wake-up call

a man at the edge of his rope
sat with a pistol in his mouth one saturday night
going over all the things that had happened in his life
which he felt had led to this particular moment &
this particular pistol in his mouth---
he pondered all those who he thought might suffer because of
what would happen when he pulled the trigger &
he pondered all that might not even flinch because of that
very same reason.

in a last desperate move,
he wrote a small ad & posted it on Craigslist---
it was aimed at finding a reason to live &
he even titled it something to that effect.

after doing so, he made a pact with himself that if he did not
get a response in an hour which was sufficient,
he would pull the trigger & splatter his head all over the
wall behind him.

in a few minutes there was an email in his box
written by a man who had stage-4 cancer &
he was pissed off by this ad that the man with the pistol had posted---
he cursed out the man & told him that
he should be so fortunate to be alive to ponder his
misery & that
though it was a cliché,
it was only when one was obliged to die
that they wanted to live the most---

the man with the pistol unloaded it.