Death Is Calling

By Solomon David

Don’t give me the damn speech.
I ain’t killing myself —
it ain’t like that.
It’s just a thought, a shadow passing,
a whisper at the edge of a long, tired day.

If I died today, be real —
none of y’all would care the way you claim.
Sure, a handful might cry,
some might even put on a damn show,
but not a single one of you
ever bothered to ask the questions that mattered.

Not one of you
ever stopped long enough
to see the man behind the mask,
behind the wildness,
behind the stupid shit I did just to feel alive.

You watched the chaos
but never once wondered
if maybe I was dealing with something heavy,
maybe I just needed one person
to give enough of a shit to look deeper.

But no—
you judged me.
You talked behind my back.
You lied, cheated, dug, stole, manipulated,
and I took it…
and took it…
and took it…
until my soul felt like chewed-up leather.

Yeah, I’ve lied.
Yeah, I’ve done wrong.
But y’all?
Y’all take the damn cake.
You perfected betrayal.
You mastered pretending.
You graduated summa cum laude in fake love.

It was right in your face,
FOR THIRTY-SIX YEARS,
and none of you dumb fucks cared enough
to look past the smoke and see the fire
burning me up from the inside.

So when that day finally comes —
the day I take my last breath,
whenever God says it’s time —
don’t cry for me.
Don’t pretend.
Don’t show up wearing memories
you never earned.

Don’t act like you knew me,
because the truth is:
you never did.
You never tried.
You only knew the mask —
not the man wearing it.
Not the heart beneath it.
Not the pain stitched into it.

Death might call my thoughts sometimes…
but it’s not because I want to go.
It’s because I’ve spent my whole damn life
surrounded by people
who never cared enough
to ask why I was hurting
in the first place.