My cousin took a shotgun and shot himself when I was young
He was cooler than I’ll ever be and had a silver tongue
But a mother had to find her son that day
A mother had to try and piece together a memory of his smiling face from all the little pieces left behind
A mother had to clean those walls and the sheets but a mother could never clean her mind
Of the image of her only child
Recently I haven’t been able to stop thinking about them
I remember gathering at a home and all the women in our family screaming in agony surrounding her on a bed
Her husband, a bear of a man who I had never known without a smile, just staring blankly at the front door down the hall
Surrounded by quiet men but somehow seeming a million miles away and a thousand feet tall
It kills me to say this but I think that he was waiting for his son to walk in
The waves of despair that bellowed out from them was deafening but even then I knew to force myself to listen
She didn’t speak English very well and before we hadn’t talked much because I think she considered the language barrier a burden
But after she never spoke to me, seeing a little brown boy with a beating heart must have been agony
She would smile at me though and it was the most loving and devastating smile I have ever seen
She would touch my face and bring me so much food it’d felt like my blood was mostly anti-histamine
I think about them all the time because I wonder if he’d have done it if he knew what he left behind
I think about him all the time now because I’d like to know if he’d do it one more time
Because I’ve been thinking about the pros and cons of suicide
I keep weighing the suffering of my breathing against those who would care if I died
What my mothers face would be like whenever she looked at my brother
If he’d be the one to break the cycle or if he’d be another
Tragedy, one more chain in a link of broken sons
I don’t want to be a burning memory like a field of blood soaked suns