A List of Cages

by Robin Roe

I’m not sure why people want you to look at them when they’re angry with you. That’s when you want to look away the most.

But for me it’s as if the pathway between brain and mouth is damaged,

people don’t want you to say what you think. They want you to say what they think.

It’s strange how many ways there are to miss someone. You miss the things they did and who they were, but you also miss who you were to them. The way everything you said and did was beautiful or entertaining or important. How much you mattered.

“It was meant to be. We each have a mission on this earth, and we don’t die until we complete it. I may not understand it, but he completed his mission.”

Maybe I could answer if time were measured in exhales, because I’ve counted all my breaths.

I’ve cried in pain and I’ve cried in fear, but these tears are different, deeper, like I’m breaking apart.

He’s only four years younger than me, but I feel so much older, or maybe he feels so much younger. I used to think struggle was what aged you, but if that were the case, Julian should’ve been a hundred years old. Now I wonder if the opposite is true. Maybe instead of accelerating your age, pain won’t let you grow.

It seems unfair, the way unhappiness flows out of a person, just to ricochet.

People I love will be watching me. Their eyes like safety nets, I can’t fall.

“Because people heal a whole lot faster when they’re with someone who loves them.”