my mother’s on the phone with my brother who said he wrote me a letter but didn’t. i told her to ask him why. we’ll see what she says that he says, if their time didn’t run out. we get twelve minutes per phone call, down three from the jail. in the jail, we could press five and skip most of the auto­mat­ed message. in the quar­an­tine facil­i­ty, we have to listen to most of the auto­mat­ed message before it lets us press zero to start the call. i stalled my last letter because in his last letter he said he would never again put our mother through the fear of not knowing whether her son would live or die and i’m knee deep in another bout of sui­ci­dal ideation. so what is there to say? i’ll ask him again to con­sid­er the mental facil­i­ty instead of prison, i’ll find a way to talk about his sui­ci­dal ten­den­cies without talking about my sui­ci­dal ideation. i’ll tell him i’m sorry his friend died and i’m glad he got to talk to him first, but i won’t tell him that i can’t stop pic­tur­ing his cold body on the steps of the church.