What You Did

by Claire McGowan

No one ever tells you that this is the downside of giving your kids everything you never had – they turn into spoiled little brats.

I hate all this, this social media mob. We aren’t meant to know what other people think in this level of detail.’

We always think we want to know secrets, but what we forget is that they come with their own weights, heavy as millstones, and if you aren’t careful this weight can crush you.

And how sad, to be so drunk that this kind of thing happened to you. To let it happen, like standing out in a lightning storm, as if no one else had control over what they did to you, not when you were so pretty you were like a walking wound.

But what we don’t understand is that love can turn on a dime. We don’t know how easy it is to feel it flip over to a dark side, cold and dead, like the moon spinning on its axis.

But now I was in his arms, my mouth on his skin, I understood that some things are right in themselves. And I knew he had to stay, that he couldn’t go away again. I fell into him, offering my mouth like a sacrifice, and thank God, thank God, after twenty-five years of turning away, Bill took it.

even when you think you’ve lost it all, there is still more that can be taken from you.