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How hard is it to kill a person?


 How hard is it to kill a person?


The window is open. I could see the sun folding into the trees, slow and indifferent. Iron bars—white, knitted like a cage—holding me in place. Outside, a bald, sweating man pretends urgency on a phone call. Inside, she talks.

She is really talking.

I look at her.


Her eyes—dull. Not empty. Just… unused. Long eyelashes trying too hard to convince you otherwise. She smiles, but it doesn’t arrive where it should. It dies halfway to her eyes. 

There’s a small cut above her left eye. Her nose is sharp enough to have made it.

Light maroon top. Red lipstick—almost matching. Almost convincing. But her lips betray her. Pale beneath the effort.

Cute? Beautiful?

I try to decide.

I fail.

She asks something. I don’t hear it. No—that’s not true. I hear every word. I just refuse to let them land.

Because she is standing there—alive, speaking, existing—and yet, nothing in her feels alive.

So I play along. I nod. I laugh when she laughs.


Her smile widens.

little office kitchen shortens. 

Her eyes stay dead.

And then—


What if I had a knife?

What if I pushed it into her chest?

Would that color return? Would that borrowed red become real? Would her smile finally reach her eyes—or would it disappear before it ever gets there?


She keeps talking about her project.

I keep smiling.

The distance between us is one step. The distance between thought and action is smaller.

What would it take to make her feel something?


I imagine the knife in my hand. I test its weight. Its edge. In my mind, it slides in clean. No drama. No scream—just confusion.

For the first time, she feels something real.

I see it in her eyes.

Finally.

Someone once said it’s hard to be normal. Hard to live without crossing the line. But if all you’ve ever been is normal—how hard or easy would it be to step over it just once?


Not for me. Not for my own self. 

For her.

Would I pay that price? Prison. Condemnation. A lifetime erased— gone in a puff

just so she could feel, for a moment? What if that moment was a lifetime for her?


Is killing hard?

Or is it only hard the first time?

Could I do it again?

Or would one moment be enough—watching life finally arrive in her eyes as it leaves her body at the same beautiful time?


They say death makes you feel alive.

Her coffee is finished.

She’s leaving.

I didn’t kill her.


The knife, suddenly, weighs a hundred kilos. Or maybe it never existed.

I don’t pity her. I don’t feel for her. I have no empathy for her

But I can see it—


I can see her soul leaving, dying, decaying.

Comments

  1. Wow, this really made me think. The tension in the poem is crazy, and your descriptions are so vivid.🙌

    ReplyDelete

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