Absention

            Tiny girl, wrapped in wool coats, knows the answers, but never shares them. She coughs into her hands and spits blood when no one’s looking. It’s not here that she belongs; we’re all aware, but we never talk about it. She shivers and pulls the coats closer.

            Tiny girl never speaks anymore, not for a while. She learned to use silence as a weapon, and now we all suffer. When she doesn’t lose her temper, she doesn’t lose. She can’t lose her temper if she doesn’t have a place in an argument, or a conversation. She watches people tie themselves in knots, she likes it when they squirm.

            But these days will end; it won’t always be this way. The time will come when the sides of this cardboard box will fall apart and she will finally have space to grow up. Her fingers will get longer, her lips will get fuller, her eyes will stay the same. The trauma that lives behind them will never leave, but it doesn’t matter. In fact, it is the only thing that will make her beautiful. That spark that lives and dies, looping again and again until it finally goes out.