Why I Have Not Committed Suicide

Peg Howard

The Devil sat me down to lunch
in a little crimson room.
He fed me on tea brewed of fresh hot tears
and cakes baked of violet gloom.

The tea was bitter and the cakes were hard
and I sweated from every pore;
but better such bitter fare, I said,
than the cold outside that door.

Yes, better the Devil's crimson room,
and the Devil's heated laughter,
than the awful cold outside that door,
and silence, forever after.