Woebegone

I always believed that the darkness could hide me. As a little girl, I was afraid of the dark for this very reason. I couldn’t see the monsters in the dark. But the only monster in the room was me. The boy stirs beside me, waking to the sight of pills in my hand, sitting there like m&m’s. Maybe if I pretend they’re m&m’s, I could swallow them. It’s been over an hour since I emptied them into my palm, staring at them, contemplating whether to swallow or not. But he wakes, and he takes the pills and hides them somewhere I’ll never look. He comes back and I’m too tired to cry. He kisses my palm and pulls me under the covers with him.

“Go to sleep, please, just sleep” he’s begging.

And he even says an ‘I love you’, maybe because he’s afraid it will be the last time.