
Goodbye
Austin Yackle

"Mental Health" Ellie Lake
Content Warning: Suicidal Themes
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, call 911 or the suicide and crisis lifeline at 988.
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The ambiance of the city never sleeps, and neither do I.
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For a moment, my eyes will close.
The evening lies raw, while winds holler from rooftops. The city whispers things back to me that only I can hear. Isolation seems so sudden, as though wallpaper drapes over my skin with complete suffocation, choking me of my own will. Sometimes those bleak days became months and those months became years. But, I don’t want anyone to know that. I don’t even recognize myself, even in a swathe of my own skin. To be elsewhere is to be desired. As I stand in reveries, my breath pulsates with the sound of traffic below.
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Nobody even notices me.
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Nobody.
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Abide our purity they say. The indulgences of innocence are not salvaged and neither am I, so I am capering on edges to see if my poise can carry the grace of my posture. While dainty limbs compose into fumes. As though flames rapture into a rage. Not ready to be extinguished by breath. A contortion of movements set forth an overwhelming etude of final breaths. The denouement is near and it's almost my cue to saunter on stage. It has begun.
I’m embroidered with fallacies that lace through my bodice.
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My wake is near.
Soon breathing becomes lamentable cries. Sullen eyes seep into the tissue of my eyelids.
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For a moment, my eyes will close.
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Nothing can contain me. The feet are taut on edge. Morose eyes peer over the haze of the horizon.
The morning sun rises as I descend.
The current of air flutters my silky garment. My limbs elegantly levitate above my body as if they were separate entities. For a moment I soared above the city's smokey landscape, but my wings were of sheer plastic.
Cement disdains my dainty figure as blood broadens over splintered branches that break into fragments of flesh.
My eyes peer open.
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They never closed.