A Flicker in the Dark

by Stacy Willingham

I glanced over to my mother, to the stubborn expression on her face. Maybe she was having doubts, I thought. Maybe she wanted to see him, one last time. Maybe she wanted to say goodbye in her own subtle way. Or maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe she just didn’t know how to leave.

understood why we were here, why we had come back. It wasn’t because she felt like she had to; we didn’t come back because she was weak. We came back because she wanted to prove to herself that she could stand up to him.

When people get hurt physically, you can see it in the bruises and the scars, but when they’re hurt emotionally, mentally, it runs deeper than that. You can see every sleepless night in the reflection of their eyes; you can see every tear stained into their cheeks, every bout of anger etched into the creases in their foreheads. The thirst for blood cracking the skin on their lips.

This isn’t the first time I’ve struggled to find the words to say to Daniel, but usually it’s because nothing ever seems good enough to say. Nothing ever seems to convey how deep my feelings are, how absolutely I had fallen for him in such a short amount of time.