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for every time i dialed the wrong number

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As far as I’m concerned, a suicide hotline and a psychic hotline

are the same thing. Both predict the date of the caller’s death

while sugarcoating it as an open heart, a caring listener

on the other end of the line.

At my father’s wedding last summer the bride held herself

like a forest fire, the kind that burns all the other trees down

before vanishing into its own pile of ashes like a wilting phoenix.

But I’ve read psychology textbooks about defense mechanisms,

and self-immolation wasn’t listed in any of the pages.

I used to believe that repression existed

until the news of Kurt Cobain’s death broke,

and I still catch my father weeping over it years later.

I am difficult to handle because no shade of blue in the universe

can ever quite match my hue of sadness.

Love me like the closest version of that blue on the color wheel

you can find, and we’ll be set for ages.

Or better yet, be my suicide hotline so I can memorize

your number instead: Whenever I want to kill myself,

put parentheses around the word want. Inform me that want

is not the same thing as will.

Tell me to call back again sometime.


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