wednesday, october 18, 2023.
thirteen at seven pm near lake's edge, just after dinner. it's raining and thundering and you're telling me this is a bad idea. i'm laughing and holding your hand.
we stand by the water together, on that old metal dock, and watch lightning crack across the sky. i squeeze your hand harder when i feel you flinch.
that's what feeling alive is — not the lightning. it's your hand.
i lay beside you later, listening to the crickets outside, and think about your nervous laugh all night. were you scared? or did you feel it too?
wednesday, october 19, 2023.
i want to be young again — again, in the back seat of the car as rain patters against the roof. my mother and father aren't fighting, but laughing, and the hushed joy of their voices is the only time i've heard them agree on something. i'm falling asleep and the road lights are twinkling and everything is okay.
i am loved.
wednesday, october 20, 2023.
“you shouldn’t feel guilty. you’ve spent your whole life feeling guilty,” he says. there’s five hours and 3,165 miles between us, but i swear he’s right next to me with a voice like that. i’m a kid again, sitting on the stairs leading up to my grandparents house on halloween night, passing reason back and forth; flickering, like the porch light.
he told me about people, then. how certain people feel empty. i thought that i’d been empty before, but not like this. not like mom. my dad said certain people need to reach rock bottom before they can change. i asked if he thought mom was somewhere at the bottom, looking up at us, desperate for a ladder, or a rope, or something — “you feel guilty. you shouldn’t feel guilty.” later that night i was surrounded by candy wrappers and the overwhelming dread of rock bottom, wondering if i’d ever fall down there, and if i’d see my mother along the way. wondering if there’d be anything left.
five hours for him is after work. for me, it’s one in the morning, and it’s dark in my apartment and dad talks like it’s just the two of us. no ocean. no 3,165 miles. no rock bottom.
the next day mom texts me and i decide not to reply, the same decision i make over and over again, until it’s been eleven months since i last heard her voice. it’ll be a year soon. i don’t feel guilty.