"Suicide's Note" -Langston Hughes

Suicide is a theme that courses throughout Langston Hughes's oeuvre, most famously perhaps in this small haiku-style poem:

Suicide's Note

The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.

I've always loved this poem. But just this morning I realized that one could read the river as a mirror of the speaker's thoughts. The speaker, contemplating suicide, looks into the river and sees his own reflection. Read in this way, the river loses its agency and becomes all the more "cool" and "calm," an unbiased but unforgiving environment. Conversely, the burden of suicide comes to rest all the more on the speaker, as he becomes both the receiver and producer of the thoughts.

For a more lighthearted take on suicide, check out Hughes's "Life is Fine."