old: rivergirl

There is a bridge just out of town, if you turn left at the old sign pointing to Crawford farm.

It’s made of cobbled bricks of stone, and god knows how old it is.

No-one’s used it for years, and it’s covered in brave little plants like lichen and moss. It’s grey and ugly and a lonely place. There are no myths or legends surrounding it. No creepy stories to keep you up at night.

I’m not sure the younger kids even knew it was there. It’s not significant enough to act like a local landmark.

Honestly, it’s nothing special. Not that big of a deal.

Well, it wasn’t. Before I jumped off it.

This is the story that no-one knows. It is the story they hide in the folded corners of books, underneath the seats of a car for sale. This is the story of a lonely bridge, and the girl who found it.

This is the story of rivergirl.

old: A Feeling of Freedom

I have secrets inside me, and they hurt.
They scratch and tear with claws I didn’t know they had and when they want to leave the locked prison in my mind, they scream.

***

We are at a camp to promote the school’s cadet force.
The girls are whispering and revelling in the atmosphere of hidden, stolen freedom that swarms around us in clouds of high-pitched laughter and it suffocates me but I don’t think you care to notice. Everyone is young and some want to be old and I seem to be the only one who’s hiding in a quiet moment.
There is an atmosphere of expectant excitement.
“She doesn’t get shit.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like, she’s on my case all the fucking time, you know? It’s fucking insane.”
You think that you sound daring, but I cringe inside because it’s not real; I know you from my classes and this isn’t what you’re like.
“She’s not as bad as mine! I’ll have to get a job; she refuses to give me any money. At least you can get out the house.”
You complain through my silence and you don’t know that my mother forbade me to say to anyone that she disciplines with kicks and sticks, with furious tears and fears.

***

They burn me to smouldering ashes without shedding a single waft of smoke; burning quietly because they are cleansed too well with the statements of opinion that you force down my gullet so frantically.

***

We are at your home and as I sit on the couch on your half of the house I remember the cadet camp where you complained about the lack of privacy you suffer.
Your friends are here and I came because I have been shuffled under that category; not thrust, just simply swept into it. You have no reason to assume that I don’t belong as your friend, and I don’t want to give you one.
She complains about how busy she is, and we nod understandingly because we know how unjust it is to be confined to limited hours outside the house when you’re a social person and your friends want to meet up with you.
You then cut her off and reveal your punishment for being caught with those cigarettes, and we gasp accordingly because grounding is far too harsh a punishment for that.
You and your friends don’t know that this is my first time at the home of a friend.

***

And sometimes, they leak from me in little whispers of doubt and find their way to your mind. They slither among the crevices of your life and when you fall into a crack, they catch you.

***

You are talking to him and I am standing beside you. You ignore me until I'm needed, like you never suspected I loved him before you knew his name. I don’t want to imagine that it’s because I’m just good at hiding it.
He says something and you laugh loudly, throwing your head back and sticking your chest out, and when you stop you smile at him and try to cover up the blatant message by bringing me into the thicket of the flirtatious bubble you’ve created.
“Hey, do you remember that time?” You turn so he’s part of the conversation too, and I step forward so to seem that I want to listen. “And there was this one guy who wouldn’t take no for an answer? And I had to literally leave the club, he was so clingy!”
You laugh again, and pat his arm casually, blocking me out of the conversation.
I clench my teeth behind my easy, carefree smile and nod and lie that I do remember. I pretend to recall what never happened so your crush is jealous of the fake personality.
And when you squeal to me on the phone later I roll my eyes and glare at the wall and don’t allow myself to open my mouth until you ask me to. And then I laugh happily and encourage you, and your gloating is engraved into the dull bone of my skull.
You don’t know how I couldn’t even cry that night as I carved seven slow cuts into my leg, and wouldn’t let myself cry as I continued to do so the following years.

 ***

You don’t know that your friend doesn’t consider herself as such.
You don’t know what she hides.
You don’t know how she suffers.
You don’t know why.
You don’t know.
And you never will. I’ll make sure of that.

***

You find my body leaking scarlet into the grooves of innocent bathroom tiles three years later and you cry as the hospital hooks me up.
I let you.
I worry about the whispers and stares, and the shards of rumours that you’ll spit at me; I fret over what you’ll have destroyed, what new persona for me that you’ll have created. I am anxious and thoughtless and chilled to the bone.
I am speechless.

 ***

And then, in one quick ordinary moment, I realise that I do not care.
I really, really don't. Perhaps... This is how I can be free of you... And maybe  - just maybe - I'm being given that chance. In one quick ordinary moment, I realise that I can be free. That I have that option. That I'm finally letting you go.
And then the prison bars break and the secrets flood out of the fading scars on my wrists.
And the screaming stops.
And I allow myself breathe in that addictive glow that grows in your absence, and I find myself drifting in bliss, and I let myself drown in the cool relief of a feeling of freedom.