III: The Edge

She often thought
of suicide, not
because she wanted to die,
but simply because she’d
rather not live
with the embarrassment
of not being able to find your
keys to the car while your
son is waiting or
coming to the checkout
at the supermarket
and finding you're five dollars
short, or lying under your
husband listening to him snort
with passion while you feel
really nothing--
petty things that accumulate
a treacherous poison
in the brain, she thought,
while she slid a cool blade
across her wrist, a petty slit
that gauze and bandages would heal.
The pain at least,
unlike her death, was real.