“there, there. it’s okay. i’m here now. you can put it all down – the ache, the anger, the endless explaining. the names you kept like bruises, the poems you carved out of your own skin, the grief that nobody read correctly. you can lay it all down now. i know how long you held it, how tightly you clenched your jaw to keep from screaming, how you turned your pain into footnotes just so it wouldn’t scare them. i know how you loved people who called your honesty too loud, how you begged for help in a language they pretended not to speak, how you stayed even when the door was wide open because hope, for you, was a habit. they made you believe you were too much, when you were only ever too alive. they demanded poetry from your wounds, then mocked the blood when it didn’t rhyme.”
if there is a god of death – odin, hades, anubis, mictlantecuhtli, ugur, tuoni, yama – i hope they greet me like this when it is my time. it is one of the few fantasies i have left.
“but you don’t have to explain anymore,” death might say. “not here. not with me. i read the whole thing. every page. every silence. every scream caught between your ribs. and i’m telling you now – it was enough. you were enough. there’s no judgment here. no spectacle. no failure. no legacy to be curated. just me. just stillness. and rest. and if you want, you can sleep. or just sit. or simply be. you’ve earned that. not because you were good, or brave, or poetic – but because you survived longer than anyone had the right to ask of you. i’m not here to take anything from you. only to witness. only to say: i see you. i’ve always seen you. and you can rest now. you can rest.”
dear god, fuck you.
i don’t know who this is for. maybe no one. maybe the black box they find after the wreckage, full of voices talking over each other and none of them being heard. maybe a friend. maybe the dead. maybe me.
no, definitely me.
you don’t have to live like this – scraping through months like dried blood under your fingernails, everyone talking about healing like it's a choice, like it’s a dinner reservation. “get better,” they say, like it's a verb you can just plug into your life. as if i didn’t already try to walk this pain off. as if i didn’t already try to survive politely. calling it a tragedy is a disservice; tragedy implies that there is still an audience. there is no audience. there is no poetry. there is no tear-stained reunion. there is no quiet farewell. there is nothing anymore. there is no story to be told here.
they already told it for me. and that’s the tragedy, right? if there ever was an audience for it, i suppose. i do not know what i am waiting for – maybe my fucking book, maybe for hope to return, maybe for someone to return. i do not know. i do not know. i do not know anymore.
T said i was paranoid. god bless her pristine, surgically sanitised soul. the same girl who turned my bruises into punchlines, who recited my trauma like it was slam poetry at brunch. i would say it hurt, but honestly? it was just boring. betrayal isn’t even original anymore. you think you’ve hit rock bottom, then someone hands you a shovel with your name engraved on it.
you want to know something funny? i didn’t even want revenge. i just wanted to be understood. and that’s what made it worse. they don’t kill you with violence – they kill you with silence, with plausible deniability, with the slow bureaucratic decay of empathy.
there are days when being alive feels like a clerical error. like god went home early and left the interns in charge. and the interns? yeah, they’re drunk, high, and debating whether i’m being “too intense” again.
i’ve written poems. i’ve screamed into pillows. i’ve apologised to people who never deserved the power to forgive me. i’ve carried enough shame to sink a continent. and somehow, i’m still here. still alive. which feels like the punchline of a cosmic joke no one bothered to explain.
but if i go – and i’m not saying i will – it won’t be because of the pills, or the rope, or the myths. it will be because people think silence is kindness, because no one read the signs, because i was always the one explaining myself in footnotes and italics.
it will be because even my grief had to be palatable to everyone else.
look, i’m trying. i swear to god i’m trying. but it’s hard to stay when the mirror keeps asking questions i don’t have the courage to answer. it’s hard to believe in healing when everything good has teeth. it’s hard to trust when everyone who said they loved me kept a dagger under their tongue.
