

F@!k you
For running away from me.

F@!k you
For not accepting my help,
For pushing me away from you,
For hiding every part of yourself
that needed me.

F@!k you
For not allowing yourself to need me.

It was okay
To need me,
Rose.

It was okay
To be broken
And to be sad,
Rose.

We all break
Like the glass we are.

We all cry
And bleed
And shatter
Like the fragile people
That we are.

We all feel caged
And lost
Like wild animals
Brought into captivity.

You could have let me cage you.
At least then I would have saved you.

But you didn’t want to be saved.
You wanted to die,
And you let me die with you.

You let my heart fall out of my chest,
And my nails chip ragged
As I scraped at my stone cheeks in despair.

You let my body tremble
Like thunder shaking a house
As I cried
Drops and sheets and rivers
Of tears and rain and water
And everything blue.
You let gray become all I see,
All I think about,
When I think you.

I don’t see roses red;
I see them gray
And wilting.

And I see myself
Gray and shadowed and angry
In the mirror,
Because you couldn’t be saved,
And that’s my fault.

It’s my fault
That you didn’t want to be saved.

It’s my fault
that I couldn’t love you enough to live.

It’s my fault
That I wasn’t there
To stop your trembling hands.

It’s my fault…

But then,
I learned she thought it was her fault.
And so did he,
And so did your mom
And sisters and your dad.

But it wasn’t our fault.
It couldn’t have been OUR fault.

I was there,
Even when you didn’t want me to be.

And I am still here,
everyday,
Even two years later,
Writing to you
And loving you
And punishing myself.

I am still here,
Everyday,
Polishing your coffin,
Cleaning your gravestone,
And leaving fresh roses.

I am still here,
Everyday,
Fighting for another breath,
Fighting for another reason to live.

I am still here,
Everyday,
With hollowed eyes
The color of everything
That is blue and sad
In this gray world.

 

What did you learn?

When you lose someone like to suicide, you learn what it means to be broken. You truly do learn what despair and sadness is. And on top of that, you learn what mourning is and how hard, yet very possible, that it is to move on from something like that. When somebody commits suicide, there are so many things that you go through in response, and it was so challenging for me not to blame myself.

The loss of such a dear friend truly opened my eyes to the reality of depression and bullying and all of the other stuff teachers hammer into your head throughout high school. My friend was a good person who just couldn’t stay above water, and after he killed himself, it was hard for to stay above water as well. But I did. And here I am, writing poetry and sharing love and insight with the world. I write because my friend killed himself, because of the pain I felt, and writing is not only my passion, but because I learned it is so much easier to deal with things and move on from them if you express your pain. You find others who sympathize. You pick yourself back up and keep going. Life never stops, so don’t stop, either.