The day you called to say you were going to kill yourself,
I was in the kitchen doing dishes and couldn’t be bothered
to pick up the phone. Years later, it still rings in my mind.
Every time I turn on a lamp twenty more moths die,
singed to death by currents of electricity; every step I take
crushes another insect underfoot. When your mother
took 9 months to make you, the inside walls of her womb
were already covered in your suicide notes.
Before birth, you were already practicing your farewells
when you tapped out goodbye along the umbilical cord,
a kind of Braille for which your fingernails
had not even developed yet.
The price we pay for love is never the monetary value
we thought we’d agreed upon. My new mother-in-law
says she’s glad you cleared the way for my husband,
as if your demise were some kind of ritual sacrifice.
In the dreams of my childhood, the mulberry tree
that lined the streets of your California home tips over
and spills all its berries; they stain our fingers like ink.
I climb its branches and the wasp nest that hangs there
like a lantern explodes into brilliant light.
The owl living in the hole of its trunk dies on impact
with the muddy ground.
I am still the bringer of death, even as a child.
At night I lie awake in bed while my husband sleeps,
palms in my lap, practicing how to pick up a phone in the dark,
as if the next call I answer will be enough
to bring you back.