The Border of Paradise

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I’ve never known a man who has taken his own life, and so I’ve never read a suicide letter, seeing as how the final words of such uncelebrated and self-condemned souls are so privately guarded. Still, I can’t help but think such letters all must be the same, because what else can be said but, over and over again, Sorry, sorry, I am so sorry, in the way that someone newly smitten can only say, I love you, I love you, I love you, like one of the Wellbrook patients I grew accustomed to in my incarcerations. In particular I am thinking of a schizophrenic woman with chin-length, ashen hair, stooped in her wheelchair, who repeated the word plum, such that the hum of that word faded into the background of everything, including the screams of other patients, the soft rush of water, plum, puh-lum, until the word shed its meaning, becoming nothing but sound.

This motel room is not as depressing as I thought it would be. Someone has taken pains to make the place palatable; I have yet to see a cockroach. Only one or two flies the size of kidney beans occasionally dive-bomb the air. The bed’s comforter itches, but is printed with an assortment of nice English roses. Note that a man conflicted about his suicide will reflexively stop and smell the proverbial roses. The cheap blue curtains let the light through, and when I first walked to the window to pull them shut I saw that one of them had been carefully stitched near the edge, where I’m assuming it was once torn, and in the end I take this all to mean that this place is as good as any to die. I didn’t want to end things anywhere near the house, where my wife could find me — or, even more horrible to consider, my children.

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