How to Make Friends with the Dark

by Kathleen Glasgow

Here, the world around me is messily alive. You haven’t seen a sky until you’ve seen our moon hanging at night.

The ceiling over my bunk has old water stains. If I had a pencil, I would write Kill me. Kill me now inside them, like words inside cartoon text bubbles.

The girl-bug in the jar can barely breathe. She covers her face with her wings.

Their noise just fills up all the empty space around me. Areas my sadness can leak.

It’s nice to lean back, and to breathe, and look up at the stars, which I feel like we always forget to do, you know?

It’s never really occurred to me before that stars are always shining, they don’t “go out” when night ends.

Keep your head down, get better grades, and take care of yourself, and someday you and your friend Butter can rent an apartment together like Laverne and Shirley. Okay?”

It would be nice if once, someone would just say, “Girl, you are in the shit and you will not be getting out soon. So here’s how to make friends with the dark.”

I push open the double doors as hard as I can, the sunlight nearly blinding me. When I shade my eyes, hoping to see a magic path, or a beam of light telling me where to go from here,

I will be in the dark forever, feeling around for a light switch and never finding it.

Because what other choice is there, really? You have to make friends with the dark.