Martyr!

by Kaveh Akbar

“Expendable” may seem a bad word to use to describe your own life, except I actually find it liberating. The way it vents away all pressure to become. How it asks only that you be.

Siegfried hero versus monolithically bad dragon.” Cyrus knew she was talking about the hero and villain of a Wagner opera, but only because of a joke in an old episode of The Simpsons.

If the mortal sin of the suicide is greed, to hoard stillness and calm for yourself while dispersing your riotous internal pain among all those who survive you, then the mortal sin of the martyr must be pride, the vanity, the hubris to believe not only that your death could mean more than your living, but that your death could mean more than death itself—which, because it is inevitable, means nothing.