Pause. Rewind.
I play the tapes back
again
because somewhere along the line
I forgot to bury the thought of you
in my backyard
and now I can’t seem to
let go.
We’re sharing screen time again,
pictured in full color, side by side
on the corner of Secret Sisters
and
Being Too Much for One Another.
I am transfixed, stuck staring,
looking for whatever it is
I could’ve missed
that caused this whole thing
to blow up in my face.
Fast forward.
I’m in the aftermath
of all the time we spent in
each other’s pockets
and all the
late night drives in your Mustang.
It’s all crashing down around me.
As the dust settles
I’m on the phone
with your mother
when she drives the knife of
“You’re the reason she wants to kill herself”
into my chest
Pause. Rewind.
I play the tapes back again
to double check that I didn’t miss
something, anything,
because I started hurting myself when I was
thirteen
and now the thought of you brings me the
same comfort
I once found at the edge of a razor.
Fast forward.
Epilogue.
You and me no longer
share space
on the same screen,
and it’s been that way for five years.
We’re at the part where
your mother
confronts me at the dog park
in front of my new boyfriend.
she apologizes
for cutting me deep enough that
it never did heal quite right
and I tell her it’s fine,
because I always did find it easier
to vomit lies into people’s palms
than to let anybody
hear my truth.
I play the tapes back again
and again
and again
until I stop checking you for
exit wounds or blunt force trauma.
I play the tapes back again
and again
until I stop seeing myself as the
villain
in my own story
until the words
“we don’t talk anymore”
roll off my tongue with ease
and until the voice
inside my head
stops trying to convince me that
I was always the Catalyst
that took my friends to low places,
until I finally believe that
I am not responsible for the faces
my friends don’t show me.
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
It’s about a friendship that ended with a bang after she stopped speaking to me without an explanation. I sent a nasty text and the following day, her mom called me to tell me that I was the reason her daughter wanted to kill herself. It was traumatizing, but I’ve made my peace with it. Nobody in this story is a villain or a hero. we are all human with imperfect human traits and yeah, sometimes we all fucking suck. Whatever. We grow. We change. We never have to talk to one another again. I am not to blame for the problems in someone else’s brain and that’s the only thing in this scenario that I am certain of.
no hate intended. If people didn’t want me to tell my story my way, they wouldn’t have played their roles the way they did.
a collection of words 