acid

i am made of dust, of dirt and sand. when i move, my porcelain bones rattle like a twisted maraca. my chest is hollowed out and my heartbeat echoes inside of it like the melancholy voice of a singer in an empty opera house. my skin is tissue paper but it is also leather. my hair is a collection of rose petals that fall, featherlight, onto the floor. my body is not a temple, it is not a colisseum—no epic battles have been fought here. there is no heroic bloodshed.

no, my body is a beehive. thoughts and sensations come and go like frantic bees. sometimes i get wasps. the wasps sting, again and again and again. other times, they are honeybees; they fill my skull with thick, sweet honey. my body is tired of all the noise, all the constant activity. i need to rest. i need to sleep. honey makes me tired. i let it seep in until my bone marrow is honey, too. i let myself soak into the slow orange ooze. and this body—made up of dirt and bees and glass—begins to rot. my pieces return to the place from whence they came.

the day after i killed myself, i had no regrets. i was finally free—no more of that crushing weight, no more dark water filling my lungs until i was sure i’d suffocate. i didn’t have to think to myself, one more day. just try to survive one more day because i had no days left. it was over. i didn’t have to hurt anyone ever again. my family wouldn’t have to worry anymore now that i was gone. selfishly, i was relieved that i would never have to face them after what i’d done. i didn’t want to see how it hurt them. i didn’t want to know.

but i saw. from my place in death, i saw what i had done, the damage i caused. it was irreparable. my mother barely got out of bed. our dog barked and whined, begging for her attention, her love, asking where i had gone, but when she never responded, the dog simply climbed into bed and lay in silence with her. my cat, once confined to my room, now roamed the house as he howled, calling out to me, a living, breathing reminder of the daughter my mother lost and the love i had for cats.

my father, on the other hand, drowned himself in his work. he logged up to a hundred hours a week, only leaving himself enough time to miss me when he returned home at night to see my empty bedroom, the lights all switched off, the door cracked slightly open the way it always was when i lived there, eternally unchanging. he had begun to adjust the thermostat from his phone instead of passing by my doorway to do it manually. he didn’t want to think about me and what i left behind more often than necessary.

my little sister, who was only sixteen, still traveled between our parents’ houses. when she was at our dad’s, she kept the door to my bedroom from our shared bathroom tightly closed. she locked it when she showered, and sometimes expected me to burst into her room and scold her for leaving it locked after she was done. but i never did, and she eventually stopped unlocking it.

at our mom’s, she did her best to avoid walking down the hallway that led to my room and the bathroom unless she needed to pee. my door was always closed now, and my cat never seemed to figure out why. he would sit in front of it and cry, wailing for me to let him in, unaware that i was not home and i never would be again. my sister cared for him on my behalf, holding him when he cried in the middle of the night, feeding him when he purred and begged for food. he was how she honored me in my death. he was how she showed that she had loved me.

my older sister didn’t live at home anymore, but she felt the loss, too. when she lay in her bed, she sometimes caught herself staring at the candle i made for her in my pharmacy class and began to cry. she couldn’t bring herself to light it, unwilling to let a flame melt away something i had given her. when she felt strong enough, she often visited my social media pages and scrolled through my posts, remembering how i’d ask her opinion of my photos and whether i should post them. she always encouraged me to post them, no matter how other people may react. it was my page and she wanted me to share whatever i felt like sharing. now that i was gone, she was thankful for that.

my boyfriend was surprised by the news. at first, he thought it was a joke, something i’d orchestrated to get a reaction out of him—a sick prank. but he eventually realized that it wasn’t a cruel joke i’d been playing. he still went over to my house, sat on my bed, looked at the rumpled sheets and flattened pillows where we used to sleep together. he thought about how i would always sling one arm and one leg over him when we slept, like a koala hugging a tree, and i could see the ache i had put inside of him.

sometimes he would log onto his computer to play his favorite video game and see the minecraft logo, forced to remember how i made him play it with me the night after our first date when i panicked and made him go home. he remembered the feeling of his arm around my waist in the movie theater as we watched spider-man, of my hand in his while we walked through cedar point, of my skin against his the first time we had sex. he remembered the sound of my heartbeat whenever he rested his head on my chest, the smell of my perfume that he liked to spray on himself, the sound of my laugh when he said something particularly stupid. he couldn’t stop remembering. sometimes i wished he could forget, if only it would stop him from hurting so badly.

the day after i killed myself, i had no regrets—i was proud of myself for my success, relieved i had finally freed everyone from my web of misery and pain—but the day after that, i did.

two days after i killed myself, i regretted it. i wanted to go back. i wanted to push my hands through the earth i’d been buried in, my fingernails caked with dirt, and crawl home to the family i’d left behind. i wanted to wrap them in my arms, tell them i was sorry, promise them i would never hurt them that way again—but i couldn’t. i was dead.