Poems That I Form

happy birthday to me

The words are weird in my mouth;
They are every year.
The problem is that I never think that I'd make it to the next year.
Last year I would swear I'd be gone by sixteen.
I had a rope, I had multiple trees, and I no longer had the will to live.
I thought I'd be dead by my fifteenth.
I was preparing to die before my fifteenth,
With my head under cold pool water,
Until I heard the voice of my childish younger brother asking me what I was doing.
I thought I wouldn't make it to my thirteenth.
I was prepared to die in the summer between sixth and seventh grade, already being a skeleton.
I just need to slit my wrists and bleed out.

So how did I make it to another milestone?
How did I press myself to keep going?

I don't know.
I don't know why I am choosing to keep on living.

But goddamn it,
If I'm going to keep living,
I'm going to make it the best life I can have.

Happy seventeenth, Esperanza.
You're still here.