She told me
she tried to **** herself three days before my birthday.
And ever since then, I wonder if
she raised a knife to her wrist. Or if she
swallowed a bottle of pills. Held a gun to her head until
she realized that there's so much more out there than
her brains littering her bedroom wall. Did she get rushed to the hospital,
put in the ICU?

These are the questions
I will always be too afraid to ask.
Suicide is more than your curiosity, she would say,
but she was the one who cried as she wrote
what she hoped would be her last goodbye,
almost left me alone in a world we were trying to understand,
together.

Stain me, because my birthday is no longer
my birthday. My birthday is wondering if
the world would have continued to turn if her heart stopped beating,

and the presents aren’t so exciting anymore;
the cake never tastes as sweet.