The veins in her neck strain. Black spots erupt into her vision. Unwilled tears splash over her collarbone. When she remembers, these are the first things that come to her. The wallpaper in the bathroom, childish flowers in pastel colors. A porcelain toilet bowl. Soiled.
So many moments. Lost moments spent in the bathroom constitutes to lost years in her life.
Four years after her first rendezvous with the bathroom brings her to twelfth grade. Her senior year. Her final year in high school, yet she can scarcely remember what went on during the others. Her memory is selective. There are holes, aching gaps of lost time. Moments of her life gone, vanished.
Others may not know it, but she is unfixed.
***
Four years ago, she was happy. She was whole. She was a real person, not a china doll frozen in the backlogs of time. She was not subhuman. She was not a stack of intake and release forms.
She was not less.
She was not.
***
She was the product of a mistake, of a drunken night of bumping in the dark. She was a zygote of imaginary love at a high school party. She was the fetus of a girl and a boy, but not of a husband and wife, not of a mother and father.
Only the offspring of a teenager who had too many regrets.
***
She'd once been able to dance and laugh and love. She could feel and hope and trust. She could believe in a higher power that would keep her safe. She could dream and wish and simply BE.
It is hard to be when she does not want to be.
***
So many moments. Lost moments spent in the bathroom constitutes to lost years in her life.
Four years after her first rendezvous with the bathroom brings her to twelfth grade. Her senior year. Her final year in high school, yet she can scarcely remember what went on during the others. Her memory is selective. There are holes, aching gaps of lost time. Moments of her life gone, vanished.
Others may not know it, but she is unfixed.
***
Four years ago, she was happy. She was whole. She was a real person, not a china doll frozen in the backlogs of time. She was not subhuman. She was not a stack of intake and release forms.
She was not less.
She was not.
***
She was the product of a mistake, of a drunken night of bumping in the dark. She was a zygote of imaginary love at a high school party. She was the fetus of a girl and a boy, but not of a husband and wife, not of a mother and father.
Only the offspring of a teenager who had too many regrets.
***
She'd once been able to dance and laugh and love. She could feel and hope and trust. She could believe in a higher power that would keep her safe. She could dream and wish and simply BE.
It is hard to be when she does not want to be.
***
