imaurorie

[imaurorie]

Met my younger self for coffee today,

She was late,

So was I.

We always were.

She ordered a pumpkin spice latte,

I did too.

She said her favorite artist is Kellin Quinn,

I said mine is Taylor Swift.

She smiles, sure we’d grow out of it.

But we won’t.

She wears the clothes her mother picked,

I wear the ones she only daydreams about.

She thinks it means we made it,

It doesn’t.

She is high,

I am too.

Hers make her giggle.

Mine just make everything quiet.

Her scars are covered in bracelets,

mine are covered in tattoos.

She thinks that means the scars are gone.

(I don’t tell her some wounds heal ugly,

and some don’t heal at all)

Just before I take a sip,

She asks, “Does Mom and Sister finally love us?”

My hands shake.

—I almost drop the cup—

She watches my silence fill the space

Where hope used to be.

I watch her face fall the way mine once did.

She has to leave early.

She always had to leave early, she escaped.

I sit there, alone,

Watching my own feet walk back to that house,

The one that still creaks in my nightmares.

I want to yell,

“Don’t worry, you’ll have a home soon!”

But my throat closes around that lie.

She waves goodbye,

With eyes too bright

For a future that never arrived.

She is sad,

I am too.

But at least she still believes it gets better.

So glad she didn’t ask if we ever got happy.

I know she thinks we will.

I hope I never meet her again.

Not because I hate her,

But because when I see her, I see the girl who dreamed,

and Im the woman who forgot how.

[imaurorie]