Goodbye Reggie
I’ve known rivers of sorrow longer than I’ve known my own mother
At nine I was bullied by school kids and by my own brother
At the young age of ten
I stabbed this kid with my pen
When I was in grade five
I wished I wasn’t alive
Late in the eighth grade
I ODed on Cascade
In high school I got high and they labeled me a menace
At Yale I got higher, and studied to become a dentist
And that’s why they call me suicidal
My strain exceeds the recourses of coping with pain
Thoughts of death are continuously occupying my brain
Are my deliberations normal? Or am I just going insane?
Meditations of death, I perform this task daily
I drink like a fish and I smoke like a chimney
I have peaceful daydreams of drowning and leaving this planet
Popping blue pills and Vicodin, downing 21 tablets
Whatever it takes I’ll do it to numb my deep sadness
And that’s why they call me suicidal
Reggie is all I have to live for, my dear little fish
Resting in peace, six feet deep, this is often my wish
My friends they all abandoned me in my complexity of gloom
I bang my head on my walls as I shatter my room
I sleep and wake up, now it’s time to resume
Wishing that mother would have left me inside of her womb
But now that I’m out I wish I was inside of a tomb
And that’s why they call me suicidal
I slit my wrists, curse the mailman, I won’t eat for days
I hate waiting for my parcel of tablets, laced with Purple Haze
Crying myself to sleep is a ritual, happens all of the time
Living is for the happy, the joyful, this life is not mine
I feel like my mother did when she had a miscarriage
Too bad I wasn’t a miscarriage, feeling unwanted and discouraged
I feel like a rodent, caught in the snare of a snake
A destitute failure just here for this world to forsake
These fatal inclinations are my blissful contemplations
And that’s why they call me suicidal
My shrink doesn’t understand me, he can’t treat my depression
No matter what he tells me, he can’t change my decision
Will it be life or sweet death?
Will this be my last breath?
I bought a rope and a chair
Even said a short prayer
Climbed the chair, tied the rope
Tightly round my wide throat
Then I kicked away the chair
And I hung loose in the air
Please tell Reggie I love him
And someday soon I will see him
And that’s why they call me suicidal
-Zion Hezekiah
