Hannah—

Standing alone in a living room
far from home, I learned
you’d given up your life
and almost shattered on the spot.
I was in Oregon, in the valley,
a place so socked in by fog
it could’ve been Sleepy Hollow—
I wanted to mainline Vitamin D.
Already, I was thinking I might die;
couldn’t sleep, couldn’t find
any kind of relief. A visit to an old
friend proved ill-planned.
The daytime dark there was opposite
of what I needed: sunshine,
warmth, and healing waters.
Instead, we drank too much,
in the cloud-dense days,
into the frigid nights. Hannah.
You died in a hot city. It was January.
That evening, I read, you texted
a friend for comfort. Hey pal.
Next morning he found you, flesh cold.
I was freezing in Corvallis, OR.
Trying to get myself out of the hole
of depression, the same one you were in;
we both found the rope, we were both
falling, but somehow I was caught
and raised to safety while you stayed
down, twisting slow and heavy.
I think I caught myself. I didn’t want to die.
Did you? Hannah?

Katie Hamblen is a poet, M.F.A. candidate, and writing instructor at Western Kentucky University. She has been published in Shift and Good Little Girls, and is a peer reviewer for Whale Road Review. She lives with her family in Nashville, and reads whenever she gets a break from her three-year-old twins.