It’s all of us and the small towns that hurt us.

Leaving you was like prison escape and I knew it.

It was simple hard, I didn’t know how much poison there was in the water fountain water and school lunch until I left, coughing up blood every once and a while for years.

“oh yeah”

It comes back to us in late night phone calls filled with panic awe.

Excited pain in the discovery.  We talk about ourselves like we can’t believe it. Can’t believe we knew those girls that we were.

Just hitting us now, adult us judging our child selves.

We therapize ourselves, our words slapping band-aids on each other’s trauma, surgery done with a knife and fork.

Did we know at graduation we’d never see each other again?

Our lunch table doesn’t exist anymore. A real death and some bonds that faded away.

Our bus drivers name was Vito and our hall monitors name was Nancy. The lunch ladies hated me cause I asked for seconds when they gave me two chicken nuggets. We had girls nights and we had first-time sex and we ran the mile. We got raped and didn’t know it and we dropped out.  We avoided people and we had teachers fall in love with us. We ran towards and away. We got teased on the bus. We got nominated for homecoming court. Our parents got cancer and overdosed. We got jobs and we applied for college.  We hid Xanax in our boobs and we failed gym.

We dreamed of getting away and dreamed of graduating and one day we did.

We lost a best friend to betrayal. I still know how to get to her house, and I still miss her mom.  My dad still asks how she’s doing, still doesn’t understand why I hold grudges.

I called the cops on the boy who told me he was going to kill himself because of me. Said I made him want to die. I hated him even though I say I don’t hate people. Now I just feel nothing.

 Two years later I have to go back to meet with the principal cause a boy won’t stop grabbing my little sisters boobs and the principal won’t stop doing nothing.  A boy on Snapchat told her he’d kill himself if she didn’t show him her boobs. The boys who never leave turn into men who turn into pedophiles who hang around Cumberland Farms and swimming holes. The girls who leave turn into runaways who turn into artists who turn into women who can’t afford therapy.

We did nothing for four years, and we’re still recovering.

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