What If I

These poems form the core of a Haunting Collection Titled "What If I", A raw and flinching exploration of suicidal ideation and its devastating ripple effects on survivors.

What if I gripped the wheel, engine roaring like a final scream,chasing shadows down a midnight vein of road—problems dissolving in the blur, accelerator pressed to bone,adrenaline, a wildfire surging, electric and alive,until the tree rises sudden, a sentinel of the end.Impact: a thunderclap of glass and steel,fast, they say, painless in its mercy—but the aftermath, a shattered mosaic,unrecognizable, a blood-broken mess,limbs twisted like forgotten promises,face a mask no mirror could forgive.Darkness cloaks the wreckage, silent sentinel,unseen till dawn's reluctant light.Family slumbers one last unknowing night,hearts unburdened by the void I've carved,until the cop's grim knock shatters dawn—words like shrapnel: accident, or choice?The news a freight train through their world,waking them to a loss that echoes endlessly.In that self-hatred's grip, so deep and dark,the crash seems clean, a thief in the night—but it leaves ruins, not release,a family's forever fractured,sleep stolen, dawn poisoned,the what-if a wound that never heals.

What if I gather the pills like quiet white moons,

swallow them down with the last of the water,

then sink into the bed that has never truly held me—

finally a promise of a full night’s sleep,

no bad dreams clawing at the edges,

no restless turning beneath heavy sheets,

no dawn dragging me back to the hollow ache

of waking empty, again and again.

It was soft, I remember—

the drift gentle, almost kind,

a lullaby the world forgot to sing.

Morning arrives, pale and ordinary.

My car still sleeps in the drive.

Mom calls my name once, twice—

Then pushes the door open to silence.

She finds me arranged like a question no one can answer,

skin already borrowed from winter.

Her hand reaches, touches—

and the cold that lived in me all along

passes into her like an inheritance she never asked for.

She collapses there,

a mother folded over her lost child,

The chill spreading from my stillness

into her heart, her breath, her bones—

a frost that no spring will ever thaw.

In that self-hatred’s deepest cradle,

The pills seemed like a doorway to peace,

a soft ending in a familiar place—

but they only opened a wider wound,

leaving her to carry the cold I could no longer bear,

alone in the room where I finally slept.

What if I climb the railing of a bridge,

one of so many rising cold and high above the water,

city lights flickering like distant, indifferent eyes.

The river below rushes black and swift,

faster than the tears I finally let fall,

a churning promise waiting to swallow everything.

Stomach hollowed by a drop that hasn’t happened yet—

a sick, weightless lurch unlike any other,

wind whipping the last coherent thought away.

Then the lean forward, the brief free-fall,

air roaring past like a lifetime compressed into seconds.

The river hits—

And I feel nothing at all.

Eight days lost to the current and the tide.

Eight days of my name echoing in frantic voices,

phones ringing unanswered,

posters taped to lampposts,

searchers combing banks with flashlights and prayers.

On the ninth morning, a couple on their quiet walk

stumble upon what the water has returned:

a body broken against coastal rock,

skin torn, features rearranged by merciless stone—

as ruined outside as I believed I was within.

Now the ugliness I carried in secret

is carved permanently, undeniable,

a destroyed face no family can unsee.

The gentle memories they kept of me—

smiles in photographs, laughter caught mid-frame—

overwritten by this final, brutal image.

What if I turn the gun on myself—

bought it to shield me from the world’s sharp edges,

from strangers, from threats that wore human faces.

Now the danger lives deeper,

coiled quiet behind my eyes,

whispering louder than any intruder ever could.

Just six pounds of pressure—

Six pounds to silence the roar inside my skull.

It was deafening, relentless.

My neighbor of three years pounds on the door,

phone pressed to her ear, voice trembling to 911.

Police shoulder their way in.

The air turns metallic; iron coats their throats.

Even outside, neighbors gather, murmuring,

as crimson and faint pink bloom across walls and ceiling

like careless brushstrokes.

I lie arranged like a final canvas—

the last stroke, deliberate and complete.

Friends step in to scrub the walls,

pack boxes, haul away what’s left of me—

My family can’t cross the threshold

of that small, quiet room

that held me safe from their worry,

their reaching hands, and their offers of help.

A closed casket sinks into the earth.

Tears fall, heavy and unanswered,

for the choice I made alone.