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How I Came to America

Screaming, having left it all, all this earth,
before, and on my own terms, too:
having set out this place
and determined against it: everyone
should determine against being born
if they don't like it. But doing so
discourages one. One finds oneself
in a city, San Francisco, say, and the streams
of people one doesn't know and the man behind the counter
won't even talk to you about your breakfast he made for you,
your condition, your...
In the Qur'an, when the men suddenly disappeared,
Solomon-was it Solomon?-realized
they were spirits, not men,
their question a test, not a true quandry he was to determine
the rightness, the wrong of.
Like if suicide is so wrong, why have I done it so often?