a text unlike any other perforated my soul and my eyes wanted to erase the note read, press a remote control or hop in a time machine and reset the day.

 

 

 

every late summer morning with fresh dew on the outdoor plains, we'd don the red and black polyester blends like our carefree yesteryears. my memory takes me back to knee-high socks line those chunky, not yet light-weighted cleats gripping through the muddied field as we put up another stop. the crowd roars sitting on those soon-to-be-in-months-time cold, metallic benches.

 

 

 

my mind wanders back to reality to decades later in our new lives, no longer as carefree. responsibility-mired, yet still simplistic gestures. a text message welcoming the year anew, celebrating before celebrations should begin. every year the same message, Go Dawgs.

 

 

 

 

calendars changed again, yet dissimilarities kept far away. until dread seeped in, foreboding an unanswered text. minutes later, my heart dropped into the pit of my stomach unable to return home. my friend's child responded. suicide, she wrote. she died by suicide.