SEVENTEEN

From the first time I led a foot into my high school building, I knew it was too big for me.

Here my solitude is all over the place, and I don't know what to do with myself.

Every time I walk into a classroom, it hits me, how long and daunting the hours are.

The teachers are talking, one after the other and I should be interested... but I'm not. This is not a fun place to be. And yes, I know, high school is not supposed to be fun but... when you're already starting the day with a smile that wouldn't leave your throat and definitely couldn't reach your eyes, when you forgot your favorite pen, when your best friend is sick, when you feel like your legs are being tied up to your chair so you can't leave the room, when you want to leave the room... When your father hits you.

Sometimes I hide in empty corridor because I think that silence is the only thing I deserve. Nobody understands me better than cold walls, old paint and dust.

I used to spend days wondering if clouds could freeze, until I finally learned that some of them are made of frozen ice. Now I wonder if my heart could freeze because I'm pretty sure that I'm made of frozen memories. And it's heavy in my head when I think about it, it tastes like metal in my mouth when I want to speak about it. So I don't.

Instead I try to calm the pounding in my hands before it reaches my heart, like it always does when I think about him.

My teacher asked us to write about failure. I want to write about my mother's pink cheeks and her tired hands, about her green sweater and her black eye. I want to write about the way my hands will reluctantly hold my ticket at the bus stop tonight, like I don't want to go home. I want to write about the sixteen bruises I counted on my legs, about the sadness of my mother's eyes... I want to, but I was told that words like these can break silence. So I don't.

I'm not sure if I already lost my mind or if I'm on my way to it.

And high school... high school is supposed to be an escape, it is supposed to be somewhere safe. But I still think of him. I still feel the ghost of his lips on my wrists as I try to fill the blank page in front of me. See, it took me too many bruises and a very long time to understand that arms can hold too tight and lips can't heal everything.

He is like a shy cancer that would try to steal my sleep and cry in the bathroom over the toilet seat. 

He is as dark as my mother' skin. 

I'm as broken as my mother's ribs.

We have nothing in common anymore. There is no "we" anymore.

There are times when I remember how it was before. When he used to think the world of me. When there was a warmth in me that was almost unbearable. 

I'm not sure when it stopped, when I started to feel cold again.

It just did.