Member-only story
You Loved All My Thorns
You freed me from one prison to put me in another.
Sometimes it was easier to imagine our life as a fairy tale gone wrong. You were the boy from across the tracks, and I was the girl you wanted to save. I was Cinderella cowering in the basement and longing for a life beyond our small town. When you knocked on the window that one Thursday night, maybe I should have known better than to let you squeeze yourself through the opening I left for you. But I let you creep inside.
A few months later, we escaped in a car that could barely stay steady on the road. It broke down halfway to Arizona, and we slept in a motel room with a bare-bulb lamp and the reek of mildew on the sheets. But it was easy to forget all that and just be happy in your arms that wound around me in what felt like protection — though maybe even then it was just possession. I didn’t realize the difference.
You didn’t harm me by word or action, but you wanted me to stay locked away behind a door. Soon I realized you didn’t want to share me with the world. I was your secret, the treasure you had coveted and sequestered away, and maybe another girl would have been happy to be just your home-bound Cinderella.
You freed me from one prison to put me in another.
But you loved all my rough edges and tried to smooth me into complacency — a doll behind glass.
I stole the key one morning and took the new car as far as it would go on the gas in the tank. Then I walked. And walked. And walked.
You wouldn’t find me, and I’d live with my thorns, and I would survive.
You taught me how to free myself.
