To The Man or Woman Who Finds My Body

I know you will want to look through
my Internet search history, but do
you know what will you find? First,
I bet the recovery will be sensational.
Am I right? You will find all those times
I looked up the best way to kill myself,
and then, finally, you will see the time
I discovered that website about suicide,
read about overdosing on Vicodin,
how it’s supposed to feel good (really good),
letting life slowly ease out of you
like squeezing semi-sweet chocolate
out a canal of gold, like navigating
the string of life carefully outside your body
through all your skin pores, like a slow,
deliberate orgasm. Well, no wonder
she did it that way, you will say.

That’s there, I’ll admit it now, just don’t
forget about the rest of my searches.
What about the times I felt alive, curious,
intellectually stimulated, wondering
how astronauts go to the bathroom in space,
or about the etymology of the word time,
what is a V-engine, how do people get
indoctrinated by cults, and why is everyone
joining ISIS, and how do you join ISIS,
and what is ISIS—that is the good stuff.
You already know I was not an astronaut,
a machinist, not a lexicographer, smith
or engineer, and I was not a politician,
anthropologist, or a terrorist either.

I was just me, questions at the ready,
suited up in life’s bundling carcass, but so
are you. It’s not just me, don’t you see?
We all peer out at what dreams may come,
press our faces to the cool condensation
of death’s wide glass-windowed doors,
where you, too, can storm out into the air.

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"To The Man or Woman Who Finds My Body" first appeared in Theories of HER: an experimental anthology by Mercurial Noodle.