you were the victim, you wouldn’t let up until she kissed you. now she’s the villain.

You have begun to hate the place you live in, but you have forgotten whose footsteps gathered at the dusty door of time, whose blood spilled over in order to leave some hope, everything left rusted-over and turned brown. This place has its limits, but despite them you are growing.

You think that if you could just wrinkle the time, bend it a little, turn it over to reveal its nuances you could change what the hands have done and rewrite another story. You played a game of imagination when you were younger, reinventing yourself in a million possible ways. These are the different people you could have been, with different faces and different names, but.

But you get the story of a family split apart at the seams, a story you only understand in halves. And you don’t understand what it means to love an idea so much to nearly sacrifice your family for it, but you’re learning what love means and has meant for sixteen years. You understand the tender prickle against your skin as your father kisses you on the cheek.

You understand the cavity you sunk into as expectation.

You understand.

And you learn to love the things that made you different, the things you wanted to stamp out so strongly, you surrendered your name, you surrendered your father’s voice, you hid behind your books so you could become one of the beautiful people.

You understand the freedom you must now give yourself: to break the string tethering you to unhappiness.