Excerpt from Warm Milk and Sugar

51/50

1996

It was around four in the morning. I was sixteen, spun out of my mind, and convinced I couldn’t keep living the way I was. My chest tightened, my breathing slipped, and shadows moved across my room like they were closing in. I thought it was over. But something inside me whispered, “It’s not over. Crawl to your mother.”

So, I did. In the pitch‑black darkness, I pushed myself across the floor and reached her foot at the end of the bed. I remember squeezing it before everything went black.

When I woke up in the hospital, I heard the doctor say I was lucky to be alive. They called it a cry for help, and I know the doctors were right, because my Father was listening.