ALEXANDRA LYTTON REGALADO 
Upon opening the letter and reading its contents, I vomited. Not because of the past months’ meager and unappetizing fare, but because of lines that relayed a desperate, pathetic situation, and spoke of the destitution in which my mother found herself, and the costly medical treatment required to remove the series of tumors thickening her gut like knots along a rope. And I could do nothing to alleviate the situation.