Laura Brown
 
You packed one morning,
caught the Toronto bus,
disappeared like a chalk mark
in a rainstorm.
There are two kinds of suicide,
the one that leaves you rigored
on a slab, and the other
that keeps you walking
like pneumonia, sick to death
at the stalemate life has become.
 
The circumstances that brought
you here are common:
escaping parents, growing up fast,
settling for the appearance
of a sure thing that is akin to
playing the horses.
Now all bets are off and suburbia
has you in a chokehold.
 
One child shadows you, sensing
your need for departure, while another
grows inside, willing pills back
into bottles, and she won’t let you
take her down the wrong tunnel.
While you seek final synapse fireworks,
the baby roils in her dissent.
Those kicks say, let me live,
then do as you please.
 
One normal morning,
husband at work, children at school,
house in order, food in the fridge,
mad money,  a single suitcase,
a newspaper with jobs circled
clutched in death grip.
Sitting on the bus, headed north,
you realize there is another kind
of suicide. The expatriation of self,
the erasing of human traces,                                                    
letting go of a past you never wanted,                                   
circling up into thin air mythology,                                           

as if to nothing.