The Orange Line
September 21st 2005.
You are standing on the platform, waiting for the train, like you do every day. Except that today you're not going to stand back to watch it slow and stop, to watch its doors open. You're not going to step on board, find a seat and anxiously eye the route map for the duration of your journey. You're going to move forward prematurely, almost as if you're not quite au fait with how these things are done, and you're going to step out into the void that train, microseconds later, will fill.
You are waiting for the train that
will kill you.
This will not be an accident. In fact, there will be nothing about the act and the way it is carried out that will allow the slightest suspicion of the accidental. You even go so far as to stand at the left-most edge of the platform (even though it is far from ideal for train visibility, leap timing and so forth) to make certain that none of the other commuters are nearby, within a radius that would allow bystanders to ask "did he jump? Or was he pushed?"
Artwork © Jennifer König
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You don't know why this is important to you, but it may have something to do with selfishness. Because you agree that the manner of your suicide is selfish, even if you don't agree that the act itself is (or that it is cowardly, for that matter). You're aware that there will be delays to trains here and back down the line while they pluck your body from the tracks. Commuters will be delayed, late into work. They may be admonished by their bosses even after they've explained that there was nothing they could do, some kid jumped in front of a train at Downtown Crossing, they had to get a bus and change twice. You don't want to add to that burden the suspicion of an accident, of involuntary homicide. You don't want some innocent to be hauled over the coals by BPD's finest because they had the poor dumb luck to be standing near you when you jumped.
You are waiting for the train. You are waiting for the announcement that the train is approaching so you can really start to wait for the train.
They say people commit suicide over a lack of something - money, love, respect, children. They say dentistry is the profession with the highest suicide rate.
Follow the words...
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