Unrecieved Text Message, 04.07.2017I want you to tell me when you get home safe, but I won’t l
Unrecieved Text Message, 04.07.2017I want you to tell me when you get home safe, but I won’t let myself ask. Not anymore. When I was young, I was always worrying over men: drive safe, be careful, text me when you get there, call me after, please stay alive, just for me. That girl, the one who cradled vulnerability, who did all the dishes in the sink, whose knees were bruised, whose hair was pulled. That girl. The one who threw herself from the mouth of beast to monster, the one who was frying pan and fire, pot and kettle. Who was forever crying on stark white bathroom floors cold Sunday mornings. Unsafe in the safest city on earth.I’ve been trying to forget I was ever her. When you kiss my fingertips, when I curl against you in your bed, when I take my time calling back, when I make you bend your hours around me, I’m telling you, I was never her. No one ever kept me in that room. I’m someone new now, a girl who forgets about the knife in her purse, a girl who can run alongside water and isn’t afraid of heights, a girl who was never twenty-two and scared of the dark. Safe in an unsafe city, and sweet for it.I feel her creeping into my throat, the girl who would have given her left lung for you if you’d asked. But now, I press my lips shut. You are a grown man and the only safety is my own. You walk out into the city, and I won’t know til you next call if you make it home. I give you room to die. I give this room to grow. -- source link
#spilled ink#writing#short story#flash fiction