Tw: suicide attempts
dissolved
The first time
she swallowed
a handful
of pills, she can’t
get them down
at once, has to take extra
gulps
of water. She chews
a few,
the chalky residue
stuck
in the landscape
of her teeth. She soon
panics,
the fear teasing
up
her
spine like a lover’s
kiss. This isn’t
what she wants.
The paramedics
shove charcoal down
her
throat,
her mouth filled
with the black
residue and half-
dissolved pills
she retches up. The next time
she fingers the glossy
metal, the 9mm her boyfriend
taught her to shoot but not
to fear.
She presses it
against her temple,
tucks it under her chin, wraps
her lips around it – the deadliest
blow-job. Takes a deep
breath. Releases
her mouth. Places the gun
in the drawer. Lies
down. Now she says she doesn’t
want to die,
just sleep, forever,
a dreamless sleep
where she exists
but has dissolved, unlike the chalky
pills
she vomited twenty
years ago.
Courtney LeBlanc is the author of the chapbooks All in the Family (Bottlecap Press) and The Violence Within (Flutter Press) and is an MFA candidate at Queens University of Charlotte. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in Public Pool, Rising Phoenix Review, The Legendary, Germ Magazine,Quail Bell Magazine, Brain Mill Press, Haunted Waters Press, and others. She loves nail polish, wine, and tattoos. Read her blog atwww.wordperv.com, follow her on twitter: @wordperv, or find her on facebook: www.facebook.com/poetry.CourtneyLeBlanc.