How to Make Friends with the Dark

by Kathleen Glasgow

I don’t understand how things are keeping going when she has just stopped.

I want to hurt everyone right now. I want to break things so the world looks like how I feel inside: splintered into a million bloody and sharp pieces.

That doesn’t sound so bad. Disappearing. Not feeling.

There will always be this emptiness inside you and beside you, where your mom is supposed to be, and only you will know the emptiness. Other people won’t be able to see it. They’ll see you, moving around the world, just like before. You’ll look alive on the outside but be dead on the inside, flicking your wings and watching everyone through the jar.

you hold the pillow over your mouth and sob and wish you could just die, too, because this emptiness is too heavy.

“All superheroes were sad kids. The sadness made them strong and then they rose up and helped people.”

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.”