.

i was afraid
and i never liked using periods
at the end of my sentences

my 4th grade english teacher
always complained to my parents
about my failure in punctuating

everyone thought maybe it was
me being careless
or something tutoring could help

but tutoring couldn't help
this nine-year-old

my friends talked about hello kitty
and how cute brady fitzgerald looked

and all i could think about
was death

i was always scared
about the idea of no longer existing
about everything eventually coming to an end

and i thought that maybe
if i stopped using periods at the end of my sentences
it would give me some type of relief

writing was a way of expressing myself on paper
writing was one thing i loved

i wrote poems and stories
and shared them with my family
and they appreciated it despite the lack of punctuation

i wrote all the time

until the end of 4th grade
when my grandpa took a bullet to the head
and was found drowning in his own pool of blood

i stopped writing that whole summer
and spent every night staring at my ceiling
dreading every tomorrow to come

i was miserable
i needed my grandpa
my best friend

life without him was horrible
and i wanted to die

i've come to terms with death
and it no longer scares me

i stopped trying to convince myself that
i was immune to death

death is inevitable
and it cannot be ignored

ignoring it only makes us less cautious
of everything we do

death is a friend
and i've welcomed it home

on the first day of 5th grade
my english teacher told us to write a sentence
on an index card

about what we did over the summer

I stopped being afraid.