How to Make Friends with the Dark

by Kathleen Glasgow

If I close my eyes and wish hard enough, will she come back? Is this some cruel, weird trick by the universe? Like I’ve stepped into the wrong portal by mistake?

I’m in a strange house. My mother is dead. I have no home. Everything I knew is gone. I start to cry.

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.

Will she visit you? You know, like show up. You’ve seen movies like that, where dead people appear to the living, to comfort them. Maybe frighten them, too, if the living person was cruel.