“finding my sister after her third suicide attempt” by amritha york
finding my sister after her third suicide attempt
she spells her name with all the things i keep inside: the exalted symbols from two nights
before, my frantic rambling and my golden scars i keep hidden while she wears hers on display. i
want to say it’s an act but can’t bring myself to get up most days. she’s not dead but dazed and all i
want is to talk for five minutes, just five minutes, only about how many coats of paint it would take
for us to cover up her scrawled sharpie death scribbles off the walls. it was the way she looked at me
the day after she fell off her bike and broke her ankle. the way she didn’t look at me facing the
topography of the carpet, clothed in her neon green coat and dusty black boots and a truth that had
finally revealed how damaged we were.
i didn’t even recognize her: it was like an emotional stab wound, something self-inflicted,
broken beyond integrity. she got down on her neck, dropped a lit match unto herself, a blaze of fire
to keep me awake, seemed so inhuman but for some reason, i endured it. she spells it out for me like
this: she saw a damned person’s name on a wall and assumed it was meant for her. ever since her
skull’s been burning, crackling with the steam of sulfur. i want to cure her sickness but she has
chanted something twisted, desperate and unhallowed. i want to find some kind of strength and tell
her to stop making me find her slumped on the floor behind her door. i’m tired of calling the same
three digits on the cordless.
i don’t’ know the way out this memory so i stay on the line, listen to the calm tone of the
operator, look for any pills or sharps in her possession, listening for instructions as a way to keep
her. what a sound she’s giving me: something like rage, i’d like to think. i keep my spine against the
cool wall , bathe in the rites of scented worn down candles, the thunder she has carried from a
storm i can’t remember. later, i stay up all night and this is what i ask for: that this is not the last of
what we have, i can handle it. i will handle it. i pace to let the embers in my limbs stop singing. i pull
myself down from where i’ve floated up into the ceiling. i carry myself into the ambulance high on
déjà vu. she’ll always be “just fine” and “okay.”
amritha york (she/her/they) is an East Indian queer woman, a new mother and a decade-long nurse attempting to also work as an emerging artist and poet in Toronto.
IG: @first.breath.release