I saw how to kill myself on the six o'clock news.

It looked easy enough.

.

Why did you take the day off today,

to buy weeping garage flowers and wear cheap and shiny

black? It is what I wanted, and yet it is not enough.

And it is too much.

Just a little bit of love, admiration;

pride and loss. A gentle tear left to fall.

.

I sorted the recycling like it's a normal day;

cardboard, paper (no staples), tin, bottles (green, brown, clear)

Sectioned neatly, each in the alloted space

No harm in organisation.

No guilt, pride or worth.

Guided by intuition and upbringing,

straightening edges and neatening the

fraying corners of the posters and pictures that

I cared so little about, that formed a screen for

my insubstantial existence.

They say they need to grow, need to be forgiven,

need to live -

the weakness in my soul does not care for this.

.

I remember walking when the autumn came;

the leaves in terracotta and aubergine tumbling through

dusty shafts of afternoon sunlight, always an Indian Summer in

September, and the birds blinked their eyes and warbled into

the quiet paths and woodlands.

So quaint, so dainty and innocent.

I remember squirrels, so tame, so indignant at being caught

scratching in the undergrowth.

.

And I, so pointlessly watching them, uplifted

for a moment, by the simplicity and naivety

when I looked out of the tower block and away from the organised

and loopholed city streets and plastic office cubicles.

When I guiltily caught your eyes across the room,

I couldn't guess what you were thinking.

There was nothing in my mind, then, at all.

.

Cut me open on a surgeon's table.

I didn't die of heartbreak or knotted thoughts.

My mind was not complicated enough for reason,

but I saw how to kill myself on the six o'clock news.

It looked easy enough.