By Sofiya Ivanova 

Trigger warning: suicide 

“…Закончил жизнь самоубийством.”

I moan it through the phone line’s static 
palm pressed over my mouth.

 

My mother listens on the other end—

she once saw your size eleven shoes in our foyer
and said it’s hard to believe they belong
to somebody’s son.

The gnarly consonants snag on my tongue. 
I can’t get them out fast enough 
for mercy. 

(Like the Russian word for “life,” 
yours was the length 
of one syllable.)

Took his own life:

A blow that wishes to be a caress.

He took his own life
to Hawaii, where his freckles multiplied, and salt wind whistled through his curls.

He took his own life
onto his surfboard, cleaving waves between psychology classes.

He took his own life
and shared it with a girl he loves.

Killed himself.

When heard: 
Hits like a gunshot.

Why would you 
twist the rope?  
Put salt in the 
exit wound? 

When said: 
The kickback 
knocks the wind out of me. 
I stain my hands 
with your still-warm blood.

Committed suicide,

Like a crime.

Like a coroner’s report, 
the end-stop pressed into the page
bleeding
into a black hole.

---

Sofiya Ivanova (she/her) ‘27 is a lifelong “rhyme-writer,” as she declared at just three years old. Now her work has been published in Perception magazine, several anthologies, and in a solo collection, Hindsight. Having immigrated from Russia as a child and overcome Lyme disease as a teenager, she received the prestigious Coronat scholarship to study psychology and creative writing.