How to Make Friends with the Dark

by Kathleen Glasgow

I can’t feel my body, I can’t feel my heart, I’m rising out of myself, watching as I separate into the girl before and the girl after.

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.

They’ll see you, moving around the world, just like before. You’ll look alive on the outside but be dead on the inside,

Please don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me. Please come back. Please.

I’m spare parts now. A series of phantom limbs pieced together with tears.

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.”

The world is full of tears, and I’m starting to drown.

Someday, when people ask us about high school, and dances, and kisses, and all that stuff, I know that what we’ll remember most of all is how normal was stolen from us.