Work for It

by Talia Hibbert

What a load of rubbish. I don’t sulk; I brood. Like Batman.

He’s burning me down to the bone. They’ll find the scar of him on my remains.

Sometimes I’m so angry with him. How dare he make me feel like he adores me?

And then, somehow, we’re lying back on the grass, and I’m holding him, and he’s letting me. Resting his head on my chest, the greatest weight I have ever felt. I wonder if he hears my heart pounding out his name.

“She overdosed a few months after my eighteenth birthday. She wrote me a letter and put on her pyjamas and got in bed.”

“You’re not a burden, Olu, not to anyone, and especially not to me. I know you’re depressed. I know you have bad thoughts sometimes. I know all that, and I love you as you are. I want you to feel better, but I love you as you are.”