RELATIONSHIP Poem: Death Wish, by Jordanna Miller

I wish you were dead.

Does that make me a bad
person?

Maybe.

Anyway.

I wish you were dead.

It’s strange, you know?
Carrying around
this kind
of hate.

Because it’s not the
boiling burning bubbling
kind that wakes me up at night.

No.

it’s the quiet kind, the passive
kind. The kind of hatred
that sits in my chest
next to my other heart.

Thumps in my chest
with my other heart.
Only a whisper, but listen…

Can you hear it?

I can. On occasion.
Like when someone mentions
your name, and the hatred, the rage
skips a beat,

stops.

Then begins
palpitating,
pounding,
pumping,
so loud, my ears ring,
so fast, my chest
aches, swells, throbs,
and this rage, this hate,
leaks into my veins, flows
straight to my brain, wraps
around my brain, and tightens
until my frontal lobe is gasping
for air, until my cerebrum is turning
blue, until finally, my thrashing
hippocampus coughs, splutters, then spits
out a single sentence (“I wish
And as this single sentence reverberates
in my head he was
the hatred’s grip will loosen,
my frontal lobe will gulp
down mouthfuls of air,
dead”),
and my cerebrum will regain that rosy hue.

All because of that single sentence.
“I wish he wa-

I wish you were dead.
I wish you were dead.

Why?
Because if you died,
I wouldn’t have to think about you
ever again.

I wouldn’t have to worry
about you running
your slimy little tongue
across the folds of my brain,
pushing your slimy little tongue

into the folds of my
brain, pushing, rubbing, running
that slimy, wet tongue
into my brain, against
my brain, across
my brain again, and again, and

God, I know I’m a bad person,
but I need you
to die. If you did, maybe
I wouldn’t have to

listen to people
talk about you and what you’re “going
through.”

I wouldn’t have to watch them shake
their heads in disappointment
when I shrug, and state that I don’t give a damn
about your “pain,” your “suffering.”

Because as far as I’m concerned, you could swallow
a handful of pills, and die on your knees
with vomit dribbling down your chin, and your head
slumped forward into the bowl of your toilet,
and it still wouldn’t be enough
(I was a goddam-

It will never be enough
(A goddamned chi-
But it doesn’t have to be.
I’ll take anything at this point.
Anything.
(Christ, I can’t sleep. I can’t sleep).

And so, I’ll keep wishing
for your death
in bed, when the alarm clock
flashes 11:11pm
in bright red.

I’ll keep praying for you to die
at night, hands clasped together
while I howl at an overcrowded
sky.

And I’ll keep hoping
(cross my hearts, hope you die
cross my hearts, hope you die
cross my heart, hope to

You know I could do it myself, right?
If I wanted.
I could blow your brains
out tomorrow.
If I wanted.

But I won’t, because I’m an adult.
I can’t, ‘cause I’m still a kid.