Whenever I see you these days
you've red ribbons on your wrist
it seems you forgotten there are other ways
to deal with this
shit you have to call existence.

In every instance of difficulty, self-doubt,
you refuse to break, but spill out blood
and silent words that flash with razorblades,
splinters out of better days, all over the
bathroom floor.

Afraid of being a burden you try
every method money can buy
and some that it can't. You seem
to dream of a funeral, an end, friends
crying in memory, denied goodbyes.

Each time I see the ribbons stuck,
with gooey stubborness and born with
pride - you were always a soldier -
and you ask me why I give a fuck
about whether you lived or died
I think perhaps you've missed the point
of the last two years of being joined in friendship
or something.

And this is why I watch those ribbons
winding up your arms with latticed delicacy
tracing out the patterns of a damned mortality
with eyes that weep and a hand that trembles
offered in hope and love and fright,
to bloodstained fingers, clutching a razor
aching to turn off the light.