He’s eating sushi in the break room. He looks like a black bear, not a teddy bear, but there’s still something soft there ‘cause I remember it. And I wouldn’t remember something that I had just imagined. We are re-defining “small-talk.” It is so small. Like the smallest space you can put between your pointer finger and thumb, small. He is moving in a few months, to his original hometown, to where his heart belongs. I used to like him but I don’t like him anymore. I know that for a fact, I tell myself as I pick at my nails. I’m almost certain he is looking at me and thinking I look prettier than I did last summer when he didn’t want me, didn’t want me at all, but I talk about my boyfriend briefly as if that would stop him from saying anything he probably wouldn’t dare speak of at all, even if I begged him. Asked him. Do you think I’m pretty?

I used to think one day we would reconcile and rekindle the relationship that we never really had. “Us” failed, twice. For only three weeks, each try. Barely even a try. It still hurt him, though, and then crept around to eventually hurt me. But yes, I used to think that one day we would. That I could go through guy after guy while he fished around for girls and then one day, BAM!, there he’d be and there I would be. I wouldn’t smoke anymore by then, which he’d like, and I’d have my life together. My-self together. And we’d fall in love, like we failed to do at seventeen. But he’s going to pack up his bedroom soon and grow somewhere else, and I’ll be the girl he trained at work and pressed against his car in the parking lot a few weeks later, the midst of closing time around us.

One day he’ll forget altogether, and it’s to be expected that I will, too. I sit there in the break room and I really just want to say something. I think about pet names and future dreams and genetics and sweet kisses and text messages and the way my mother looks at him. And I want to tell him that I met him and kissed him and said yes to him for a reason, nearly three years ago. I want to say something. I want to look at him and say “ya know, I’m going to look for pieces of you in the man that I marry” and I want to mean it. But it’s 5:55 and I have to clock back in at 6:00 and if I don’t run to the ladies’ room now, well, we might have an issue on register 2.

I recall waking up as if it were a normal day. The sun faintly made its way through the crevices between the blinds. A strand of hair swooped backwards across my neck and landed on the pillow beneath me as I rolled over and stared at the ceiling. It hit me like a hammer to the chest, a big iron club that would thunk a villain on the head in an ACME cartoon. Facial muscles contracting, I looked at my hands, my wrists—one bleeding; the other, jealous—and I felt my face for signs of nonexistent bruises. I had a lot to do.

I showered like normal, hair safe from droplets in a shower cap. The water scorched my back and soap scum clung to my pores, anxiously. Trying to thicken my skin. I tread to my bedroom, limbs heavy. Picked out the red dress, three quarter-sleeved and dainty, and adorned my wrists with big black bracelets. As if I could fool everyone. I slicked my hair in a black headband, painted my cat eyes on, and walked out the door ready to begin the first day of my second life—only seven more to spare after this. And my engine purred, sending me a short distance to class. And the lecture was dreary, but who could blame me for thinking so? The world was spinning on as normal, and it was not a normal day. No one could tell. I think I saw the girl sitting next to me take a peak between the black bracelets. I wanted to turn it away from her but I couldn’t move a muscle. I let her have a look.

I drove to where he was doing community service and picked him up. I played the same slow, Pierce the Veil song over and over again. I’m such an animal, and baby honestly, these teeth won’t let you go. We were close to the bank when he noticed my carvings. Scolded me like a child, like he always had. I drove on, defenseless; waited for him to emerge from inside the building by breathing deeply alone in my car. He slipped the money in the cup holders—I’ve written about this before—as if it would satisfy me. Satisfied. That’s a funny word. I tugged at the red dress, told him he’d never see me again. Shuddered as he chuckled. I drove on and made it back in time to attend my 2pm improv class. There was no greater need for pretending than this day, this class. But I stared straight ahead, lifeless, fingers coiling red fabric. Some noticed, others lived on. That’s how it happens, you know. And who could blame them.

