*
 

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.