—NOTHING LEFT TO FIX, NOTHING LEFT TO SAY

  

 

Very Cold People  /  Sarah Manguso

 

 

Of all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these: It might have been.

 

I pitied the teacher for assuming I was like the other children.

 

I wanted to challenge the world to break me. I wanted to explain that I was not yet broken.

 

His kindness was so potent, I could barely breathe.

 

I hadn’t known that rule. There must have been others I’d been breaking all that time.

 

I couldn’t admit to the power of my desire, I had to figure it out first in private, before I could uncover it in public, but I never figured it out.  

 

She had to be careful. If anyone found out she loved me, we’d both be in trouble.

 

She had been parented too well, made into a perfect person.

 

Some people wore their differences honestly, but my parents were liars.

 

She wanted me to know I wasn’t fooling anyone. She wanted me to know I was ugly. She was helping me get ready for the world.

 

It was as if getting the weeds pulled weren’t the point. It was as if our sitting together on the grass were the point. It felt good.

 

Everyone eats a peck of dirt in their life.

 

You can learn to eat violence. I dedicated myself to teaching my bully just how much a person can consume.

 

My mother, she was the protagonist of everything.

 

My mother taunted me about my death books, but I didn’t stop reading them.

 

I held my breath. If and left the room, I would be admitting that something was happening, in front of me, but if I stayed and ignored it, there was some small possibility that it wasn’t happening, that it hadn’t happened and never would. So, I stayed.

 

As I stood there shuddering, my mother looked at me with hateful joy.

 

I thought that maybe it was wrong to be that loudly happy, and that she was trying to protect me.

 

I was simply a person who had nothing to share, nothing worth sharing.

 

I was surprised that she knew me. I’d thought I was invisible.

 

My anger surprised me. I hated her, and I didn’t know why.

 

What happened to her was too horrible to say, so she never said it.

 

She looked like a girl who doesn’t know what she looks like.