A. Song About the Story: “Martyr!” by Kaveh Akbar
In borrowed lives,
acting to have a death that means more
than the anonymity my father knew
at his end, than the sea of anonymity
my mother drowned in.
I play my part before you,
helpless by design, I’m
biting back desire.
I gaze at you, doctor–
you may see a patient,
but this body’s a pyre.
So don’t talk to me
as if I am a complacent thing
that only needs a line from your
well-weathered, hollow-worded script.
Don’t talk to me with cool apathy,
as if I’m blind to my own dying.
I’m not. I’ve seen it before.
Let me deplore:
“The last time I thought I wanted to die…”
I almost took my own life,
watched it drain from me
like the ninety-five percent I poured upon myself–
Ever clear, doused but
paradoxically dry,
craving the catch of fire but fearful
of being inextinguishable.
Filled with contradictions,
juxtapositions,
and a superstition that
“A drunk horse thief who stops drinking
is just a sober horse thief.”
So even if I
went back inside,
dried the body
meant to be set on fire,
meant to be a pyre,
A meaningful death I’d be denied,
consigned to living a myriad of lives,
only to die
a Martyr(!)
Quoted lines from Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar (Knopf, 2024).
Avril Song 