Deep in the earth's interior is a core of solid iron, spinning in a molten chamber. The crust is trimmed, except for some parts they missed. The protective atmosphere is membrane-thin. The watery parts are dark and deep, the contents under pressure. Extinction events originate from within and from above. Death from above, death from below. I haven't had a suicidal thought in many years, ten years at least. I'm over all that. Even in my worst moments it's never seriously considered by the parts of my brain that would be responsible for considering such a dramatic, self-canceling gesture. Yet often as I fall asleep I hope not to wake up. I look out the window (at "the world," I suppose is the sentimental idea), at the tops of the trees, and just before I lose consciousness I say to myself: gone before dawn. It's like a private little murmur, the rhyme lending an air of whimsy. Self-whispering, as a genre of utterance, is ripe for the expression of death-related wishes. The wish not to be alive is not the same thing as the desire to kill oneself. It's passive, miles away from the humid notions or chilling resolve normally associated with suicidal ideations. There's a kind of childlike quality to it, it's almost charming, like when I was twelve and I'd try to will myself to grow taller (I never did). There are all kinds of ways I wish the world were different, and my not being alive to experience any more of it is just one more wrinkle, although if that one were to come true then the world can let my other wishes slide, no problem. Ha, I said if.