CW: suicidal gesture

Today would have been the anniversary 

of my death 

if I hadn’t gone to the hospital, 

sipped a slurry of charcoal

a morbid black, chalky sludge

sticky thick like tar — if I hadn’t trudged

from class to class the next morning

like a zombie with a smudge of a mouth

the shadow of the night before on my lips

and had instead let myself slip

beneath the warm surface of sleep

I never would have known that my impulsive 

heart, connected with wires and stickers 

to the jumping needle, could expand to whole rooms

making space for blooms: 

a wisp of poetry; the fragrant steam 

wafting off a cup of coffee; the slant of golden 

light warming my skin in the cool air on graduation morning; 

the crackle of firewood; the honking of geese in the rose garden

I never would have known 

the salty slip of an oyster or the chew of boba

the glitter of bioluminescence gliding across skin in the black bay

the sweet oxytocin swell of holding a baby squirrel to my chest

this garden of sensory treasures collected over decades

since that night

Lenna Jawdat (she/her) is a first generation Arab-American trauma therapist and writer. She lives in Washington, DC with her partner, two cats, a rotating cast of foster kittens and an occasional foster squirrel.