spring

i just have to get through this year

It’s still cold, but I can live without a jacket now. Summer is hurtling on towards everything, and the afternoons grow warmer and warmer, even though the mornings stay freezing.

I eat grocery store baklava and use rose petal face cream samples and lie under my blanket pretending it’s someone else. My head pounds from the sugar rush and my skin breaks out anyway and there is no one holding me in my bed. It’s okay. I’m fine with this dazed, removed half-life.

My friend who’s double my height hugs me from behind. I lean into her. I’m offered an apple slice, browned from being cut open too long, and I take it. I want to grow out my hair until I can hide my face in it and nobody will have to look at me ever again. I want to get full marks in my end of term maths test. I know I won’t.

Everything feels so defeated, but I revel in it. I guess it all really did get the better of me in the end. The misery’s gone now. The only thing that’s left is a wistful sort of acceptance, and I put up a tent in it and bury seeds into the earth and hope for things to better over time.

It’s alright. I don’t need anything. I have never needed anything. Only wanted. And I still want, but it doesn’t consume me anymore. It’s alright.

I let myself dissolve into the noise and bright light of the halls. Maybe I’m not happy, but I am content. Five percent joyful, if you will. Summer is going to come and I won’t be so separate anymore. It will all wear off in the end.