sometimes i think about when i'm going to die.

i think about what i'll look like in the mirror, what i'll look like in my coffin.

i wonder about who i will have loved.

i wonder if anyone will have loved me.

i think about how it'll happen. if i'll lie down on the shower floor and take every pill in the house. or if i'll drive so far away, i never come back, all the way into a gnarled oak tree that folds me up into millions of neat squares i wonder if i'll find something tall and fly off, if i'll take a silver knife and write my stories on my skin until all the blood is gone from my bones.

the thought of a funeral is scary.

i don't want anyone to see my skin.

it feels wrong to think about strangers hands dressing my cold body up, feels weird to think about someone picking out a color of tie, a nice suit to stuff my bones into.

i wonder if they'd bury me in my sweater if i asked.

but what if i don't die? what if i don't kill myself, what if the birthday cake candles keep adding up and the clocks never stop and my lungs don't fill with water. what if i make it past 22, past 35 and 47 and 63 and i don't die, i don't stop breathing?

how am i going to live with myself then?

i think i just want to be loved.

but i don't really know what i want.

or if i want anything.

this isn't a cry for help or screams that never get heard, not like the others. this is just living.

i guess.