On Suicide

What a beautiful day to be a nihilist. The sun
shatters like a wine glass on the sheer ocean.

Someone is stretching a canvas on the patio.
Little blue flowers whose names I will never know

sprout up in the grass, crickets trill,
an empty crab shell contemplates existence on the window sill—

the compost bin exudes its sweet
ammoniac rot.

Down in the surf,
small children scream their heads off.

Christopher Robinson is a novelist, poet, and futurist. He is the co-author, with Gavin Kovite, of War of the Encyclop aedists (Scribner, May 2015), which received glowing reviews in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He lives in Seattle with his partner, Amanda Knox, who pushes him daily to be more empathic.