You stroked and caressed self-harm as a friend,

a shadow and prop in a game of pretend.

How like you to buck an established trend

and exit the stage on a masculine end.

Exhausted to death by the Thought Gestapo,

you took to the talk of Greta Garbo.

Acting with cowardice or bravado?

We'll mull over that on another Bardo.

You likened the fall to a motorway crash,

a mangled wreck straggling the tracks.

I taught you to reconsider the facts:

remember how you responded to that?

Weighing my words like stones of scripture,

you drew your face in a bigger picture.

I thought the smile was a permanent fixture;

when did the voice become more than a whisper?