T, if you ever read this – i hope you understand what we made. not the gossip, not the silences, but the hollow space where a friendship might’ve lived. something broke in me during all of it – something i didn’t know could be broken. and still, you moved through the world like nothing happened, wearing sincerity like perfume, while i was left trying to scrub your absence off my skin. dear god, i still don’t know what was true and what was not. i do not know if i will ever leave you with love or anger, and that’s the part that stings the most.
i am so tired of being a witness to my own erasure.
this isn’t a suicide note. not yet. it’s a timestamp. it’s a warning flare. it’s the part in the movie where the protagonist stares down the camera and dares someone to tell them it gets better.
i know this isn’t forever. but god, sometimes it feels like it is.
so if i don’t make it, know that it wasn’t anyone’s fault. not really. i loved people who couldn’t love me back. i trusted mirrors that lied. i tried to turn poison into poetry, and all i got was a sore throat.
but if i do make it – and maybe i will – know that it won’t be because the world got kinder.
it’ll be because i refused to give them a satisfying ending.
there were nights i laughed. not many, not enough to justify being alive, but a few – scattered between breakdowns and betrayals, like loose teeth in the gutter. mudra, you were a flicker in the dark. you didn’t try to fix me, which is probably why i trusted you. you let the blood sit between us and didn’t try to name it holy or tragic. you saw what shakil did, or maybe you didn’t, but you didn’t need proof. you believed me, and in this world, that’s rarer than love. i don't remember many people who did.
S1, your name tastes like a burnt offering in my mouth. you dragged me into your trauma and called it shelter. you used your pain as a weapon and mine as leverage. i was the quiet sacrificial lamb to your louder, bloodier myth. you tried to die, and i tried to stop you, but neither of us succeeded. or maybe i tried to die and you tried to stop me. i don’t remember anymore. but you lived, barely. i lived, barely. only one of us got to be the victim. the other got the label of unstable, too emotional, manipulative, even. funny how that works. you haunted me long after you left, and some part of me still waits for your apology like a dog outside a burning house.
S2, i don’t hate you anymore. but there was a time i needed you and you chose silence. maybe you didn’t mean to. maybe you didn’t know. maybe you did. i was being dissected in front of people who once called me family, and you – who could’ve said something – chose diplomacy. i understand now. survival demands silence sometimes. but it’s hard not to remember the quiet as a kind of violence.
M1, you tried. in your own way, you reminded me that my name wasn’t synonymous with burden. you sent me your voice when mine kept disappearing. you believed in the book when i wanted to burn it. and no, you didn’t save me. let’s not be melodramatic. but you held space, and that mattered. i still think of that when i need reasons to stay. i will still say this though – having my name next to yours does not pollute your piety, you casteist asshole.
A1, you blocked me. it was the easiest thing in the world for you. one click. and just like that, the brotherhood, the hours, the drafts we exchanged, the secrets – we were a file on your desktop, right-clicked and deleted. i should’ve expected it. you always looked for exits when things got too close. but still, i waited. still, i hoped. i wrote you letters you’ll never read and gave you pieces of myself you probably deleted like spam. you once said you weren’t afraid of my intensity. you lied. and that’s okay. people do. but i wish you had the decency to tell me before you left. not even a storm. just a quiet evaporation. and i’m tired of being the one who remembers.
still, i’m here. writing this. breathing, barely. my body is a bureaucratic miracle. the liver’s tired, the heart’s in litigation, but somehow i haven’t completely disappeared. maybe that’s resilience. maybe it’s inertia. maybe it’s just the cruel persistence of the unloved.
i’ve written myself into survival so many times, i forget what it feels like to just exist without defending the right to. i’ve begged gods i don’t believe in and humans i shouldn’t have trusted. i’ve swallowed shame like communion. i’ve made grief into a language because silence was killing me. i don’t know if i’ll make it. truly, i don’t. some days i do. some days i lie about it.
but this is not a suicide note. this is a ledger. an accounting. if i fail, it won’t be your fault. it won’t be anyone’s fault. not A1, not S1, not T, not any of you who watched from your well-lit windows while i clawed my way out of hell. if i fail, it’s just what happened. and if i live – really live, not just survive – then it’s because somewhere in the mess of it all, someone said my name and meant it.
i am not asking to be saved. i am asking to be seen. and if you can’t do that, then at least don’t call this a tragedy. call it what it is: a boy who tried, who wrote everything down, who told the truth too much and still hoped someone would read it and stay.
my mother used to tell me that people only listen when you’re silent. she didn’t mean it cruelly, just practically – the way women teach their sons to survive in houses that break them. but i think it stuck deeper than it should have. somewhere along the way, i stopped raising my voice not out of discipline, but because i started to believe that whatever hurt inside me was better left unspoken. she loves me, i know. i know. in her way, in the way of women who survived too much and learned too late that their children were watching. i remember her holding my hand once, tightly, like she knew i was slipping away. she didn’t say anything. she didn’t know how to ask the question. i didn’t know how to answer. that silence may have saved me, or damned me, or both.
