*
When you say I am proud of you
it is so locked and loaded. The thing is every day
should be World Suicide Prevention Day
and, for me, it is. Look at me make it, calculate
monthly payments and split chicken between tupperware.
I wash my hair, floss on the go. The mundane feels marvelous
when there’s no quicksand, when there’s no traffic
and I get there with time to spare. Once I had a wood-
paneled basement. More recently, a hallway always
brightly lit as if we didn’t deserve the dark
or already had too much of it. I completed puzzles,
painted myself inside a snowy timber. I learned
Latinate names for green things,
my mindful hands in their dirt.