Ten lines of argument, then one line that stops arguing. That is the shape of Beth's untitled poem (its title is just three asterisks), which plays out a conversation between one person who keeps saying the darkest things and another who won't let those words go unanswered. Its central idea is that against despair, the strongest reply isn't a cleverer argument but company: "Cause I am here."
The poem is built like call and response. Five pairs of lines each open with "You say" and are met by the speaker's reply, and the last line has no partner at all. The verbs matter. The first two replies begin "I know": "I know thats a lie," "I know thats fake." The speaker sounds certain, even a little sharp, as if seeing straight through the words. The poem suggests they hear "I wanna die" less as a plan than as pain at its loudest. From the third reply on, though, "I know" gives way to "I say." The speaker stops claiming to read minds and offers a view instead, and the view gets smaller and more personal. "Thats not fair" is almost a child's complaint, and it is pleasingly ambiguous. Unfair to whom? To the friend who dismisses themselves, or to the speaker who cares? The poem lets both stand.
The word doing the most work is "ok." The friend uses it as a mask ("you are ok") and then as a shrug ("thats alright"). The speaker throws it back with a "not": "thats not ok." Then, in the penultimate line, it returns in a longer spelling and with the opposite spirit: "thats okay." This comes straight after "I give up," the only words in the poem set in quotation marks, as if the friend's voice finally arrives without disguise. The speaker doesn't fight it. "Okay" here can hardly mean agreeing with giving up. It seems to mean that it's okay to say so, okay to be exhausted. The same word has travelled from denial to permission.
Sound follows the same path. "Die" and "lie," "care" and "fair" are clean rhymes, and they make the speaker's replies snap back like a door closing. "Ok" and "fake" only share a final k sound, a half-echo. By the last pair, "up" and "okay" no longer rhyme at all. As the speaker gives up the need to win, the poem loosens its tidy sound. The lines are short, mostly five or six syllables, and the repeated "You say" gives them a steady, tapping pulse. It feels like an argument that has happened many times before, which makes it tiring and also devoted.
Then comes the final line. It has four syllables, no "You say," no "I say," and a verb of being rather than speaking. "Cause" is clipped and spoken, as though answering the unasked question of why any of this is okay, with a reason that fixes nothing and promises only to stay. Because every earlier line is a rebuttal, this quiet one carries the most weight.
There is almost no imagery in the usual sense: no weather, no darkness, no metaphor. That bareness seems deliberate. The informal spelling ("wanna," "thats" without its apostrophe, "Cause") makes the poem read like something typed quickly in the middle of a real conversation. A metaphor would have put distance where the poem wants closeness.
That is what makes it worth reading. It doesn't pretend the right sentence cures anything. It shows another kind of help: noticing the gap between what people say and what they mean, pushing back, and then knowing when to stop pushing. In real life, anyone who says they want to die should be taken seriously, and a trusted adult or a helpline belongs in the picture. The poem's own lesson is that nobody should be left alone with those words.