Only If You're Lucky

by Stacy Willingham

One day we were strangers and the next we were friends. That’s usually how it works with girls.

Some words should be ours to own, at-times-vicious yet tender terms of endearment we toss around like glitter that suddenly taste sour in the mouths of men. Girls is one of them.

That’s the beauty of fiction, of words: when your life becomes too boring, too bland, too hard or depressing or chaotic or calm, they allow you to simply float away and inhabit another, try it on for size. With so many options so ripe for the picking, it would be a shame to only taste just one.

but ever since I lost Eliza, every time I’ve tried to flip open the pages of an old favorite, immerse myself in something mindless, the words won’t melt in my mind the way they used to, warm and smooth like freshly whipped butter. Instead, every sentence feels clunky, hard, taunting me like they’re written in some foreign tongue, completely illegible. I guess that’s the thing about grief, loss: it changes everything, not just you. Colors are duller, foods are blander. The words don’t sing like they used to.