Short-form prose

First line is a good content warning.

23 October

"What do you feel, when I tell you I want to kill myself?"

"It sounds like this represents an instability in your perspective of your own life, rather than an inflexible truth."

He's in the next room, so I almost have to shout. "I meant emotionally."

"Oh."

"I don't ask you that enough. I don't think of you enough, what you're feeling. I only think of myself. I'm terribly selfish, aren't I?"

"You're not selfish. You just have a brain that makes it hard to live." Chop, chop, chop. He's cutting onions. It's so cliche that I want to laugh.

"I've been depressed for as long as I can remember. All of the good thoughts, they don't stick. My brain just erases them. I don't feel like I have control over it, except when I'm on the meds. But they make my whole body seize up. All of the stress straight to my muscles. My jaw clenches. So I stop taking them. But then it's back to the depression. And they do nothing for the suicidal thoughts." He's heard this before. He heard it last night, almost verbatim. I say it over and over like I'm rehearsing.

The onion begs for its life under the blade. Thunk. It's over.

"I don't want this brain anymore." Matter-of-fact.

"Well, it's the brain that I love."

"Is that what you felt when I texted you last night?" I imagine him looking at his phone.

"... Yeah." He pauses before answering, even though he already knew what he was going to say.

I wait for a minute. He doesn't ask how I'm feeling, but I don't hold that against him.

"I don't feel scared anymore. I feel good. I think that you're the only thing keeping me here. It's almost annoying, because otherwise the decision would be easy."

I hear him start to cry. From both of us, and from the onion, I'm sorry. We're all uncomfortable. I wish he'd move onto the carrots.

"But I do want to get better. If not for me, then for you. And on principle. It's a sin or something, I don't know. That's a reason, yeah?"

He knows I'm not religious. "Yeah. Any reason is a good reason."

"How long do you want to wait for me? It's going to be a while. Maybe forever. Thinking about spending an eternity failing to get better, it makes me want to kill myself more."

"I want you forever."

"You can have me forever. In an urn, on the mantel." A long silence. The sink faucet starts running. It says, that wasn't a joke. How accusatory. The onion vapors are wafting to me now, too.

Then I think, maybe he's stewing. The laugh from earlier comes out - a wide-mouthed exhale, pushing some tears out with it.

"It wouldn't be so bad, would it?"

The water stops. "Am I even helping?"

"You're helping."

"Good."

"I need help."

"I'll get you help."

"I'm impatient." I want to join him in the kitchen. Maybe I'll steal some carrots from under the knife.

"You have to take things one step at a time."

My foot twitches. I push it off of the couch. It's as heavy as a boulder.

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