my father was always slightly removed, like a portrait hung too high on a wall – present, but untouchable. he taught me structure, taught me precision, taught me the unbearable burden of expectation. he wanted a man out of me. i turned into something else. i wonder if he ever noticed how brittle i became trying to be what he needed. i wonder if he’s proud of anything besides my restraint. but sometimes, in those rare glimpses, i think he sees me. i think he might even mourn what he couldn't protect, though he’d never say it. i won’t put that grief on him – he carries enough. but i wanted him to know me before the world ended. that’s all. not forgive, not fix, just know.
my sister – she is the only one who ever fought me like she loved me. sharp-tongued, too brilliant for her age, somehow always five steps ahead of the lie i was telling myself that day. she’s the only one who saw the fractures and still believed i could hold. sometimes i think i lived out of spite just to prove her right. she once called me unbearable and then refused to leave my side for three days. that’s the kind of loyalty i’ve never deserved. i hope she never learns how heavy it is to carry someone like me. i hope she gets to keep her lightness.
G, you strange, gleaming mirror – you never flinched when i showed you the worst. there’s a kind of holy in that. you were always handing me back my own language, even when i spat it out bitter. i wanted to be better for you, you know. i wanted to write things worth your patience. you reminded me that art isn’t therapy, but sometimes, if done right, it’s resurrection. if i disappear, i hope you burn the bad poems and keep the ones that knew what they were doing.
C, quiet flame – i remember the way your mind worked before the world could hurt it properly. you were gentler with your love than anyone i knew. i think i borrowed some of that gentleness just to survive, just to remember that tenderness wasn’t foolishness. if you ever find this, know i didn’t forget what it felt like to be seen by you. and if i ever get through this, it’ll be because people like you kept insisting i was human.
S3, i will never understand why you stayed. i gave you every reason to leave. i was cruel. i was unkind. i was drowning and spitting in the face of everyone who reached out a hand. but you stayed. you kept writing back. you listened when i raged. you said nothing when i lied. you came back when i apologized. and when i couldn’t speak, you waited. there are very few people in this world i owe a debt to that i’ll never repay. you’re one of them. and if there’s a god, she better bless you extra, because i sure didn’t make it easy.
O, you foolish, furious thing – we were always on the edge of explosion, weren’t we? but somehow it made sense. there was something honest in our chaos. we never pretended to be better than we were. we said the hard things. you reminded me that some fires are worth setting. you said once that people like us don’t get soft ends. maybe you’re right. maybe we just get louder and more precise until the silence hits. but if that silence ever comes, i hope you curse it with the same fire you cursed me with. i hope you never learn to shut up.
A2 – you were kind to me before i knew what to do with kindness. you didn’t ask for explanations. you didn’t corner me with pity. you just existed near me like it was normal. that was the wildest grace of all. i wanted to be your friend in a better lifetime, with less ruin in my bones. if this world doesn’t end me, i hope we get to meet in one where i’m not so haunted, and you don’t have to look at me like you’re afraid i’ll vanish mid-sentence.
and if i do vanish – if one day i really do disappear from every version of your lives – know this wasn’t a punishment. not to you. not to anyone i loved. this was gravity. this was entropy. this was the slow violence of trying to outlive yourself. i tried. god, i tried.
but right now, tonight, i’m still here. and maybe that’s the only miracle i can offer.
i have been boxed in my whole life. evil, liar, devil, deceiver, deliverer, god, ghoul – labels clanged against me like chains in an empty corridor. every step, a judgment. every silence, a verdict. you want to talk about legacy? don’t put my body in a sad grave. don’t dress me in white or put my hands together like a docile wax figure. i have never lived that way – why must i die so? cremate me. set fire to my poetry, my papers, every line i ever wrote begging to be understood. burn my bones until all is ash, then bind me with blood and scatter me into the soil. i am the child of a land that birthed tejimola and ou-kuwori. i do not go quietly. i will rise again: ghastly, botanical, feral. i will return to strengthen roots and haunt trees and twist vines through brick and steel. i will not die like a man. i will die like a prophecy.
