Member-only story
Say Goodbye and Fly Free
I burned the pictures and set fire to what you meant to me.
Do you remember all those papers I’d pass to you in school? Sometimes I’d crumple up the note into a tight ball as if you’d get some kind of delight just by unraveling the mystery fold by fold. But most of the time you just stared with an apathetic luster as if I’d bored you with the litany of my heart.
I knew it was wrong — I knew you’d never care — but still I handed off each piece to my friend, who traded them away to you, as if every single word were a part of me.
Every single one went in the trash. I know you didn’t keep even one of them. I was an annoyance in the shape of an adolescent girl who didn’t know how to shine bright. All the older girls, the ones who were in high school, fascinated you much more than any other girl in our class would have. I knew these things, yet I still danced in the fanciful realm of make-believe. Sometimes I could even imagine you loving me. And I craved that kind of attention as if it were a lifeline.
But you didn’t know a thing. You saw me at school every day, but you had no idea. You didn’t hear the cursing, the frustration, the echo chamber of a home that didn’t feel safe. I never told anyone. How could I? Would anyone have tried to save me? No.
