Mathias Svalina

The Wine-Dark Sea



The wrinkles around my eyes
& my cracked teeth:

finally
some objective facts.

What I am scared of most
is never transmitted.

If I had will
I’d be dead.

I can’t remember when
I decided I would kill myself.

It happened all at once,
not like a levee breaking,

like a car,

at the end of a workday,
turning off the road
& into a driveway.