i start every story with

noticing: what i can touch,

who i cannot. i take survey of

the room, question who is

alive, who might be a figment

of my false reality.

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often i do not believe someone

is dead until i call them and

they do not answer. when i was

a child, i thought everyone was

dead until they appeared in

front of me, risen from the

grave.

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                              what vast

variance i’ve created for myself

through this learning of

deadness. i tell a friend to text me

when you make it home and they

do not. in my mind they are

gone. i find a dead hen in the

pond knee-deep in ice. i am not

sure about the protocol of dead

things. i do not touch it.

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i believe in omens. i believe in the pith of

mothers saying text me when you get home,

chile, i believe in the dragging of the “L” in

“chile” to emphasize how tired we have

become at losing kin to the night air—i

answer every message within seconds, to

prove my existence. i speak invocations of

survival,

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                     place runes beneath my

tongue in prayer. let my grandfather

be okay when he misses my phone

call. let my sister be okay when she

forgets to message me back.

even for my father, whom i do not call, i still

pray. i search his name in the toledo papers,

wait to hear from his wife that he did not

make it; that she sat, phone in hand, waiting

for the text that would not arrive.

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on the other hand, my mother texts me every

morning just to prove to herself she is not a

ghost. i answer every message seconds after

i receive them. on the days she does not

respond to my response, i spend the rest of

the day waiting for her eulogy.

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