WEEK 2

How do you let yourself
become a probation officer?
Is there a school for that?
A diploma?
Congrats, James, you have graduated
and are now
a complete
tool.

James recommends
not writing any more things
like that last thing.
Otherwise
the judge will get mad.
Who knew my probation officer
could read my journal?
I would like it on record that that isn’t fair.
Do you hear me, James?
Do you hear me, Mrs. Bainbridge?
Do you hear me, Judge?
A personal journal is very crowded
with so many eyes.

James on Monday.
Mrs. Bainbridge on Tuesday.
School every day.
Home every day.
Nowhere else unless Mom is with me.
That’s the schedule, Journal.
Got it?
It’s pretty simple.
Like a court-ordered cage,
with a Mom-shaped lock.

You better take this journal seriously,
James told me Monday.
Or they’ll throw you in juvie
so fast
your head will spin.
As if my head isn’t already spinning.

On that day, weeks ago, I’d lost my head.
Everything foggy and frosty,
everything a dwarf name
from a fairy tale
that doesn’t exist.
I remember I was so tired.
So
so
so
tired.
Levi had been sick the night before.
One of those nights with no nurse at home to help.
Mom had her hands full.
And I did, too.
Levi was bad sick.
So I helped.
Running for towels,
for meds,
for the heavy oxygen tanks,
for the suction machine,
for the spare trach tubes,
for the ties to keep the tube in his neck
so he could breathe
which he wasn’t doing very well
that night
before the morning
when my head was full of fairy-tale dwarves
named Foggy and Frosty and Sleepy and Crazy.

I will never know what I was thinking when I stole that wallet,
because I wasn’t thinking.
I wish everyone would stop asking.
There is no what
when there is no thinking.
There is just is-ing.
Things happen.
Things happened.
Just like that.
Snap.
It is what it is.
It was what it was.
So stop asking.
I was trying to help,
that’s all.
But it was the opposite of help,
and I know that now.
I’m not sorry, though.
If you’re wondering.
I’m just sorry I got caught.
Because it would have helped.
It would have.