What It Seems

by Emily Bleeker

She took me in after my mom got arrested. She adopted me when my birth parents didn’t want me back.

I learned that quiet doesn’t mean calm and silent doesn’t mean safe.

Now hope is the one emotion I avoid at all costs. It’s like a cancer that sprouts inside of me with just one seed and grows and grows and grows until it takes over my whole life.

Why does she keep saying things I know can’t be true? I don’t like it. Her polite dishonesty throws me off-balance. I want to trust Alyssa, to let her in, but I can’t seem to do it when she’s always lying to me.

It’s a wound that never heals and keeps getting reopened every single day.

Number one: never let anyone get too close; number two: keep it simple; and number three: tell the truth as often as possible. I’m less stringent in following them now, but they’re still incredibly effective.

again—just like summer or a sunset or ice cream or innocence—nothing lasts forever, does it?

“It’s not about the locks, Henry, or heroes. It’s about feeling worthy enough to have something better.”

“But you don’t have to be strong. You have to be . . . I don’t know . . . ready, I guess.”