Mother’s death was simply A MINOR FACED CHARGE AFTER A LOCAL WOMAN, 64, FOUND DEAD AT HER HOME. There was no further expounding, no further coverage.

The caption appeared briefly for three seconds at the bottom of the local news channel, before they switched to a commercial break. I searched on the newsprint for months of the trials, but, instead of finding any other snippets related to dead local woman, I found spreads on the latest feminist right campaign and the next basketball game.

I thought I should be glad that pictures of my mother's deformed body weren’t plastered on every flat surface out there. But for some reason, I didn’t. Instead, I felt angry. Angry at the world, angry at Gran for not being there on that fateful night, angry at the wasted dickhead kids, angry at myself for too absorbed in my own anxiety to come home more often.

It was the hot, vicious anger that made me felt sick with a constant urge to drop whatever I was doing every five minutes to check on the door. It was the white, blinding, paralyzing wrath that made my fingers itched to tap the correct number on both sides of my forearms to assure myself. I’m OK. The order is right. 

As long as I keep doing this, the world will be balanced and I’ll be safe.