‘Six Months after Contemplating Suicide’
— Nix Thérèse
I love that “contemplating” is the verb we’re left with in the title. It implies that we're really examining how someone's mortality can feel so weighted and at the forefront. So, it’s surprising that the poem is almost ethereal and mythic in its interrogation: “Some days you knelt on coins / in those yellow hours. // You lit a flame // to your shadow / and ate // scorpions with your naked fingers.” The trials that the “you” has put their body through are at once both stunning and powerful. Holding yourself upright while coins imprint your knees, setting fire to anything that creeps behind you, not being concerned with stingers or venom—all of this requires a sense of self-determination through ritual. These rituals require one to take in or be without, and the tension arises from this push/pull of the body interacting with the world. The fantastic imagery allows us to enter the poem with a reverence for how the “you” is still working to connect, even through slight violence.
The ambiguity of the “you” leads us to question who the speaker is addressing. Because of this, we’re implicated in knowing this feeling or knowing someone who knows. We’re called into mediation, brought to the shower-water that drenches. Since we’re connected, we’re called to think about who else needs this reflection. Google says I’ve visited the poem 25 separate times and that speaks to how often I've found someone to share this poem with. The constant enjambment makes this poem sprawl down the page and feel as enclosed as a house sprinkled with soft downpour. How blessed we are to be invited to kiss the goat’s “trembling horns” and come back alive.