Things I Learned in the Night

by Emily Byrnes

I want to lay in the freshly mowed grass and be young again. I want to take off my shoes

and the sound of rain. I want to wake up eight or ten or twelve again. But when I wake it’s not right. This isn’t my mother’s house, and nobody is here to clean up my messes. I miss you, I miss you. I miss the way the sky looked before I grew tall and the sound of my voice before it grew tired. Take me back, just take me back.

I can still hear moon shadow, moon shadow in my mother’s voice, like twenty-five years ago was just yesterday and I am still a little girl fighting off sleep, begging for one more song. Lullaby

and I finally understand

that karma isn’t magic, it’s the action of reaping what you sow. Songbird

Please don’t blame me for running; the universe has lit so many fires under my feet I’ve been conditioned to flee at the sign of a spark.

It could be worse doesn’t make it feel any better now, does it? Unhelpful Help

Humbly, like the tides that shape the earth but do not announce their changing; that’s how we should live. Humility

They say it doesn’t matter whether it was real to them if it was real to you as if I’m a child with an imaginary friend and I’m supposed to feel good about creating a narrative no one else wanted a part in at twenty-three years old. More Unhelpful Help

Open the window and let the rain in. Let it soak the books on the windowsill (we never read them, anyway) and let us drown in white noise before the flood comes to carry us away. I guess this is what the end feels like; like pretending we’re enjoying the rain, when really we’re just hoping it fills the silence so we don’t have to. The End

Rain pounds on the windows but I feel it in my bones like steel bullets knock-knock-knocking on my spine. It's almost fitting, like a movie, except there is no plane and you wouldn’t stop me from getting on it, anyway. Not a Movie

It’s funny how boring normalcy seems until it is ripped away. Things we take for granted

for my scars, foundation on my chin, dark jeans on a hot summer day because I don’t like the color of my legs. Do you do it, too? Do you cloak your insecurities and hope they don’t show through? Cloaked

I've always loved order; schedules, plans, ducks in a row. But you are scattered all over like rainbow pieces of a kaleidoscope and I'm starting to think there's something to be said for chaos. Type A

Listen to the songs that hurt; they belong to you.

but he’s not getting Bon Iver.

I’m like that, sometimes. I measure time by clothes that’ve gone out of style

and pretend everything was “just yesterday” so I don’t feel like I’m speeding toward the finish line, because who the hell knows where the finish line is, anyway.

Alcohol in my cut It hurts I scream and jump like fire ants have crawled inside me. My mother says to count to ten so I do but the pain is still there. Count to ten again and by the time I reach seven or eight I start to forget like she knew I would. Maybe it will be ten breaths or ten months or ten years but eventually, if I just keep counting, the pain from you will fade away and you will be a tiny scar or a little mark or if I'm lucky, nothing at all. Count to Ten

part of growing is always l e t t i n g g o.

Like all kids today, I grew up too quickly, I ran from my youth

And years later, Alice returned to Wonderland to find that nothing was quite the same. Because growing up and moving on can do that to a person. Alice