They’re coming in
a little closer each time,
sometimes it feels like suicide;
I’m just sitting here waiting
as they come closer in
Breaking on dry grains of sand
gently it sounds like my lover
and he loves me
and wants to take me
with him
and I want to go too
He’s coming for me closer
a little closer each time;
sometimes it feels like suicide
only two feet from my two feet
I’m anxious
and nervous;
anxious nervosia
licking my toes
lapping at my ankles
I didn’t know he’d be so cold.
I don’t want to die
no, I don’t want to die
in the arms of a stone-cold lover;
it doesn’t feel like suicide
this time…
© Sabrina Santa Clara, 1987
A note, looking back:
I wrote this at twenty-two, in a season of my life shadowed by depression and suicidality. I don’t share it because that darkness was beautiful — it wasn’t. I share it for the turn at the end. Even then, at the water’s edge, something in me refused. I didn’t want to die in the arms of that stone-cold lover. I wanted to live.
I survived that time, and I carry it into the work I do now — I speak from the far side of it, not the theory of it. I keep this poem here as a witness to the young woman who chose to stay, and to the plain truth that these seasons can be survived.
If you’re near that edge yourself, please don’t stand there alone. Reach for someone you trust — or, in the U.S., call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You are worth staying for.