Tsunami.

You generated a series of water waves
with the falsehood that you don't impact
others with anything substantial

The waves were truly a phenomenon,
rising rapidly, cutting across all
borders, races, genders
to prove how deadly desires can be.

You released enough energy to convince
a landlocked country that silence is not
being content; humanity is not emotionless,
though many questioned their ability
to understand that which is unseen,
the internal mystique.

The waves traveled 800 kilometers per hour,
smashing isolation and stuttering tongues.

We are all immune to grief, misery, and
suffering. It is not meant to be preventable
yet your actions were.

You idealized the end of civilization
instead of seeing the storm's intensity
and fearing its culmination.
There were warnings, your feelings were
predicted by those who tried leaving
handprints on neglected shorelines.
Yet the pressure cornered you until
you believed living was drowning
and dying was fighting for a cause.

You were annotated as one of the most
destructive forces in history,
for you ambivalently saw Sumatra as
a prison cell, while your self-worth
treaded water.

~

Suicide is calmest after dawn,

after the world owns evidence of visible
destruction around them.
And it impacts everyone- killing them
instantly or by indirect means.

We mourn for those we never knew,
for the breaths hushed underneath
a magnitude no one cared to report.

Are we non-confrontational observers
of a fluctuating sea, or are we guardian
angels who listen to moaning tides
and choose to reveal our humanity?

-
Written 1/23/14 @ 12:30 AM

Watched most of a suicide documentary on Youtube tonight and it was something I could not get off my mind. It went from coverage of suicides to interviewing families to the work of EMTs or volunteers of suicide prevention hotlines. It even had me thinking of what I could do as a career or volunteer path for counseling. What really struck me emotionally is how suicide does affect everyone, even if we've never had a family or friend take their life. We start to form ideas about it, etc. It also made me realize how many who have contemplated ending their life try to reach out in small ways....we may have even gone through something similar where we don't have that vigor for life yet need encouragement that it's not the end. In the video, the speaker brought up a true reality that suicide isn't limited to one race, gender, or location. Although we can never be fully aware of what everyone is going through, the least we can do is try to understand. One woman spoke about how we can relate as humans, and how often that is taken for granted. But just by showing our humanity we can inspire and grow with others. Anyway, there's a lot of angles I wanted to take or address but I hope to sometime write an essay or do research. I did freewrite ideas first for this poem and then based it off the idea that suicide has an effect on a massive amount of people, whether we are aware of this or not.