Sometimes...

Sometimes when the house is quiet and everyone has fallen asleep, I stare out the window and think about the things I might have missed. I search the stars for answers but they never say a thing. The wind for all his howling could not even piece together a sentence to answer my questions. In the dark, I am still alone. When the moon peaks at my bedside window, she never stays long enough for me to catch her gaze. For the longest time, it seemed they were nursing secrets only I wasn’t allowed to hear. But over the years and the many dark and quiet nights I've spent looking over that window, I’ve come to know their secret. They didn't have the answers but they didn’t tell me because my eyes always stared at them with a loneliness so wide it could embrace the night sky. 

Sometimes when nobody is around, I look in the mirror and cry. The words in my mouth taste like gravel. I pretend I don’t know the reason. But I do. I always do. I cry because I feel like I was born into the wrong family. When nobody is around, it feels like a prophecy of my distant future. The dinner table will still be set. The dog will still extend her paws to ask for food. The house will still stay warm all year.  Nobody stops for the quiet ones, those with unmarked solitude etched on their faces. Those with heavy hearts and slimy skins that make them feel like impostors. Nobody stops for people like me. 

Sometimes when my mother calls my name, I don’t hear her. She calls me but does not call to me. Her words lose something as they travel in the air, when they reach me, I can no longer hear her. So I scream. I scream at the words to bring them back to life. I scream at the top of my lungs like i'm drowning. But when they travel back to her, the words have already died. I don’t think we understand much about love- my mother and I. We both grew up reading books about it but they were always prettier or too devastating to be real. The kind of love we read about is either mangled or deprived. My voice has become too hoarse now that I don’t think I have enough words and enough love to reach her nor does she have enough words and enough love for me. 

It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just sometimes, it feels like mine.