I took a walk today, thinking that
maybe it would help to clear my head.
Walking by the house with the red fence and the
rusted screen door, I stopped
and noticed that I could still see my reflection
in the dirty glass of the front windows.

The girl stared back at me, maybe dazed
and a little confused. She wore no makeup, and
the shadows beneath her eyes were
darker than usual, like charcoal had been
smudged onto her skin.
Maybe it was the sadness in her smile, but I
saw the sparkle stop just a few centimeters shy of
the blue-green-gray swirl of her eyes. I know
that the medication makes her sick;
she cries at night and smiles at everyone's jokes
because she doesn’t want them to see
the insecurities behind the mask of
thick
black
eyeliner...
The boy hurt her once, but she’s forgotten
all about that particular incident; she knows that
he’ll never do it again. He ignores her instead,
turning away when he sees her
in the halls or in class or at basketball games.
Her friends tell her to get over it and she replies
that she already has. It’s easier that way,
to pretend she isn’t hurting.
So what if she cuts? The therapist knows but
doesn’t stop her, and as long as she hides the scars,
no one will bother to look for them.
It’s that simple, isn’t it? That’s what the
medication is for: to make her normal again.
The pills still make her sick,
and the charcoal smudges beneath her eyes
won’t disappear, no matter how hard she tries
to cover them with all of that
thick
black
eyeliner...
She’s helpless, caught in a bleeding downward
spiral where it doesn’t matter who she is
because the current is indiscriminate and takes her anyway.
Her life is normal; it’s boring and
there are worse things that could happen,
but sometimes it feels like her tragedy
is the only one that makes sense. She realizes that
she's tired of hurting, and she wants to live again...

Biting at the chapped skin of my lips, I turned away
and continued down the street.