twisted tight with all of this?

So tight

I am not sure I can

breathe.

There’s been

a spiral in time,

things changing so

fast

I don’t know my sister

anymore.

Oh, Liz.

Stop that thinking so you can

come back.

19.

Before all this,

before Liz grew

weary of living

we used to laugh.

Once,

Momma

put me and Liz

in the car

and said,

We are going

garage sale-ing

and you can get yourselves

whatever you want.

Me and Liz,

we whooped it up!

Laughed out loud.

Momma flung us

some money to the backseat.

Lots of ones,

folded so many times

they were soft

as an old blanket.

We rode up and

down the streets

of Ormond,

passed the 7-Eleven,

passed the Piggly Wiggly

looking for signs.

All around us

the smell of pine

and the salt of the ocean,

the clatter of palm fronds

when the wind pushed through,

cooling the air

for us.

There’s one,

I’d say.

There’s one,

Lizzie would say.

And Momma,

she would throw

her head back

and laugh.

Then

help us dig

through boxes of

toys,

the hot sun simmering,

to find just the right thing,

just the thing

me

or Lizzie

had been hoping

for.

20.

That very afternoon

of the gun day,

Momma and me

stand at the edge of a parking lot,

the end-of-school

weather throbbing

around us,

hot.

Oaks dip toward the ground,

lining the lawn

shading the sidewalk.

This grass is like carpet.

I cannot recall the time we step in

the hospital

but

it’s chilly in the building,

dark

after outside.

A

goose runs over

my grave.

Don’t think that.

This way,

Momma says,

and walks right past

the front desk like

she knows this hospital.

No one questions her.

No one stops us.

Somehow

we sneak down one hall

then another

and another,

in the green coolness of

the hospital,

until we

stand in

a corridor

with a sofa that has no back.

Momma holds an unlit cigarette

to her lips.

Shhh, she says, shhh.

I nod.

Down some,

there’s a huge door,

pale green.

The sign,

printed in block letters,

black letters:

LOCKDOWN UNIT

I can see it

from where I sit

and I shiver

again.

Up high

in the door

is a window,

big enough for just eyes

to look through.

And there is wire inside the glass.

Who can get through there?

I say to Momma,

nodding to that

window.

Can’t no one squeeze through

that little rectangle.

But she doesn’t answer.

Just waves her cigarette at me

and chews at her nails

that bleed from

torn cuticles.

I am

scared and

sick

so that I might throw up.

I sit on the edge of my seat,

try to catch just a glimpse

of that huge door

by looking at things through one

squinted eye.

With one eye

the sign looks even

farther away.

LOCKDOWN UNIT

My momma,

out of nowhere,

she sobs.

But I don’t shed a tear.

I am the strong one.