You smile. No, it is not fatal.

The tulips are too red...they hurt me.

Perhaps you considered yourself an oracle, Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other. Thirty years now I have labored To dredge the silt from your throat. I am none the wiser.

And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die.

At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do.

The journey over the bridge had unnerved me. The river water passed me by like an untouched drink. I suspected that even if my mother and brother had not been there I would have made no move to jump.

I do not fear it: I have been there.