Today I see a relationship status, new and fresh like a daily headline in the morning paper, of a boy I used to know when he was dating my friend. He is now linked to the name, to the lips, to the heart—soon enough—of someone else. And it’s always a strange feeling, one can imagine, when the high heels you wore out time and time again but scuffed and tripped in are now polished and worn again by someone else. They hurt your feet, and so you tossed them (who could blame you?)—gave them to Goodwill; someone will find better use for them than you can now. You loved them, though. You think you did, you may have. You’re uncertain. But in the rush of Spring cleaning, you forgot that part. Now they hold new feet. Perhaps this metaphor is just me taking things too far. But how does she feel today? My friend. Does she send him a message: I’m happy for you… or does she pretend she doesn’t see? Perhaps it does not bother her at all, but I know it is always a strange whirlwind in the belly, even the smallest of water funnels, little baby tornadoes, that appear when you see someone you used to lay with get up and move on without making your bed. You just shut your lids tight and hope you don’t get accidentally compared to her during late-night pillow talk sessions. You realize that occurrence may eventually be inevitable; so be it. These are the moments in life that can only be labeled as “strange.” We don’t know what to make of them or even what to take from them. But they happen daily, like the printing of the daily paper which will soon be thrust at your front door like it was yesterday morning and the dawns of the week before. You’ll be thankful for the arrival of the news, but in the end, it ends up in the waste basket. Someone will use it to wrap their gifts, though. But that will never be you. You have no use for that. You wait for the Sunday paper to come. Bigger and better things. Maybe even a new pair of shoes.

Watch a father who can’t afford his groceries ‘cause he’s run out of money on his EBT card take back orange juice and a loaf of white bread so he can buy his overweight son a carton of ice cream

Get fucked in the mouth to the point of vomiting in the name of love

Witness a good deed and a suggestion for something to be done in return

Watch a mother get away with murdering her child

Read your first “I love you” off a text message screen

Hand a homeless man a beer - it’s what he probably wanted, anyway

Analyze the Bible as a piece of fiction for a semester after spending 8 years in Catholic school and watch your faith deteriorate

Search for morals and laugh when you can’t find them

Sit in a classroom where no one respects the professor

Or their elders as they cross the street, dodging cars

Hover over a fourth grader’s shoulder and watch him misspell “Weather.” “Snowman.” “Pineapple.” “Reach.”

Meditate to the sound of the news, bathe to a repeating record announcing the latest government budget cuts, take the sun and think about cancer

Flip through the channels until you find a sex scene, hear a curse word, see a poorly written drama on screen. Well that didn’t take long

Come home from work with an aching back ‘cause no one wants to carry their own weight. The manager sits in the back room playing with his new phone. He makes the big bucks. You’re understaffed

Ask how your best friend’s dealing with their parent’s divorce

Panic when you see the way your father scowls at your own mother. It’s only a matter of time

Listen to the next President get sworn in. Have a nightmare about nuclear weapons and a war over gasoline

Work 30 hours and get paid for a percentage of it. The rest goes to the government. You’ll get it back someday

Check your facebook
Check your facebook
Check your facebook

Count the lightbulbs in the church ceiling

Pray you’ll never end up married to the man sleeping next to you in the nude

Evaluate today’s education system

Realize the world is not what you thought it was going to be

Wish you had never opened your eyes

You are every mother’s dream. I am sure you got her a gift that sparkles in the sun and made you cringe at the register as you dug deep into your pants pocket. You’ll sit across from her today, I imagine, at a lovely Sunday brunch with white linen decor. Sunlight dances through the window, peering through thin lace curtains. You say thank you - for your life, for your looks, for your health, for her money, for her patience. She says thank you, for being her son. And she looks at you; looks at you sitting there, up in your years. Twenty-something now. For twenty-something Mother’s Days, you’ve performed this ritual. She scans your face and sees the puffy baby cheeks that she used to pinch; she remembers your tiny white teeth and the first one you lost. She thinks of the great things you’ve done - the diplomas you’ve held, the wild flowers you plucked outside and handed to her with a dirty palm. She thinks of the nights she spent tossing and turning, worrying about you. Recalls all the bad things you’ve done. Your mugshot, your bail calls, your apologies and arguments. Every mother’s dream. She reads you like a book, even to this day. You’ve tried for years to translate the language into something she can’t interpret. But she knows you inside out, except for one thing - a little grey smudge on the page. The incident she never was told about, the darkness in you she’ll claim she never partook in raising, in creating. But I saw it, and I felt it. And I never met her, looked at her, spoke to her, told her all the things I knew. She’ll die reaching out for you, calling you “son.” But what is a son, what is a mother-son wedding waltz, what is a morning stroll, what is an “I love you, Mom” if your son is a stranger? A monster? I wonder. And today I pray I never give birth to a baby boy. Because sometimes, no matter what you do, you give birth to a body with a beating heart that will shatter numerous others’ like nobody’s business as it grows. A heart like mine. A body like yours. A memory, like a Sunday brunch, or our frightening January night. Happy mothers day to your dear VM. She’ll never know what she created, but you know, and I’m sure it’s nothing you’re anxious to write of in a sentimental Hallmark card. Oh, you are every mother’s dream. But it is a dark one.

