My Last Innocent Year

by Daisy Alpert Florin

I felt detached from what had happened to me, Debra’s anger reminding me how I should be feeling, but didn’t. What was wrong with me, I wondered?

I opened and closed my hand, watching the mechanics of tendon and bone. Was this really my hand? If so, how was it connected to the rest of my body? What was my body anyway? What made it mine?

I watched Abe wrap his tea bag around a spoon, then set it aside so he could use it again, and listened to him enumerate the many opportunities I would have once I graduated. Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. I sipped my champagne and wondered what he would think if he knew what I was actually doing at Wilder, messing around with boys and vandalizing school property and worrying that no one would ever love me.

I waited until everyone had closed their eyes, then closed mine.

“When you write, you have to take people to the closet. Not to the living room or the kitchen, not even to your bedroom. No, you take them straight to the goddamn closet, the place you keep your most secret, unmentionable things.”

When I told Jason once that I didn’t understand poetry, he said, “That’s because you’re searching for meaning. You have to let the work happen to you. Forget whether you understand it or not—how does it make you feel?”

I read all the poems through once, then took a deep breath and read them again—and again—until I felt myself letting go.

you could write anything, say anything. There were no rules.

To write like no one was looking over my shoulder.

Girls with feelings. If it had felt like a poverty before, now it felt like a gift.

Lauren kept asking questions about my house and school, what I liked to do, where I played. It made me uncomfortable, like she was trying to poke holes in the facade of normalcy I had started to construct for myself.

Men admire each other when they are at their best, but women enjoy meeting each other in pits of despair.

didnt know how true this was until i saw this line

I wasn’t sure Kelsey would have understood. I knew she thought of Debra’s messes as a character flaw, a sign of her general lack of discipline, something she could control if she just tried hard enough.

This is a woman at the end of her life. Maybe beautiful language isn’t what’s called for.”

but I wanted to stay in the moment a little longer. Because once it was over, I knew I’d start doubting what Connelly had said. Andy was the better writer—everybody knew that—and for Connelly to say different made me wonder if he could be trusted. But for the moment at least, it felt good.

“This is the kind of writer you should be. One who writes what everyone is thinking but is afraid to say.”