_Life is like a sharp stick, _I realized as I stood over the endless view. I was dangiling at the end of my life; I had reached the end of the stick. Because that’s what we’re taught. Life only gets harder from here, so by default, we are left hanging by one arm at the point of the stick, our helpless body swaying above the abyss.

I breathed in the sweet air of this infinite night. Does the world go on after you die? Maybe the world stops—just for a moment— and in this beautiful moment, both time and gravity break their rules. Maybe the death of a soul worth breaking the rules for.

I wanted it end, but I wanted to be grieved. If time or humans wont grieve me, who will? Will nature? No nature uses humans. Corpses are deprived of their warmth. Nature stole it. And air makes you known to predetors, who will use you to stay alive. It’s a depressing thought, but it is real. No one will grieve me once I die. Everyone’s worried about falling off their own branch.

I considered jumping now. But don’t I owe it to world that cared for me to watch one more sunrise? One more bloom one more morning.

I smiled, excited it’s almost over. Maybe if I fall off my branch during the beauty of an orange sky, then people will pay more attention.

Mom always told me I was smart. She was right, of course; who else would take the metaphor so seriously? _Life was like a sharp stick; it only gets harder as you move forward. The branch narrrower, smaller. _

So wouldn’t it make sense to end it quickly before it got any harder? God knows I don’t need anymore challenges.

I imagined my body plummeting off the cliff. I had thought my method of death carefully. A slow fall will give me enough time to replay my life, a pathetic thing. I have ruined every chance I got to change my life.

Who knows, maybe life will be worth living at the bottom of the cliff, or at the top of the sky, in a place called heaven.

Finally, the sun rose up from behind the mountains. Like the inside of an egg, the contents spilled of the sky just as easily as I could dab color with a paint brush. A swirl of oranges and reds and pinks and blues and purples and yellows and every color that I could name was there. And it was beautiful. Almost too beautiful of a moment for this to be the end of my stick. But no, my time was up, and like this sunrise, I had to die eventually. _But the sunrise will come back tomorrow, t_he child in me thought. The bird will sing again and the world will go on without me.

So I jumped before the sunrise was over, barely aware of my own movement. I was like a ghost, watching my body plummet in slow motion. Even a stranger could tell not mistake my eyes for anticipation. It was fear that was written on my face in my final moments. It was doubt, it was deep regret.

That should have been the end. But it wasn’t. While I wil never be able to get time on my side, gravity seemed to push me towards a near by clif, beyond the abyss. Where surely I was to die because even though it’s not the ground, it’s still a long jump. And a long fall, which I was reminded of as the ground got closer, and closer and closer and closer and I could see the bugs on the cliff and closer and I closed my eyes— and there they stayed. Closed. And than nothing at all. My mind, for the first time since I was a child, was empty. I was dead.

I heard my family members moarn me from my hospital bed, heard my mothers tears. Except, that wasn’t possible. I couldn’t be dead if I could hear. And sure enough, a miracle was to happen, simply because it want needed. It was a waste of a wish, me, who craved death, being brought back, while there was ghosts in my nightmeres who cursed my name for getting the second chance they longed for. I silently despised my mother for praying for me.

I relived that there were two options for me, kill myself while they left the room, or show signs of being alive. Turns out I didn’t have to choose because the machine started beeping when it detected a pulse. Yay.

Or at least that’s how my family reacted, cheers, happy tears, more praying, and a lot of tears. Yay she survived. They probably thought I just too. But I muust have been in a coma of some sorts because I could see or move or speak. So I guess I’ll be crippled for the rest of my life.

The severity of the situation hit me: I wasn’t going to be a be able to move, maybe I wa paralyzed. And suddenly, I didn’t want death, or being eternally bed ridden. I wanted that life that I flung off the cliff. I wanted to pain and I wanted the love and I wanted to feel. Death was never what I wanted. Life is so much more than its end. What I wanted was second beginning, which meant the end of my old one.

So I guess I got it in the end. A second chance. A new branch.