I was wearing white lace underwear when I lost my virginity, the insides stained with blood. The dried Scarlett letter. Sixteen. To this day I do not know what to make of my decisions back then; I ponder the reasoning behind tucking the set of lace in a black and pink handbag, next to an empty pack of cigarettes with “finished 6/27” written in pen. A scribble heart is to follow.

I am nineteen years old, home for the summer from the university. Mother must have been going through my things. Searching for answers, I suppose. Or perhaps the puppies found it. The purse is perched upon the shelf in my television armoire. I know exactly what it is. I touch the plastic dress worn by the Camel pack. I told myself I would find this someday, someday when it would be behind me.

1.

I’m on a long boardwalk and he’s following me. I can feel his presence and giggle when his breath grazes my neck. I know I shouldn’t be laughing, but I am. We walk further, until we reach the area—now, some covered forest-y place—where my family is. I see my mother. I look straight ahead so he can’t see my face but now I am saying “PLEASE GO AWAY, PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE, PLEASE STOP FOLLOWING ME” over and over and over again. They see the panic on my face and I don’t know if it’s fake or if it’s real or if it’s there because I want them to think that I hate him, but it’s there regardless. They jump on him and beat him. And at some point, I’m a part of it too and I bite the top of his head. I see two red indents where his hair used to be and suddenly, I feel sorry and I am ashamed. They disappear. Once they are gone, there I am, holding him up and cleaning his wounds and telling him that I love him.

It’s 7:20 AM and I am in my purple bedroom back home. I have to get up for work and I am confused because it has been months since I have dreamed of him.

2.

I don’t know if it’s Tay or if it’s Leah or if it’s Jenn—I think it is, at one point or another, each of them but I can’t distinguish the difference and realize who the girl is is irrelevant—but someone has been raped and her fingernails have been torn off. Her nail beds are now covered in purple and red dots. We are in a big white room. He has told her he is coming to get her soon and will do it again, again, again. She’s scared and I’m helping her but I’m mad because the police are involved and we’re running and everyone wants to save her but no one knew how to save me. I don’t know who did this to her until they pull up the mug shot and it’s him, but it’s not the picture I’ve seen on the website millions of times, it’s a new picture and his face is fatter and older and sadder and sicker, if that’s even possible, and I run out and lock myself away. She starts telling the story of the house and her parked car and I’m finishing the sentences, asking if she parked down the road, if she walked in through the garage or climbed through the window, if he kissed her first and then it got worse and worse, and she’s saying yes yes over and over and I am going crazy because it’s my story. I tell the officers I know where he is.

And then it’s 12:45 PM and Casey’s sleeping silently beside me. The light is coming in through the window at full force and I see his perfect eyelids twitch in his own dream. I’m angry and I throw my arm over his body so he awakens. He has to be somewhere in half an hour. I start crying because I don’t understand why I’m dreaming like this again. I’m worried it means something. I’m angry because I don’t deserve it, because I haven’t been going to bed thinking about it, but it keeps resurfacing out of the blue. He says it’ll be all right. Between you and me, I’m afraid to go to sleep tomorrow. Perhaps I’ll stay up all night.

