9-1-1 text messages and other methods to
write in semicolons and in the memory
of cold chicken fried rice and
learning to not die;

I never called 9-1-1; not even on the ledge
of a windowsill or curled like a comma on the
floor of a shower-sweaty bathroom where
all the mirrors turned me into a haze;
pink ghost of my torso; I thought about death
in the shape of cheerios and half-cups
that I used to eat them from; parenthesis
hunched over the kitchen table; placing
each on my tongue like Eucharist;  In the
name of the father and the sun and morning
that breathes in your face like sweaty-shower
bathrooms; place your hand on the mirror
and catch a glimpse of how
clearly we can trace the potholes in the 
topography of your face; all the night corners when 
you have gashed wobbly-ridged finger-nails into
your wrists like tombstones; what did I eat for breakfast
when I was ten? That was when no one needed
punctuation; we were the rapturous run-on sentences
of self love that knew nothing would ever be
wrong with us; lay in fat bathtubs and drank 
sugar-soda like humming birds too plump to hover
but strong enough to straddle hibiscus flowers 
like rocking playground purple dinosaurs; did
you open a fridge like a storybook; If 
you were like me you would have eaten cold chicken fried rice
from a counter; the peas would have tasted 
better than the night before; you would
have eaten the corner pieces left of your birthday
cake; licked icing from a coffee mug; traced 
a heart in a fogged bathroom window; and said that morning
always took too long; asterisk-haired and triumphant;
flip-flop feet wet from the dew; walk to school on
a pig tail until you learn that there is no 9-1-1
to text to on the ledge a park pavilion; I don't
punctuate this precipice I only take steps back and 
ellipsis across a counter top in the spilling of
a container of fried rice I won't be eat again;
there are parts of myself that I'm leaving to the prologue
and parts that I still want to eat again like a 
parenthesis or a semicolon; if you text 9-1-1 from 
your night corner in blanket that reminds you of a shower
or of the corners of your ten-year-old birthday cake
remember that you're sending a letter for yourself
and you wrists and your pink ghost in a mirror;
remember that no one calls 9-1-1 anymore; that 
if you write a poem they might reject it and tell
you that their submission guidelines weren't followed
but that you should keep writing, keep writing
keep writing stories even if you only send them
in 9-1-1 text messages that scream into closets about suicide;
don't close with a period because you and me
were mean for commas; were the inventors of the ellipsis
into the morning; write me poem and leave out the last
line so I can pick up where you left off; ellipsis me
across a counter and pluck me like chicken-fried peas;
wipe the icing on your jeans like a ten-year-old 
and meet me at the counter; be the other side
of my parenthesis and I can hold you there;
we'll pretend it's morning and open the fridge like a picture 
book about purple dinosaurs or 
9-1-1 calls.