Brian Eckert

I put the revolver to my temple, reconsider, and stick the barrel in my mouth. I sink to my knees on the floor and look at myself in a full-length mirror.

Hanging on the wall above the mirror is a Van Gogh self-portrait completed shortly before his suicide.

I think about Van Gogh’s suicide often. I think about whether he would have killed himself had he been successful in his lifetime.

Then again, perhaps he would not have become famous if he hadn’t killed himself.

Van Gogh shot himself in the abdomen, a sure sign that he was not serious about dying. A shot to the head would have done the deed straight and quick.

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Published by Terror House Magazine

I.

The first time I saw Maya she was laying on the train tracks on a clear blue summer afternoon.

“What are you doing?” I said, bringing my bicycle to rest alongside the tracks.

“Waiting for the train,” she said.

She didn’t move or look in my direction. Dark sunglasses covered her eyes, which I imagined to be blue.

Later, I would find out that they are green.

“I didn’t know the train ran here anymore,” I said.

“Well, it does. It’ll be here in about ten minutes,” she said.

She pulled a cigarette out of a pack on her stomach, lit up, and took a long drag. The smoke hung around her in the breezeless air. I got the sense my presence irritated her, so I continued biking down the tracks.

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The sun in my pocket won’t go down.

How can I sleep?

I cannot live like this,

said humanity as it was borne from ash and bone and blood.

I want to drive the backroads,

take the shortcut past your front porch,

wave hello.

The brakes don’t work.

I cannot stop.

I cannot live like this.

I want to be a postcard in a country store that you send to your mother.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t make it. I was driving the back roads,” you’ll write,

and send me off,

and finally I’ll have a destination.

I will be a reminder of the blood

that surges and swells in the

eternity of consciousness,

endless river

flowing past your front porch.

I want to be a sun in your pocket that won’t go down,

won’t let you sleep,

as you drive the back roads

trying to outswim the blood,

trying to find a way to live like this.