By Zara Q., TIWP Student

I think I think that I understand people.
That I can meet them, sit in the same class for a few months,
talk a few times.
And then I get them, for the most part.
I know why they do the things they do, say what they say.
The people who puzzle me shock me 
and intrigue me and anger me and wisen me.
You did just that. 

For so long I wrestled with our two years.
I fought over the memories,
strangled the life out of each word I breathed into existence.
I combed through the shadows and tore apart the glances of light.
Then when there was no more meat to pick from the bones,
I gave in.
Stopped resisting the inevitable.
I had made sense of you all along;
known your fears and insecurities like the back of my hand.
So when I held it out to you, I thought
it would be a white flag, not a threat.
That was what terrified you.
You were the girl who was afraid of everyone else,
and then made a monster out of me.
If I was always evil, it wouldn’t hurt to leave.

I wrote your demons onto the page so I didn’t have to carry them for you.
Am I happy I was the one who received them? No.
Are you glad to have drowned me in poison? No.
I wrote your demons onto the page because you shoved them onto my shoulders.
Because you were scared of letting them free,
you were unsure of what they would say,
what they would do,
what I would think.
So we took them in like a dead body,
a burden we would speak nothing about.
Bodies we buried and unearthed with every summer storm,
tossed in the waves and scattered in the sand.
They haunted our nightmares, but they were silent.
The beach was your happy place, the water your home.
I can see what kind of house you live in now.

It’s in the suburbs, you used to say.
I always thought Chicago, and I don’t know why.
The lawn is mowed and green and lush, 
a car is parked in the driveway.
Freshly shaven, your husband leaves the door at 8:00 a.m.;
he’s got places to be, you know.
Calling out, “have a great day,”
you saw in the crystal ball a 37-year-old, packing up a second graders lunch,
wiping the homemade breakfast off a kindergartener’s cheeks.
They have your face, your eyes.
The curly hair you loved to stress over.
Within the hour, they are off to school.
Does your heart fracture every time you send them off to that place?
Does it burn to know how the flames licked your ankles,
but they still seem just fine?
But you don’t voice it to them or the therapist you don’t but should have.
You just see your reflection in each of your patient tears.
Then you make the short commute home.
Walk the dog. Water the plants. Make the dinner. Read the stories. 
This is a house with family portraits covering the scratches on the wall,
a healthy yard hiding the rotting wood underneath the stairs.
This is the perfect home and life and world you want.
And you’d hate it.

That’s why, deep inside,
you are the girl who was afraid of me. 
You were strong in the ways that throw knives through banisters,
weak in the ways that could wrap someone in the arms of a hug.
It’s a sad, sad story, and I keep telling it this way.
How much more can I even say to you without you hearing it?
And you keep hugging your pink, frilly pillow as you cry to your mom at night.
Because I understood you so much it hurt,
and now I’m searching to accept my confusion.
I want to look back and smile,
but you don’t look back.
I haven’t seen you since,
but I see me being kicked or pushed or placed kindly into your great big box of phobias.
You can smile again.