Bravery

A handful of years ago a childhood/early teenage-hood friend of mine hung himself. As he was/is the first of my most close friends to commit suicide (by that I mean the first person I knew in and out that has died in any way), I have had a hard time addre

I remember discussing with Timothy-

after we had watched a stolen porn and

drank down some vodka I was clever enough

to steal-

how cowardly it was to kill yourself, how

despite the worst of the world

a man always had a chance to make it better. He

hated my cigarettes, telling me that it was

a cowards way of cowardice, a child's way to

cut short the strings of long life. And when I observed his

funeral by sitting alone, as he sat alone

thinking about him, as he thought about himself,

and smoking two packs of camels in a row,

I saw that he bore more courage than I had, he

killed himself at once, as I just grasped on to

the baby-death of tobacco. When the smokes

were gone I could barely breath, and I thought

of how strange it must have been for him to

feel death count him out. Timothy's legs twitching

and bare, and how his perfectly clear lungs were,

even then, stronger and more brave

than mine.