How to Make Friends with the Dark

by Kathleen Glasgow

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.

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.

When I was little, if I was being noisy, my mom would say, Please keep it down to a dull roar.

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.”

Brave, says the girl-bug. What’s that?

I have no idea how I am going to live with such a giant piece of sadness in my body all the time, knowing it will never get any smaller.