fast

by Millie Belizaire

I figured my time in that room must’ve been what it felt like to die—alone at first, and then forgotten.

That’s how you know moms are little girls, too, at heart. ‘Cause that’s the type of stuff little girls laugh about.

Trauma is like cement; time only makes it more solid. Sometimes you can fool yourself into thinking you’re “over” something. Then you catch yourself saying things, doing things, avoiding things, realizing you never truly got over anything. You just set new boundaries so that the same thing couldn’t happen to you twice. Time doesn’t heal most wounds. If you’re lucky, time distracts you long enough so that you can forget.

To look at her sometimes was to look directly at pain. I couldn’t think of a least deserving person.

“I was a girl once. I was your age once. I know exactly how teenaged girls act once they think they’ve found something wrong with a girl like you.”

She was so bubbly. She was so lively. She was so bright. She was so… little. Nah… Fuck it, I’m killing that nigga.

If not for the little girl I couldn’t save, then for the young woman I loved.