What It Seems

by Emily Bleeker

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.

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