you know i liked it better before -
Aw, fuck it, there’s something I need to write and I’m not sure what it is, but fuck it all.
Here:
It’s quiet outside. The trees next to the house stretch up and stretch tall, reaching up to brush the edges of the sky, but still, still she thinks, they aren’t enough to protect her.
The cold scrapes against her cheeks, against her bare hands, but she trudges outside with Rosie, her dog, and waits. Someday, she’ll remember gloves. Someday, she’ll remember the way the cold clutches her close and doesn’t let go.
Sometimes, outside, underneath a dark sky and with a darker heart, she thinks about what she’s left behind. She considers if it was worth it, if the price of stars and the cost of silence was enough to move here; the real cost was higher, and cut deeper, than she likes to remember. She doesn’t cry. She won’t cry. Even at night, the pillow balled up against her chest, her breath hitching in her throat and her neck awkwardly straight against the mattress, she doesn’t cry.
There’s the old Oak tree near the front of the house, the branches thick and sprouting out one from another. She spent half a summer up there when she was younger-eight or nine or even ten, the years stretch back too far and her memories blend together too much for her to distinguish. Now the branches stand out darkly against a dark sky, and she thinks of the height; the danger of the fall weighs upon her mind.
She is afraid.
She is afraid of living.
It’s quiet out, tonight, but she keeps the television turned up loud and tells herself she prefers to stay in. In where it’s safe. In where she’s safe.
She drinks caffeine late at night and sprawls upon her comforter. (It does not comfort her.) She eats chocolate and rereads books she’s read too many times before. She lulls herself with familiar endings.
(In the darkness, when the lights are off, she kisses herself goodbye. There is no going forward; she knows this now.)
Underneath her fingernails, along her scalp, she can feel the need to change burning. This cannot last. She cannot allow this to last. Sometime, (sometime soon), something will need to alter. She needs to alter. This cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely. (But the comforter is soft against her skin and alcohol dulls the world momentarily; this is what I wanted, she tells herself, trying on the lie, but it does not stick, and she lets it go, lets it slip away between her fingers.)
Sometime soon she will need to fix this.
She does not know how to fix this.
“It will be all right,” she tells herself, her complexion pale in the mirror, her fingers curling around the toothbrush still in her mouth. “It is going to be all right.”
Here:
It’s quiet outside. The trees next to the house stretch up and stretch tall, reaching up to brush the edges of the sky, but still, still she thinks, they aren’t enough to protect her.
The cold scrapes against her cheeks, against her bare hands, but she trudges outside with Rosie, her dog, and waits. Someday, she’ll remember gloves. Someday, she’ll remember the way the cold clutches her close and doesn’t let go.
Sometimes, outside, underneath a dark sky and with a darker heart, she thinks about what she’s left behind. She considers if it was worth it, if the price of stars and the cost of silence was enough to move here; the real cost was higher, and cut deeper, than she likes to remember. She doesn’t cry. She won’t cry. Even at night, the pillow balled up against her chest, her breath hitching in her throat and her neck awkwardly straight against the mattress, she doesn’t cry.
There’s the old Oak tree near the front of the house, the branches thick and sprouting out one from another. She spent half a summer up there when she was younger-eight or nine or even ten, the years stretch back too far and her memories blend together too much for her to distinguish. Now the branches stand out darkly against a dark sky, and she thinks of the height; the danger of the fall weighs upon her mind.
She is afraid.
She is afraid of living.
It’s quiet out, tonight, but she keeps the television turned up loud and tells herself she prefers to stay in. In where it’s safe. In where she’s safe.
She drinks caffeine late at night and sprawls upon her comforter. (It does not comfort her.) She eats chocolate and rereads books she’s read too many times before. She lulls herself with familiar endings.
(In the darkness, when the lights are off, she kisses herself goodbye. There is no going forward; she knows this now.)
Underneath her fingernails, along her scalp, she can feel the need to change burning. This cannot last. She cannot allow this to last. Sometime, (sometime soon), something will need to alter. She needs to alter. This cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely. (But the comforter is soft against her skin and alcohol dulls the world momentarily; this is what I wanted, she tells herself, trying on the lie, but it does not stick, and she lets it go, lets it slip away between her fingers.)
Sometime soon she will need to fix this.
She does not know how to fix this.
“It will be all right,” she tells herself, her complexion pale in the mirror, her fingers curling around the toothbrush still in her mouth. “It is going to be all right.”