In the room of a lover who has become a belligerent brother

It has been a year since she’s written here. She has written elsewhere for she could not speak otherwise and be heard. She was the only one who heard what she had said, however. She found her words hidden in a plastic bag in a box of forgotten things smelling of mildew and cat urine. There was always something to say, burdens to unload, breaths to let out, old stories to let go of, to tell. Where was the girl she had left behind? In one year things happen. Relationships crumbled, evolved into otherness, others patched themselves together, holding on by bare strings. Friendships went dormant, people did what people do, had babies and got married. Things that she expected materialized in unexpected ways, not that she expected anything in particular. Fathers and mothers drew away from daughters, blaming them for the conditions of their birth. Girlfriends disguised impossible ambitions as normal and demanded that they be given. Family went to jail and abandoned children, rapists got shot and swindlers got beheaded. And she took the time to know herself. Wisdom, she was learning, came with years and some pain. And so she embraced the years if not the pain.