It starts as a joke, chides the schoolmarm voice in your head. Her hands smell of salad dressing and are colder than ice. You learned in Health that women’s digits run on the cold side because their body heat concentrates at the womb. But there’s nothing inviting to the schoolmarm’s maternity. She’s all socks and soup.

She’s right, though. It starts as a joke.

You toy with the idea. It turns into a puppy that yawns and squirms at its own expansion. It nips your fingers. You should train it before it wets your lap.

Then you find yourself in the ladder section of the hardware store. You’ve been sucking candy canes into March, plus you live in an apartment building for oversized Guatemalan families and uninsured twenty-somethings, Humanities majors. On both accounts, no fan will hang you.

What you seek is…

A tall enough ladder to break your neck from. It must look like an accident.

The ruse requires paint. Beige, or vermilion? The luridness is a giveaway. Never mind the appeal of living in a blood orange. They’ll know you were (had been?) unsound. Conniving with the stock boy, etc. It must look accidental. Even with suicide shining across the water, you cannot bear to have it out. It might hurt the old lady downstairs. She brings your mail when you can’t get out of bed. The pile makes you cry sometimes. The freak intuition, the unearned favor, the surprise she will get when she smells the stink of sweet release under your door.

Fortitude. Fuck it. A quart of cochineal, and you run.

The hour arrives.

You’ve spread the newspaper and poured the paint. An experimental roll on the wall sparkles. The ladder is open. You’re proud of yourself as you step up, and your reflection teases over the microwave door.

Your bangs are all wrong.

They look like the mustache of an oil tycoon. You can’t die like that. Adding water only turns them to mop strings. You consider pinning your hair with a chip clip, but…

It would be irresponsible to leave the Bugles.

So you joked, then petted, then bowed out of the idea. You lie in a heap of salt and self-loathing while the mouth pleasure dissipates and your belly distends in mockery. You aren’t fit for life, nor will death have you. There’s a shuffle and burst.

The old lady has left the mail. Rent is due, and Sears has coats on clearance, you find, thumbing the catalog. It’s something to read while the paint dries.