I Wish I Could Tell You Something Deep

Confessions from a bully

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I won’t be brave enough to enter your room. You lay on the other side of the glass in a white and blue gown, hair spread on the pillow like a siren. Oxygen tubes slither in your nostrils. Fluids are being pumped in your veins against hypothermia.

The smell of disinfectant and the sounds are too much. This can’t have anything to do with me. We were friends.

Once, you looked up to me and I, secretly, to you. We knew that deep down, we were two overgrown children in need of a found family. It could have been us against the rest of the world. It made me want to destroy you.

You tried to do it yourself — ever the people-pleaser.

It wasn’t always this way. First, we were just delighted to have found each other. But you acted like you didn’t know about the ice-cold sea monster inside me, who rises from the depths to block my breath.

Sometimes I thought you didn’t have one yourself.

So on that sunny, lazy day when we drank our first shot of bourbon by the river, I let it out against you instead. A few mean words, spoken carelessly; a sample of the monster’s grip.

You didn’t talk back, so I never stopped.