One Year Gone

by Avery Bishop

But she didn’t know Didn’t know the truth And now she’s gone Gone forever

Nobody just disappears. Not like in movies. Or on TV. Or in books. People can’t just one day up and vanish. Life isn’t an elaborate magic trick. There is no magician standing in the wings whose fingertips are so powerful they can make a person disappear with one simple snap.

I never really felt like I belonged, like a puzzle piece that just won’t click into place no matter how many ways you twist it around.

A stable, healthy relationship consisted of those times when the couple has a rage-filled argument. Screaming and shouting with maybe a TV remote or phone thrown at the wall. It wasn’t healthy to suppress all that anger and frustration; it needed to come out, and if it didn’t, the relationship suffered.

But the problem with brave faces is that they don’t last forever; eventually they fade, and the pain and fear beneath peek through.

It’s not something I’ve ever thought myself capable of, but motherly rage does something strange to a person.

“Sometimes dreams are just dreams,”

How to disappear. How one day you decide you don’t want to be where you are anymore, and just leave.

I suppose all of us are broken in our own way. Some of us are just more broken than others.”