My Dearest Poppy,

I'm so very sorry about the aardvark and setting your sister's dress on fire two Christmases ago. And for the handle bar mustache joke. Remember the game that Jay and I used to play in the basement of your house before you moved into that big thing where your new kids could have more room to play and you'd stopped paying child support because you didn't have the money and I went on scholarship and went to community college instead of university even though I was accepted but couldn't afford the tuition. Pronouncing the names of things backwards and eating chocolate cake with our mouths open. Getting high in your back yard while we claimed to be walking the dog. I'm not sorry. I just feel the pain of it sometimes, stuck in my lower back like an old car accident that won't forget me. Brother and I talk about our penchant for depression. And I'm manic now. Stalking around the apartment alone in my underwear and haunted looks. Curling up under blankets and painting a lot. Pulling all the shades closed. Ripping up pictures of the faces of people I love. I could be dead or alive for all I care. I don't care. Crying and eating and sleeping feel like petty useless tasks. He cured his with a child. So care free and happy and in love now that I've not seen the evidence in dark circles and late night binges with friends in years. As long as she's been alive. Alive. He's a live. I self medicate, instead. Tried to staunch the flow of the way this bile seeps into me with love and work. But it never works. I always feel short. Stop short. Can't figure out just how to keep it going. Feel useless and dried and contagious. The sharp deadly pious breath of mornings. Drink vodka and red wine until. Until. Because there's a predictability to being drunk. I know what that is. What I am when I am. A better understandable loss of control. I shouldn't expect something else. I've never been any good at Septembers.

Your adoring daughter,

Imogen