i never made it off the bridge, but my body ached like it did. and because my brain was too waterlogged with the river i failed to drown in, i was sent to the school nurse the next day.

she took one look at the bags under my eyes, at my cracked fingertips still bitten from the cold.

my lungs burned as i watched her call my father.

i'd only ever seen the man cry once before: when he tore down the door to his crumbling childhood home - tears only reserved for goodbye situations.

later, he sat me down under the glow-in-the-dark stars we pasted together on my ceiling when i was ten. he had just turned forty-three, yet his hair was whitening faster than it was supposed to.

"nothing's unfixable as long as we're alive," he told me, a plea. and i believed him. i believed him.

i believed him.


(neither of us knew it...

...but he was already talking to a corpse.)