You Know Her

You know this girl all too well. You’ve accepted her invitation for an iced coffee cause you’re terrified if you decline, you’ll have to sit at home, distracting and numbing yourself from the truth you’re unwilling to yield to. You know her, because you are her.

She’s the girl with a scream perched behind the white teeth of her smile. Gleaming, across from you at a coffee shop. A tiger’s jaw, perched and waiting. You only know because that same scream of protest bangs at the cage of your chest, a thrashing beating heart that’s become violent in the taming of its wild yearning.

The fire in her eyes only confirms what you both know. And you’ll likely continue pestering each other with pleasant questions and small talk. Occasionally allowing the sword of your tongue to swipe and annihilate the burning rage of a lifetime’s chiding. It wasn’t even her fault.

You’ll watch her face fall for a split second, you would maybe call it micro. It flashes away as if it was never there. And your heart might skip a beat knowing that you’ve waged war against her instead of waving the white flag of an honest question. Instead you both violently, politely sip your iced coffees and smile curtly.

You know this girl, because you are her.

And just maybe one day you’ll sit there sipping your iced coffee and feel oat milk curdle behind the half-lies of your placating nature. You’ll get sick of your too good attitude, your easy going facade. You’ll tire of your own lies. And maybe you’ll decide you like tea, alone, at home. A nap instead of an empty Target run. You might write a thousand things that never see the light of day. And you might spend years slowly unlearning violent fake smiles and find the truth of what sisterhood could look like.

You’ll slowly come to see that you’ve been asked to swallow your voice, gag on your truth, spit out lies. And you’ll know that same wild scream inside your very own lungs, is perched behind most, if not every, polite smiling woman you’ve ever met. And that is the most terrifying thing to know. Because she invited you for coffee, with fire in her eyes and a scream behind her smile.

And you know this girl, because you are her.