How to Make Friends with the Dark

by Kathleen Glasgow

The sounds, the old lockers, the ones they’ll be tearing out this summer, creaking open and then slamming shut. We’re all getting clear backpacks instead of lockers. Kids chattering, the clicking intercom, the smell of different shampoos and perfumes and colognes mixing with teenage hormones and angst to create a highly specific and unholy odor that I’m told is called “the Best Years of Your Life.”

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 know he’s done bad things. Hurt people. Messed up a lot. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t matter to me, to the puzzle of my life. He has a place somewhere with me and within me, he’s a piece.

You must go on. I can’t go on. You must go on. Because what other choice is there, really? You have to make friends with the dark.