The morning after I killed myself, I sat on the edge of my bed and listened to the screaming.
My mother's voice broke in ways I didn't know a voice could break, splintering into sharp edges that tore through the walls.
My father tried to hold her, but his hands shook too much, and all he could do was sink to the floor beside her, his face buried in his palms.
The morning after I killed myself, I watched the paramedics wheel my body out of the house, covered in a sheet.
My brother stood in the hallway, pressed against the wall, his eyes wide and blank, like his brain was too slow to understand.
He kept muttering, "No, no, no," under his breath, as if he could rewind time if he said it enough.
I followed my parents to the morgue.
My mother didn't want to see me, but my father insisted.
When they pulled back the sheet, her knees buckled, and she had to grip the counter to keep from collapsing.
My father touched my forehead with shaking fingers, like he was afraid I might shatter.
I wanted to scream that I wasn't there anymore, that what they were looking at was nothing but an empty shell, but the words stuck in my throat like stones.
The morning after I killed myself, my best friend showed up at my house, pounding on the door until my father opened it.
Her face crumpled when she saw him, and she didn't even ask for me.
She just sat on the porch steps, staring at the street with tears streaming silently down her face.
Later, she went home and smashed every picture of us she could find.
She kept the shards in a shoebox and hid it under her bed.
I walked through my school and saw my locker turned into a shrine, covered in sticky notes and flowers and pictures of me smiling.
People I barely knew cried in the hallways, their grief loud and public, but I saw others whispering behind their hands, their voices dripping with guilt: "Did I go too far? Was it something I said?"
The morning after I killed myself, I watched my dog sit at the front door, her ears perking up every time a car passed, waiting for me to come home.
She barked once, twice, then lay down, her head resting on her paws, staring at the door like if she waited long enough, I'd walk through it.
I went back to the bathroom where it happened.
I saw the bloodstains on the floor, the bottle tipped over on the counter, the razor blade lying crooked beside the sink.
I saw the mess I left behind.
It was so much worse than I imagined.
I wanted to clean it up, to hide it, to make it easier for them, but all I could do was stand there and look at the ruin I had made.
The morning after I killed myself, I realized I had set a fire that would burn forever.
I had handed my pain to the people I loved and left them to carry it, to try to make sense of the senseless.
I thought I was ending something, but I had only passed it on.
The morning after I killed myself, I wanted to take it back.
To tell everyone I was sorry.
To beg them not to let the worst parts of me become the only parts they remembered.
But the dead don't get second chances.