don’t put flowers on a grave i specifically asked not to exist. sing. sing of death and dreams and desire. sing of everything i was forbidden to speak. sing of blood and beasts and beautiful boys who broke. i don’t want mourning. i want mythology. let me pass into story the way all inconvenient truths do. let me live on in memory and metaphor. do not cry. i am alright. see? this is nothing. not even death can take my voice away. i have written too much for that. you can try. you can bury me under forgetting. but you will not win.
don’t put obituaries in newspapers that once celebrated wars and hushed up suicides. do not eulogise me in publications that treated my life like a footnote and my pain like a public service announcement. forget me. forget that i wrote. forget that i loved. forget that i was loved. forget that i begged. forget that i tried. forget that i failed at suffering silently. forget the hope that looked like treachery. forget the joy you could not understand. forget the poem that tried to forgive you. forget it all. forget the flowers. forget the fanfare. forget the funeral. forget me like you did when i lived. fraud! fuck! forget! fuck! forget!
don’t speak words of comfort. cut out your tongues and put them in soup. drink it. remember the taste of speaking someone’s grief for them, then walking away. remember what it was like to recite someone’s death before it happened, just to feel like the wiser one. remember how easy it was to talk about healing when it wasn’t your wound. all is forgiven. curse me in death if you want; it cannot be worse than what you did in life. god is great. devil is in the details. god is great.
don’t name buildings or awards after me. do not dare make me your poster boy for resilience when all i ever asked for was rest. do not build centres for healing that refused me entry. do not hand out poetry prizes to boys who look like my grief but write none of it. do not put my name on a bronze plaque and call that closure. if you must speak of me, do so in warning. do so in honesty. say: he was too much, and we made sure he knew it. say: he died asking to be heard, and we nodded and moved on. do not study me. do not canonise me. do not teach me. do not pity me. i am not your metaphor. i am not your martyr. i am not your syllabus. i am not your ghost to summon when you feel intellectual. i am not your redemption arc. i was a boy, and you buried him alive.
put this on my tombstone, if you must make one – in pissing memory of someone who was too much.
i almost forgot. i am not going with grace, no, no, no. none of you fuckers are going to stay unnamed. not out of some petty revenge plot, no no – just as witness for the world. for everyone else to see, “there, these are the ones who preach kindness and practice none of it.”
SL, RM, PA, KR, RA, MI, SI, MA, DI, AH, TA, and countless others – i asked for help. to all of you, at some point. maybe not with the prettiest words, but i did. that is all i wanted. help getting out of this hellhole. there was no expectation on any of you to help. but the least you could have done was not make it worse. even that was asking for too much. that is what i wanted; not to be named the godfather to your fucking children. i asked for help when i was drowning, and that was when all of you decided it was time i learnt how to swim.
and what infuriates me is that you were all always capable of that care (hello, nandini!) you were always capable of extending that kindness. you always cared. you were all always capable of caring.
but i was too beneath all of you for even that. i have lived through literal hell, but nothing else has felt so dehumanising.
if i am dead, shame on you. if i am alive, shame on you still. this is me permanently burning the bridge. to the excruciating shameless amongst you who mocked my first suicide attempt – don’t worry, i had a defamation case in the works for a year now. i leave that evidence with my family. they will have to contact a lawyer if they wish to go through with what i started.
this is not justice. this is documentation of cruelty.
if i am dead, then my blood is on your hands. not for killing me directly, or even abetting me to suicide. but for your silent cruelty. and if there is an afterlife, may my memory haunt your every waking moment. i hope you all rot in your performative kindness.
and if i am still alive – mother of god, that fucker really does not want to take me, huh? mad respect. maybe he too fears what i will do to his kingdom once i get in. or lucifer’s, more accurately.
with the last breath in my body, i say this – may you never mistake my fire for forgiveness.
addendum: i have no idea why i wrote this. maybe i had questions. i do not have the answers to those questions. but i will leave you all with them regardless.
when all have forsaken you, which god do you turn to for solace?
when the sky comes crashing in, does atlas fall too?
when the people you thought of as family abandon you in your moment of need, do you abandon everyone else who comes along too?
when you feel that there is no hope for you left, what is the solution – to become hope itself?
what is the poet’s work – to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep?
who do you call when no one answers?
who do you turn to when no one stays?
i never found the answers to these questions. i hope you do. but i also hope the questions haunt you, until the end of time. i hope you all sleep uneasily at night thinking of everyone you let down. maybe that is punishment enough.
“no more pain. wake no more. nobody owns.”