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Anne Sexton - Suicide Note
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"You speak to me of narcissism but I reply that it is 
a matter of my life" - Artaud

"At this time let me somehow bequeath all the leftovers 
to my daughters and their daughters" - Anonymous

Better, 
despite the worms talking to 
the mare’s hoof in the field; 
better, 
despite the season of young girls 
dropping their blood; 
better somehow 
to drop myself quickly 
into an old room. 
Better (someone said) 
not to be born 
and far better 
not to be born twice 
at thirteen 
where the boardinghouse, 
each year a bedroom, 
caught fire. 

Dear friend, 
I will have to sink with hundreds of others 
on a dumbwaiter into hell. 
I will be a light thing. 
I will enter death 
like someone’s lost optical lens. 
Life is half enlarged. 
The fish and owls are fierce today. 
Life tilts backward and forward. 
Even the wasps cannot find my eyes. 

Yes, 
eyes that were immediate once. 
Eyes that have been truly awake, 
eyes that told the whole story— 
poor dumb animals. 
Eyes that were pierced, 
little nail heads, 
light blue gunshots. 

And once with 
a mouth like a cup, 
clay colored or blood colored, 
open like the breakwater 
for the lost ocean 
and open like the noose 
for the first head. 

Once upon a time 
my hunger was for Jesus. 
O my hunger! My hunger! 
Before he grew old 
he rode calmly into Jerusalem 
in search of death. 

This time 
I certainly 
do not ask for understanding 
and yet I hope everyone else 
will turn their heads when an unrehearsed fish jumps 
on the surface of Echo Lake; 
when moonlight, 
its bass note turned up loud, 
hurts some building in Boston, 
when the truly beautiful lie together. 
I think of this, surely, 
and would think of it far longer 
if I were not… if I were not 
at that old fire. 

I could admit 
that I am only a coward 
crying me me me 
and not mention the little gnats, the moths, 
forced by circumstance 
to suck on the electric bulb. 
But surely you know that everyone has a death, 
his own death, 
waiting for him. 
So I will go now 
without old age or disease, 
wildly but accurately, 
knowing my best route, 
carried by that toy donkey I rode all these years, 
never asking, “Where are we going?” 
We were riding (if I’d only known) 
to this. 

Dear friend, 
please do not think 
that I visualize guitars playing 
or my father arching his bone. 
I do not even expect my mother’s mouth. 
I know that I have died before— 
once in November, once in June. 
How strange to choose June again, 
so concrete with its green breasts and bellies. 
Of course guitars will not play! 
The snakes will certainly not notice. 
New York City will not mind. 
At night the bats will beat on the trees, 
knowing it all, 
seeing what they sensed all day.
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