My mother dreams that my sister is cold. She wakes from this dream and drives to Target to buy my sister warm clothing: sweaters, long-sleeved shirts, leggings lined with fleece. She packs up the clothes and mails them, priority. The box travels many miles. It is delivered to my sister’s house and left on her front porch because no one comes to the door when the postman knocks.
The postman must hear the dog barking. I wonder if he rushes away, busy and unbothered, or if he pauses, listening to the concerned wail of the animal inside. Does he knock again? Does he walk away with an aching, uneasy feeling in his chest? It will be four days before someone comes and finds them: the dog who will not be able to sleep alone anymore, and the girl who has overdosed.
In the weeks after her death, I google: How does it feel to die of a meth overdose? It occurs to me that everyone who truly knows is already dead. I believe things get quite warm when the body encounters too much meth. An explosion, brain bursting, head blasting off. These are the phrases that I read on drug forums. All that heat and then nothing. Or perhaps there is something in between the heat and the nothing. Maybe Sarah looked down from that in-between place and saw the lovely, beastly universe shimmering beneath her and said, “No, thank you. I am done with this.”
The coldness comes later. So much cold; the bathroom tiles she dies on, her skin as the days wear on, my mother realizing she has sent a package to her already-dead daughter, the part of my heart where all the bad things live. I keep them encased in ice so they cannot touch me. At the very center of this lies the darkest part of me. It is slowly thawing. I can hear the drip, drip, drip of the icy memories that I fear will eventually drown me.
The box of warm clothing is thrown away, unopened. I hold on to the image of Sarah’s shitty porch, with the white priority-mail box, waiting to be found. It sits, expectantly, as the dog tries to claw through the bathroom door, as her boyfriend finds her body, as the police come and go, as she is taken to the coroner. The box is thrown away, but the shitty porch remains.
My mother does not send packages anymore.