The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Book of Crooked Prayer by Marcella Remund

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Content warning for suicide, vivid description of suicide

Supplication to the Suicides

               for Ike

You will wake up tomorrow and the sun will be up.
            Stores will open. Some idiot will forget to signal
            his turn. There will be dishes to do. You’ll get a job
            offer in Big Sky, Montana.
This will all get easier. Then it will get harder
            again. Then it will get easier again.
That girl you love will leave her next boyfriend too.
Your mother is canning peaches right now.
            She will need you here to eat them.
The pain you feel now comes from a cauldron
            of teenage chemicals swirling through you like bad
            soup, like toxic river water, like grain alcohol, like Drano.
            It will eventually push through your system, and you will
            be able to laugh and think straight again.
Remember that time I stomped in your house and screamed
            in your face and jabbed at you with my finger? I really
            wanted to hug you and lock you up and never let you go.
Going to the zoo is almost as much fun at 35 as it is at 13.
It will one day be a mystery to you that you ever felt this bad.
I don’t know if there’s an afterlife. But
            what if you have to watch the chain
            of sorrows you leave behind?
The belt will burn and cut into your neck. The pain
            will be unbearable before you black out.
            You’ll pee your pants.
            You’ll change your mind.
            You won’t be able to stop it.
I love the way your hair flips to the side, and the way
            you look sideways when you grin, and the way
            my youngest son’s heart opens up around you.
That girl you love will end up with four kids from three fathers.
            She’ll work at Walmart and live over her parents’ garage.
            She’ll try and fail to kick meth. Her kids will be taken away.
Or
That girl you love will end up married to a banker
            and will live on a lake and have a housekeeper.
Or
That girl you love will be in therapy for the rest of her life.
Or
That girl you love will use your memory like a crucible
            in which she’ll stew future boyfriends and cook up
            excuses for sleeping with her future husband’s boss.
After your sister died, your mother stayed alive, in part, for you.
We are only here for a blink anyway. Can’t you wait that long?
My son will have a redheaded child. She’ll skateboard.
            She’ll be beautiful and jolly and full of mischief.
            He’ll take her to the skatepark in Lennox.
            He’ll cry because you’re not there to watch her.
You’re my child. You’re everyone’s child. We will all be broken.
You’ll fall in love again and again and again. You might have twins.
            They’ll be skinny and blonde and hold your hand.
            You’ll rock them to sleep with Jack Johnson lullabies.
            When they’re 15, they’ll say we hate you.
            You’ll try to keep a straight face.
Your mother’s smile will be manufactured and hard for the rest of her life.
You are so full of love and light and promise that it burns
            our fingers to touch you. We are moths and choose
            winglessness over being without you.
My son will carry you like a scar,
            like a confession,
            like a stone in his gut.
            Forever.
Someone will have to take a picture of your body.
There is nowhere else to go.
Please, please stay.

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