If I Was Your Girl

by Meredith Russo

I wondered if Bee knew how privileged she was to be able to feel anything at all, if she knew just how scary numbness could be. How it felt, sometimes, like a darkened room with no way out.

Dancing with a boy for the first time in my entire life, I felt like a part of the people around me, like another cell in a healthy body instead of a hidden disease.

I wondered if joy could ever be felt by itself without being tainted with fear and confusion, or if some level of misery was a universal constant, like the speed of light.

I thought about how every person could hold two truths inside of them, how impossible it felt sometimes to have your insides and outsides aligned.

“You can have anything,” she said, “once you admit you deserve it.”

Kids constantly grow and change, and every time you blink they turn into something different and the kid you thought you had is just a memory.”

I thought of that poor girl pretending to be a boy who tried to kill herself and I wanted her to see this, to feel this, so she could understand that one day she might not just be okay with her body but that she would be able to feel things, beautiful things, inside of it.

Mom was more than happy to keep us out of the kitchen, since she had her own arcane way of loading the dishwasher that nobody could ever get quite right.