My sixth-grade teacher accuses me of trying to kill myself and

I write an apology letter to Pranav for asking

him to watch me go. I start with I’m sorry

but I really mean would you carry my body

home for me? I have crossed so many lines that

I leave him ........... with an erasure poem

.......................................................

......... In the pick-up zone ............

his mom looks at me ........... with

eyes ...............................................

A phone call comes in the middle of dinner and my mother asks me

to translate my teacher’s voice. I watch her face change ……… she

understands me …… hesitating over the language they didn’t teach

me in school. She …….. takes her kitchen cleaver and puts it in my

hand. I made you, ….. I deserve to watch my own animal do it.

There is a picture that I drew back then. I have our family on an imagined

porch in crayon. In front of our place on Bryant Common. Everything is

right,

even I am missing.

A bottle of expired Advil sits in the bottom drawer of my nightstand.

There are maybe 12 pills in there, but I don’t keep count. I spent that

entire summer ……… silent in my blankets.

My mother takes me to the ocean. She dips

a toe in and says it’s too cold.

She keeps it in anyways.

My mother doesn’t ask me why / I spend a lifetime answering her back.