Rachel from north London: Last year I killed a man

Rachel from north London: Last year I killed a man . In this post Ms. North links to an article in The Guardian written by a train driver whose train had 'on a perfectly normal summer's day' mown down a man who had stepped onto the tracks and calmly waited for death.  Last year a friend of mine took a large overdose of her prescribed medication and lay down to die.  Someone found her and she was taken to hospital.  On the way there one of the paramedics told her, 'You did not really intend to die.  If you had you would have thrown yourself from a building or jumped in front of  a train'.  Damned if you do, equally damned if you don't.  Perhaps someone should send this compassionate paramedic a copy of the linked article.

In case you're wondering where I have been, I am now sovereign of this kingdom.

Why?

We know how he died but we don't know why. A few nights ago a neighbour killed himself by jumping from the balcony of his sixth floor flat. He died, they said, of 'horrific' internal injuries. We don't know how long his broken body lay on the grass before he was discovered. His closest neighbours cannot even remember his name. They only remember that he was 'very mentally ill'. He was deemed worthy of a couple of columns in the local paper.

We know how he died but we don't know why.
Perhaps we never will.

Unlit Stove

There was no warmth in that room
The stove was never lit
And upstairs her children slept
Milk and cookies beside their cots
Huddled beneath heavy eiderdowns
A towel blocking the vents in the door
While downstairs something rots
It rots, it rots

The nurse came but she was too late
The mother had already embraced her fate
Coal gas descended and her neighbour slept
Enveloped in dreams beneath crisp sheets
Of cream, a freshly baked cake
Coated in icing sugar, breath slowing
Unaware. It was not that he did not care
For he had imbibed that poison too

A Heavy Voice Hangs In Her Head

Preoccupied With Death

Preoccupied with death
Especially her own
Simple and repetitive
The bottle of pills
On her bedside table
Beckons her

A heavy voice hangs in her head
Slit your pretty white throat, it said

Food holds no answers
Starvation holds no answers
Purging, then running, hiding
The monster that lives inside
She rips her skin open and
Her sluttish coloured blood seeps out

A heavy voice hangs in her head
Slit your pretty white throat, it said

The sun comes out
On Christmas day
She watches it though
The sealed window
The grimy glass
Of her hospital room

A heavy voice hangs in her head
Slit your pretty white throat, it said