My great grandma would tell cashiers at gift shops,
every time she bought another butterfly wind chime,
“This is for my daughter.
I lost her.”
Everyone agrees someone should have been with her,
but disagrees about what actually happened.
The way I see it, though,
there are very few ways to accidentally swallow a bottle of pills.
It happened before I was born.

She had three daughters and nobody understood
what she could have been thinking.
Now all three daughters hide butterfly tattoos in her memory
and moved far away from home.
My own mother keeps having more and more children,
trying to find the magical number that makes
her feet stop itching.
It's the family disease to run away.

Did you know that most suicides in women with depression
occur during the second half of the menstrual cycle?

My grandmother was thinking that yes, it would be over in just a few days,
but it would all be back in less than a month.