the only time

by

Your mother always told you that there is nothing pancakes or hot chocolate can't
fix, that if you sleep it off things will look better in the morning, that you will always 
wake up to a table set with love and care. Tonight is the only time you find it hard
to believe her. Tonight you are 13, and you have just spent the day tearing down
campaign posters and listening to votes being tallied against you; tonight your hands
still smell like crayons and ink. Tonight you are 16, and there is a boy with a smile
that should have come with a pair of scissors, a knife, anything sharp, anything that
cuts; there is a girl—a friend—that should have come with a warning. Tonight is the
only time you find it hard to believe her, and anyway syrup sticks to your palms
and hot chocolate burns your tongue. Tonight you are 20 and moving into a lonely
apartment that echoes with all the things you are secretly scared of; tonight you are
25 and wondering why everyone else seems to know how to save a seat for change
at dinner, fill its glass with expensive wine and ask it all the right questions. Tonight
you are 27, your nose pressed to a window of the bus that would take you away from
everything you want to leave behind but also everything you don't; tonight you are 30,
somber, spent. Tonight your hands are dancing across a keyboard, your epic sadness 
shooting straight out of your fingertips onto a blank white screen that will remember
your name if you need it to. Tonight is the only time you find it hard to believe her.