I want the last line of this poem to open every window in this joint. I want it to roll up everybody's sleeves and reveal all of your tatoos.
I want the last line to make you cold.
Make you feel something. Make you wonder for the rest of the night. For the rest of your life.
I want the last line of this poem to make you fall in love with me.
I've spent all summer thinking about what it will be. I thought about WRITING IT IN ALL CAPS. Writing it in a different font. Writing it in blood. I thought about writing it in Latin to see who would bother translating it. "Sed mutata sententia."
I thought about putting it in a bottle and throwing it into the ocean. Or shooting it up into space. Or writing it on a 300-foot banner and flying it across the wasatch front on a Saturday afternoon.
I just want you to see it.
I want the last line to be something you've never seen before. I want it to be new, creative, innovative. It should cut edges and burn boundaries.
But I want your heart to recognize it. That long lost love. That girl who grew up across the street. A sort of cardiac deja vu.
I want your heart to come up to my heart after the show and be like, "Hey. Um. So, uh, I was wondering if you wanted to, uh, um. I don't know. Never mind."
I want the last line to make you jealous.
I want you to Google it because you think I stole it.
I want it to be so beautiful that it belongs in a different poem.
It could be your last meal request. It could be my last will and testament. I want it to feel like the last line either of you will ever hear.
I want the last line to harden your brain and make your heart soggy. I want your arteries to look like water balloons after I turn up the faucet full blast.
I want it to kill everyone in this room.
I want the last line to be a loaded handgun on a coffee table. A bottle of poison in an unlocked cabinet. The plug that your wife wants to leave in, but I hold it in my hand.
Someone call the paramedics, please, because this poem is about to end.
Call the audience's next of kin, get their loved ones on the phone and break the bad news. Order the floral arrangements and cue up the sad music. Notify the 5 o'clock news, because there's about to be a massacre.
"Not another mass killing," they'll say. "They were all so young," they'll say. "What is wrong with this country?" #prayforenliten
The media will debate whether or not to talk about me. On one hand, they'll want to focus on all of you: the victims. But they'll definitely want to know how I could do something like this. And I guess this is the answer:
I just wanted to bring language back from the dead.
I wanted the last line of this poem to break your heart.
The kind of heartbreak that makes you write your own poem.
