Starfish

by Akemi Dawn Bowman

“If you could travel back in time to any point in history, what would you pick?” I blink at him lamely. “I’m half Asian, a girl, and I believe in aliens. Pretty much every lifetime before mine would have sucked for me.”

Because sometimes when the world doesn’t make sense, it just feels better if there’s someone around to make it a little less lonely.

But some people are just starfish—they need everyone to fill the roles that they assign. They need the world to sit around them, pointing at them and validating their feelings. But you can’t spend your life trying to make a starfish happy, because no matter what you do, it will never be enough. They will always find a way to make themselves the center of attention, because it’s the only way they know how to live.”

I draw a girl in love with a snowman at the beginning of spring.

We fit together not because we need each other, but because we choose each other.