What Never Happened

by Rachel Howzell Hall

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

Because promises are potato chips. They’re cheap. Easy to break. Too many hurt your heart.

Auntie, I’m not a people pleaser cuz I like pleasing people. Just trying not to catch any smoke—from you or anyone else, Auntie. Keeping my head above water . . . trying not to make any waves when I can.

I try out that purgatory smile. Feels like lettuce wilted and died on my face.

Sometimes I think I imagined it all, that I’m in a dream, my own Inception or Matrix

Guilt is irrational, Dr. Tamaguchi has told me several times. Guilt demands ransom even though you’re broke, and it demands that you keep it company even though it’s fused to every molecule in your body. Guilt makes you scream, “What more do you want?” even though it’s already taken everything, including your happily ever after.

I remember these days and months after the murders. Going back to church with Gwen and feeling nothing as people seated on the pews around me sang about a merciful God, the mighty fortress that He is, the watchful Shepherd. I’d become the embodiment of sorrow for my church family, a representation of “the worst it could get,”

“Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.”

She vowed that even if it took until the end of her life, she’d make me see the errors of my ways.

People tend to disregard us old ladies—they think we’re only good for sewing robes and making hot chocolate, that we’re crazy since we can no longer bear children. But we’re smarter than everyone because we don’t have distractions anymore. No kids. No husbands for many of us. We always knew the evil that men did, and we still do. Just now, no one believes us.”

Help them see that life just doesn’t happen for no reason. Every decision affects you more than you know.”

I weep until gulls stop their swooping and swirling, and the heavy orange moon calls them home.

My ears burn because there it is again, that word. Promise. A signpost that shit is about to go off the rails.

I’m too tired now to sort mania from caution. Feels like sawdust is clogging my pores, and now I can’t get enough oxygen.

So many villains, so little time.

Maybe, if she prayed hard enough, she’d fall asleep, and God would decide to keep her soul this time .

The world had the audacity to continue.