An audible voice in "Suicide Note"

In “Suicide Note” by Janice Mirikitani, she wrote the suicide note of an Asian-American college student, who jumped out of her dorm room window to her death, into a poem. In the student’s actual note, she apologized to her parents for not maintaining a 4.0 GPA. Mirikitani made the student’s words audible. She was able to take the suicide note and write it as a beautiful, yet tragic, poem. A way the poem develops a sense of “an audible voice,” is that it is written in the first person perspective. It tells how “I apologize for disappointing you” (5-6), and “I will drop bone by bone, perched on the ledge of my womanhood” (30-33). The student’s true feelings are emerging in her note, and in the poem it is almost as thought she is reading it to me. I can exactly identify the thoughts she had when she wrote it. Because the words of the poem are a reflection of the student’s actual suicide note and suicide, it is chilling to imagine her reading it, though I can the sadness of it. Mirikitani did a great job taking the personal nature of the poem and making it relatable for other readers to “hear” the words as well.