“Do you really not know how thin you are?” a friend asked me, picking through my donation pile.
I shrugged. I lived in a house with four full length mirrors and no concept of self.
“I mean you’re a Leo and I follow you on instagram. Do you not look at the selfies before posting them or Oooh this is cute,” she picked up a pink maxi skirt.
It was a few days before this all really happened. Before it all really coalesced and picked up speed from there. The night I saw a text from my best friend about the sudden surgery she needed and the only reason she wasn’t going in next was because a flight to life had taken precedence. When she said it was ectopic, miscarriage,  I had the flash return. Not that this is how we meet again but how I paid attention again. The way I was scared her whole first pregnancy, rushed to her labor and never told her of the visions of the dead baby, the omens, the death and haunting. I wrapped the house as she rushed to the hospital. I banished the ghost to the basement and the way the fear wrapped my throat like two dark hands. I saw many things. Do I drown my child? I asked the cards. Most of what I have kept hidden is to protect.
But suddenly the word ectopic is in your search engine. Suddenly a flight to life is at the same hospital. Suddenly your mantel is full of black candles again and you’re texting her jokes.
“25% blood. May need a transfusion.”


“We want to do a biopsy to see if it’s cancer. It’s a goiter. If it’s cancerous, we will have to do surgery to remove it. It’s overgrown and obstructive.”
Doctors speak like that; with an ice cold cadence I truly crave. People murmur emotion. Give me facts and statistics and search engines and the frigid whip of a sentence. Life, the ever fucking sadist. I started by guessing. I started taking guesses at people who looked at me longer. I started taking guesses at the timing before I sent that heart. God told me to do this. I start falling fast and hard as promised. I start guessing with a 98% accuracy rate.

“crossing the bridge”