For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

"How do you know if you are going to die?"
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
"When you can no longer make a fist."

Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.

--Naomi Shihab Nye

From an email I just wrote: There's a sadness in me, thinking that just before I was staggering through my house repeating "I will not die, I will not die," DFW was believing that he should.
*****

Rest in peace, Mr. Wallace. And for the rest of y'all, if you're thinking of suicide, read this first.