Somehow she always slipped in wet concrete, just enough that she could still walk while hardening. Her constant reach for something better had set her back, but she kept bending, her broken pieces never fitting.
Everyone though she was happy, and she was. For her, failure wasn't setback, just something else to climb up on. Each crack from every fall showed her something different even if other people saw the same patterns.
She laughed. She screamed. Everything, it seemed, set her up to stumble, maybe because the things she seemed to care about never really mattered.
"When are you going to stop acting like a child? You're too old for that shit."
"Hmmm," she'd answer, wink and, with a broad grin, start to laugh. "I'd rather be a child at heart than to forget I was a child once."
By the time their hands clasped, her mother had upgraded her to teenager status which, for a late twenty-something, kept her giggling that she could never be two or three again now that she knew she could have fun how she liked.
"I really don't get her. She behaves like she's in high school. My God, look at her, she's kissing trees because she thinks I actually got her drunk; but I never put any alcohol in her drink."
She'd heard her new friend's comment and kept on laughing, hugging tree after tree because she could.
That year, however, gave words power over her. Maybe, if she was swallowing them in too fast, that could explain why her body started weakening. When she gnashed her head on the shower knob, people started to notice the blood.
What they didn't see were the red stains on her arms from her cutting them. At the same time, they completely ignored the scars which she placed in front of them, her glaring the only signal that she meant to challenge them.
"I think she's going to kill herself, "he said. "I have to go after her."
Not too far down from them, she heard the campus officer say she was suicidal, and then she saw him and realized what had happened. With a sigh she went back to her room, this time locking it.
"Open the door, I love you."
He banged and, when he believed she had to be sleeping, told her roomates he was going to sleep on the couch.
"She's going to get up to pee after crying like that. Then I'll go in and, when she's back asleep I'm going to hold her."
So she heard him, too. To keep her secret, she walked out with her eyes locking only on the bathroom door.
It wasn't something she wanted. The thought of being put into another box scared her. In her own space which she had yet to fill, she liked that she was floating, it gave her freedom despite her failure to control her wilder impulses which had her scrambling to breathe.
"I just want to breathe, " she said, "Please, let me breathe."
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