Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

ablation

fear I’m starting to resemble him… To die. To choose the time, the place, and the manner, discrete or spectacular. To leave a note or to go si lently wi thout leaving anything behind. Suicide, among other things, is mundane and without major consequences. I will depart and leave everything in order. It is an inherited habit from my father who never permitted untidiness. I will give my clothes to Catholic Services, my books to the central research library, my photos to my oldest son, my non-published poems to my granddaughter who at 12 has already written some nice things, my records will stay where they are because no one still uses 33s… Will I leave behind a suicide

note? I hesitate. What is there to say to my family, my friends, or my colleagues? I shot myself because I can no longer get it up? What then? Do people kill themselves for that? For something so small! Not just for that, but for a bunch of reasons that accumulate and make life unlivable. Kill yourself now? Now that the hardest and most humiliating part is over? It pained me to think of those horrible diapers that I had to change multiple times a day. It makes me nauseous just thinking about it. There, that would have been the perfect time to refuse this inhumane treatment. A treatment that no dignified man can accept without suf fering, without being taken over by shame, a silent shame, cold, insidious. I functioned with a spirit completely occupied

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