by Bree Bailey
Experimental
Day 1
Attend Pops’ party.
Order three new bras that boost my confidence. (Give myself enough support to look like my dad isn’t dying.)
Day 2
Apply to some big-girl job to make money and leave this town behind.
Pay the bills—my birthright for being born in a single-parent household.
Buy waterproof mascara.
Day 3
Refinance my face and enroll in a class to learn to smile more.
Stop answering my phone—it’s always bad news or loan collectors.
(Not sure what scares me more these days: Death or my growing interest in it.)
Day 4
Attend open bar 3 p.m.–6 p.m.
Dinner—Taco Bell with Pops.
Hospital. (Uber home.)
Day 5
Skip work. (Or maybe it’s closed—I don’t know anymore.)
Call hospice. (When they ask for his name, pretend I dialed the wrong number.)
Day 6
MRSA—wear a hazmat suit to see his sweaty body.
Attend Pops’ first and only art exhibit—hanging from these twinkly lights, piss-yellow bags float in front of my eyes in the city I escape to.
Buy new shoes on Amazon. (Magic carpets are out of stock.)
Day 7
Start applying to jobs. Out of state.
Look up plane tickets. Print an itinerary—how to cope from far away.
Make myself smaller.
RIP everything up by midnight.
Day 8
Skip breakfast.
Skip lunch.
Skip dinner.
Day 9
Drink so bad my phone won’t wake up so that I can finally ask for
help
when I think I should.
Day 10
Attend Pops’ burial at 10 a.m.
Order a new planner.
Learn to grieve without reminders.
Day 11
Hospital.
Bree Bailey (she/her) is a Latine mom and poet who lives in Southern Austin, Texas, with her beautiful family. She is a mental health advocate who speaks openly about her experiences with PTSD, depression, and anxiety, while also doing her best to bask in the light and good of the world. Her poems have been featured in All My Relations, Sledgehammer Lit, Ample Remains, Olney Magazine, Serotonin, Wrongdoing Magazine, and West Trade Review, and are forthcoming in Gulf Stream Magazine, among others. She was most recently named a finalist in the Write Bloody Jack McCarthy National Book Prize. When not celebrating her friends’ publications or slam events in real life, you can find her on Zoom dancing and smiling like your biggest fan. Follow her on Instagram @breebaileypoetry or Twitter at @thebreebailey.