Several months ago, I woke up in a blinding hangover to a woman I've grown so close to, unconscious and unresponsive. A woman who has meant more to me than almost any human I've met. She had overdosed the night before. Once I woke her, fragile and weak, I wrapped her up, laid her in my bed, and while she slept off the pills, I wrote this poem. I knew her struggles matched so many others, a deep pain and vulnerability that we are all hesitant to talk about. Suicide, alcoholism, heartbreak, abuse, insecurities. It's the elephant in the room. I wanted to address this by sharing this moment of her story. This piece is titled "Siren Song".

All she wants is what she deserves.
To be admired,
Told her lips gleam like rubies,
Heavy under this ocean of her,
That even when riptides carry below her untamed brows,
Changing currents on her freckles
Sailors beg to die over the curves of her lashes.
Limbs and tiny hairs broken and sinking.
That she is greater than any unexplorable underwater discovery.
she says she can never perfect her lipstick but
The sea creatures all call her barnacle tongue their home,
siren song loud and daunting,
As if the void of her throat is vast enough
Anglers and giant squid stretch out comfortably,
The aches of her reach deeper than this.
All I want to tell her is keep breathing
When the pressure is too much,
When she’s at the bottom and sunlight can’t find her,
When the sharks circle above her, the stench of blood in her scales,
I want to say keep swimming,
There’s cities in her coral heart divers travel miles to see.
National geographic magazines dedicated to her mystery,
graveyards in her honor.
her magnetism is what gave the bermuda triangle a bad name.
Salt can’t create a being more beautiful than this,
Bright and elegant.
She’s fading with plankton and parasites
An unsinkable ship nestled in the sand.
Cameras flash and they say things like
“It’s still so beautiful.” And
“What a shame,”
“What a waste.”