and should it matter that you didn't scream?
should it matter that your blood filled the water perfectly?
should it matter, when you left such sad words behind--The Collected Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, Hamlet, battered half-full notebooks, your Algebra workbook--
that you did not gasp for air?
that your father did not cry?
that he found you still caught between life and death,
and instead of pulling you out of your own diluted insides,
instead of reaching into those dark red waters and feeling around for some still-breathing piece of you to salvage,
stepped calmly downstairs
sat at the kitchen counter
drank coffee

No. You are not the reflection of thick men's hands that were too afraid to become bloody.
You are not the knot around your throat choking out the screams of your mental illness for seven years.
You are not a witch.
You are not this poem.
I see now, your blue tanktop on a rainy summer day, your strong deep laugh, your tight shorts, your smiles, the birthmark under your left eye, your theatrical, broken poetry
dissolving
into water