"Tell me," she poked my side, "—why you are so sad." The streetlights were slowly fading away, like a scratched letter on a chalkboard, latching onto the nails of those who pass by.
"Does it matter?" My voice shook as the breeze passed through my spine, rattling my bones.
"Yeah, it does." She flicked a spiny leaf off of her shoulder, watching it fall in a spiral of lost dreams and tainted promises. The leaf was probably promised that once you fall off the tree—oh there will be an adventure out there. And what did it receive? A state of crumble, broken as a fingertip pokes its veins of empty blood.
"I'm not sad," I whispered in a reply, repeating it over and over in my head—maybe it'll press the sides of my brain, remind it to be happy as you hurt the eyes of others. No, that's not how it works.
{Not how momma would have said it. She would have flicked her cigarette in front of my eyes, letting my curiosity reach the ceiling as the smoke poured out of the edge. Honey, there's no hiding spot to protect you from sadness.
She had said it with ease—and died with ease. Looking at her, breathless on the couch, with a cigarette dangling underneath her fingertips—it hurt. It hurt enough to run outside and fall near the streetlights.
A blur of people swept themselves across the streets, wandering aimlessly towards buildings and machines. No one stopped to notice the hovering stars above their heads or the blinking moon with thin lips. Each star began its life as a barbaric yawp, untamed and untranslatable, born in the dirt, starving, hysterical, naked, dragging itself from sky to sky for centuries before it could get its foot in the door of the lexicon of stargazers. No one had even noticed me whose head was in my palms, the tears on my fingertips, the hatred seeping out of my eyelashes. As if to casually remind the outside, dark world, I began to mutter, "I'm sad, I'm sad, I'm sad."
Yet, only the stars knew of my sadness.}
"You know, the streetlights," she pointed out, "they guide the lonely ones home. They remind them that no matter where they are—surrounded by eternal darkness that drags behind them with chains hooked onto their ankles—that there is light at the end of the path. You don't know when that end really is—for where do the streetlights stop? They are everywhere. To remind you, that there will always be light in the darkest hour."
YOU ARE READING
therapy
Short Story"they told us that we needed therapy, as if medication and tainted words could fix broken toys."