A year ago today I called my mother and apologized for all the trouble that I had caused her. Two months into my depression, I could already see the damage and shame I had brought unto my family, especially her, and was calling to not give her my two-weeks per say, but my two-days notice. “It” was happening that weekend, I had decided. I just didn’t want to leave without letting her know it wasn’t her fault.

And when I went to hang up, that’s when she started wailing. And so I started whimpering. I remember my back against the cold door of the abandoned bedroom in my apartment as I slid down and landed on the dusty tile floor, vision blurred and voice shaky. Apologies bounced off the satellites, distributing to her and to me. She told me to hold on until Monday, to go back to therapy. She poured all her guilt into my glass and I forced it down,
down,
   down. She reminded me of who exactly I would be destroying upon removing myself from this place. And so we made a pact that I would hold on until Monday, vowing to wait to do right by my mother, for what I thought would be the last time.

For my eighteenth birthday, the man who raped me made me a hookah out of a patron bottle, plastic pipes, and a black skull head which held the shisha. I had only known him for a week then and sat nervously in the front seat of his car, hesitantly accepting his gift. I asked if he was trying to kill me. New to college, I worried he looked to freshman as fresh meat. And here I was, stupidly opening my door and my arms and my mind to him. I didn’t understand our friendship or his intentions and openly admitted that I feared the worst, which amused him, of course. I didn’t know he’d lead me to believe I was falling in love a month later, or that four months later, I’d be led to ruin, running to my car in the cold with tears streaming down my face; throat burning from vomit and wrists waiting to be cut to shadow the pain of what I had just gone through.

He made me a second hookah shortly after, out of a tall bottle of grey goose. We pieced it together, together. I remember the sweat on his silky indigo button down shirt which he foolishly wore in the September heat. His shoes clicked as we scurried down the aisles in Lowe’s to buy the pipes. He addressed the cashier as “Love.” Everyone was “Love.” The day after he did it, he told me “I’ll see you later, Love.” I told him he would never and he slammed the car door.

That memory hurts. Moving on.

My boyfriend refuses to see what he looks like. He’s probably seen pictures but has no idea who he is staring at, and prefers not to be told, either. He doesn’t want a face to match the descriptions, the stories, the details I’ve muttered sheepishly in the dark. But yesterday he told me it was about time the images get deleted from my phone. To be honest, I couldn’t even tell you why I had kept them there; why I had let myself see those eyes, that nose, that hair, while scrolling through my album of 380 cell phone pictures. But there they were. And if you looked through now, they’re gone.

Over the summer, which I devoted to self healing, I got rid of the hookahs but kept the black skull head, which sat on my dresser in my new apartment. My boyfriend was leaving this morning and picked the skull up from my dresser on his way out. He asked what it was when he saw me shudder, and there I was, admitting that there was still an artifact left in my room that trailed the memory of such a mad man.

He took me to the balcony of my apartment complex. We stood against the railing on the third floor, facing the parking lot. He told me to throw it straight out into the grey pavement, as far as I could. I felt the chiseled teeth, the indents of the eyes. I poked my nail near the holes in the top where the flavoring, once burned, used to seep through. I remembered that car ride. I remember shoving the piece into my backpack and walking back home afterwards, the skull head poking out through the zipper, for it had been too tall.

And then I chucked it. There was a pop and the pieces scattered across the parking lot, too far away for me to see them. And then I heard myself chuckle. And I use that word wisely because it was one of his favorites, you know. But there are very few moments when I look back to remember that. And Casey will never have to see him or smell him or make him bleed or watch his mouth curl into a smirk. He’ll never have to look at an image of those eyes, that devilish pair, and feel them burn into his skin like I did.

I guess that’s the thing about growing up. You have to realize that since you’ve changed, and you know you’ve changed, and you know you’ve learned more since then and didn’t mean everything that you said back in those days,

the same goes for everyone else. And yeah, some people will never change. But others may be just like you. So when they’re sorry, they’re sorry. And just like you’d kill for second chances, and just like you wish you could walk up to people from the past and say hey, I was just a kid, I was lost, don’t remember me like that, you’d like who I am now,

they could be wishing the same thing. So don’t freeze them in that frame. And when your heart mends, don’t sew it up in bitter threads.

