All This Could Be Different

by Sarah Thankam Mathews

Pretty girls make nervous fools of us all,

Perhaps this was the way of the world. Your best friend serving as placeholder for the real thing: the person who would audition to be your husband or wife.

Two friends locking into each other, choosing what seemed so rare to me: to trust and to forgive.

While two people are still alive to try, he said, it’s never too late, and it’s never the end.

My family is a geode of silences. You would need a hammer to smash it open.

nobody consoles you after a rupture with a beloved friend. There are few movies ideal for watching while your tears salt pints of ice cream, no articles in women’s magazines that you can skim at the hairdresser’s. You have only the ache. No script to accompany it. No ritual to give it shape.

To return to the new place makes it less new, moves it something closer to comfort, to safety.

respect is free, I said. Costs me nothing to call you what you want to be called,

We create our lives saying one small yes to one small thing at a time. We create the world that way.