Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord ​my soul ​to keep;

Keep me safe t​hrough​ the night
and wake me with the ​mourning ​light
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take

- The only prayer you knew when you were five, the night your sister died, you spent all
night praying. I do not think you have ever stopped.

I. There are two stages to dying. There is clinical death. This is when your organs start shutting
down, your heart starts to stop pumping blood but your organs still work, your brain stops
receiving oxygen. Then, there is the biological death. This is when your cells begin to
degenerate. Your soul leaves the earth. You are dead. The doctors announced the time. It is over
for the dead, but the living has to keep living. This is the depression.

II. This is it.

Take it I do not want it.

III. The hospital room is cold. Just how I remember it. The mattress of the hospital bed
sometimes slides off, and the sheets are thin. The blue paint on all the walls matches just how
cold the room is. There is a constant beep, tracking something. You can see through the cracks of
the door every single time the nurse walks by, maybe this time she will bring medicine. When
you are in the hospital the sense of time slips away. You define time by the amount of time you
are in pain and when you are not. The needle in your arm from the IV keeps you awake, you
really have to pee, but you are too weak. I hate the hospital. I always have. Except I really hate
the hospital that is direct across from my window. I have never stepped foot into it, however
every day I feel like I have been there.
Sometimes PTSD manifests itself in different ways.

IV. I sometimes get scared that I am trapped in my own body. I will never be free from my skin.
I am confined to these bones. I am simply just a walking side effect. Every night I go to sleep
and my body becomes dark and empty, I no longer consume it. Dreams are the only time I feel
like I am not trapped. When we go to sleep we are practicing for death. I hope when it comes
dreams do not get taken.
Stop finding home in a coffin.
V. Sometimes I pretend that she is still alive. I text her number knowing I won’t get a response,
knowing that the text will be green. Today it was blue. I do not want to delete her contact.

VI. I want to make a sad face with all of this ash.

VII. I found myself finding all the faces that people draw around New York. I have started to
document them. So far my favorite was a sad face I found in the snow, as soon as I looked a little
boy came up and drew a smiley face right next to it. I like to pretend that the faces are following
me. I have started to see them everywhere, on the subway, on a receipt, on a mailbox. Maybe I
should start drawing my own.

VIII. Time never hurt so much until I had a realization that each moment passing was a moment
that you were not thinking of me.

IX.Handle with care, I write on my wrist. My mother always told me that I was a sensitive
person. Put on your seatbelt, never text and drive, nothing good ever happens after midnight,
don't take candy from strangers. She sends me into the real world, fragile. But I am glass. I do
not just break when I fall. I shatter and sometimes the pieces cut deep.

X. There are stages of mourning and I swear I am mourning over so much right now I go
through each stage every day. I am mourning over the dead, I am mourning over the living. I am
mourning over the concept that time is passing and there is nothing I can do about it. Now it is 4
am and I feel like the city is sleeping but then I see one more person on the street when I look out
the window. I hear the ambulance outside. The world keeps going, no matter what. A clock is no
longer an object, it is anxiety. The sky is not even safe from time. When I look into the sky, I am
mourning because the stars have already died.

XI. I want to draw a smiley face in all this snow.

XII. I wonder if the sun mourns for the moon. We revolve around something that is constantly
mourning. When we wake up, we are in the mourning.