That’s growth.

It’s like foreshadowing in a novel, precursors chapters before the climax. You can feel the pep of your heart pick up, the tickling trace of a sign: an idea that can and will keep you up late at night, if you let it. It’s love, and it may not arrive tomorrow, or maybe even the next day, but the flight’s not too long and soon enough, there will be a knock at your front door. I see it in the blue of his eyes. I hear it when he answers the phone. I feel it when he ambushes my cheeks with soft kisses—pelt pelt pelt pelt pelt—and I’m without a shield so I must surrender. Has it been a long time? Not at all. And is anything to be rushed? The answer here, the same. No, my dear. But is my tongue curling anxiously to say it? Are his ear drums ready to rumble quick enough to hear it? I want to fall in love with this man. I am falling into something deep with this man.

And if he reads this, I don’t think I’d shrivel up and die. I don’t think I’d be forced to say it on the spot, for I don’t feel it, but I can sense the heat rising. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he agreed.

She gave me my first cigarette. I remember - January 2nd, 2008 - the cold weather, the borrowed coat I wore, the lack of sleep we got that night. Cranky in the morning; the others slept in the living room, back to back and blanket to blanket. It was a free for all in those days, and I was finally allowed to be set free and mingle with the rest of them. If only my parents knew what it would eventually do to me.

She was tubby then, a mystery to all. Why did she do the weird things she did? She wanted to be internet famous like the rest of us. We laughed because we thought we ruled the world, and anyone beneath us was labeled abnormal; inhumane.

We leaned against the street sign and inhaled, exhaled. She wore a cheap scene bean jacket with fake brown fur. There were pink strands in her dirty dirty blonde and brown hair. I wanted to wash her face. I wanted to go to sleep.

It’s been four years and she’s still on the same wavelength, that same misunderstood low. Married now, if I’m correct, or at least trapped in a relationship with a man as dirty and lost and acne scarred as she is. I probably outweigh her by twenty pounds, and to think back then I scoffed at her love handles and tubby belly. Her face is sunken in and you can see the absence of life in her eyes. I still would give anything to wash her hair. She sticks needles in her arms, you know. And even though she’s grown out of putting tampons in her mouth and trying to pretend she’s outgoing when she’s awkward, she’s probably never going to grow out of that scene because there’s no one there to tell her no. To pull her out. To get her away from those people. I bet every paycheck excites her, so she can run back and get some more. We all know how it feels, or at least we have at one point or another.

We called her the Rodent. She’ll probably die this way, as one. It breaks my heart to see the demise of the thrills and things she lives for.

Sometimes I write with no direction because it’s the same way that some people live.

You’re going to get married one day and no one in the pews will know. The father and mother of the bride will be so proud that she’s found such a beautiful, stand-up guy. You’ll provide for her. Buy a house. Carry her over the threshold. Brush her blonde locks. Have sex in the afternoon. And you’ll travel the world together; sleep in hotels—the maid will make the bed and she won’t have a clue of what kind of secrets she’s folded inside. You’re going to conceive a child one day, and it’ll grow, and it’ll be brought into this world by some woman that you love. And if it’s a boy, you’ll hold it, and you’ll hope it’s anything but like you. And if it’s a girl, I hope you hold it and you pray she endures anything but the things you put me through.

My father held me like that once, too. And he had no idea what the future would hold. He prayed that I would be safe, and healthy, and happy. And unharmed. Deserving only the best, his baby. Sometimes I think, who the hell are you to ruin the things he wished for me?

Stand right there, yes, just like that. And don’t move, just smile. And don’t speak. Because the last time you spoke, you promised me something. And we both know it’s not a big deal, but the point is, you didn’t do it. So stand there, just freeze. Clench your muscles and show me your teeth. I want to leave you standing cold and lonely. I want to leave you hanging. You’ll stay until your legs ache, your back pinches, your jaw hurts. Smile and nod ‘cause it’s fine, it’s fine. It’s just a broken promise. Be more careful with me, and more careful with your words.

If this is the prologue to a horror story, let me put the book down. But something tells me it’s alright to keep reading. I believe every word you say, scanned every word you pressed into the page.