Mom never talks about it. Dad tells people you fell and broke your neck. Your classmates have been calling. I tell them you went to visit grandma. Down the streets I keep getting weird stares and I'm jealous. Jealous that you've gone to a better place and left me in this hell. Jealous of how calm and peaceful you look in your wooden box. The carpenter outside the house said he's heard of this spirit before. That it shifts moods abruptly. He said it's a white man's disease and should be cast out. The preacher man said God is not dead. Well, if he ain't dead, then he must be in a comma. Just lying there in bed - speechless. Listening to every word I say but doing nothing. I'm sure he saw you sneak that rope into your room but did nothing. He must have heard you gasp for air but couldn't move to save you. So let the monitor replace his heartbeat graph with mama's pain and sorrow as she prays. May the catheter carry dad's anguish to his lungs. He might be reminded of love. Let the drip fill him with human blood. It just might wake him up and if he wakes up, tell him I was here. If he'll be looking for more souls to take, I'll be available. Let him put the demons in me. Because I can't live to see another person wake up every morning feeling sorry that they didn't die in their sleep, fighting an enemy inside their minds, filled with devils that literally hound them to death and voices that urge them down the path of self destruction. No! Let me be the one with the cluttered thinking, cluttered mind. I'll walk with the restlessness, suicide thoughts and empty feelings. Tell him I want to be the one to carry these demons of darkness.