Good Me, Bad Me

by Ali Land

Have you ever dreamt of a place far, far away? I have.

Morgan’s question unsettles me, makes me think about what lives inside me and if it’s possible to outrun it. Traits buried deep in my DNA follow me. Haunt me.

The confusion a child feels when violence is mixed with tenderness. Push and pull. A hyper vigilance, never knowing what to expect, but knowing to expect something.

A rip of a pad, another cocktail of pills ordered. Blue for the morning, white for the night. Pink, if I didn’t want to think at all. One of the other teenagers showed me how to hold them in the side of my mouth, spit them out in the toilet afterwards. Taking them felt like cheating. A kindness I didn’t deserve,

My left eyelid begins to tic, a hidden puppet master pulling on my strings. Reminding me you’re still in charge.

I told him I envied you, out in the open, whereas I live in the dark, hidden from all but a few. Everything taken from me, even my name. He told me to view the darkness as a place to rest; in the future it’ll become light.

Mike asked me once what I wanted from life. Acceptance. That’s what my answer was. To accept where I’ve come from and who I am, to be able to believe and prove the curious shape you twisted my heart into could be untwisted.

Little blue pills, gifts from the gods or the psychiatrists who prescribe them who think they are gods.