HURT

HURT

It gets pretty dark, I’m not gonna lie. Inside and out. Lights blaze but, it’s still dark.

“It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

Been awaiting Aurora with bated breath.

She’s late.

“It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.’

My flame fades.

“This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine…”

Nasty, niggling nursery song. I only hear it in a minor key.

The opposite of dark, is light. I find mirth, a black mirth, hard won. Edgy humor glows up the murk. I don a surprising smile — an “easy smile”, they call it. A gift from Mom. I have her smile. A scowly child and an often annoyed adult but, I’ll give my warm, full smiles freely — no hoarding. I don’t save ‘em up for later, for someone more important than you.

“ Who’s your dark companion?”

Who, Slim? He lurks. Keeps to the shadows. Always has. Most days, my side-eye has him back on his heels. I lean into the sun. He’s the worst at night. Rock and Roll my meager garlic then, my flimsy crucifix.

I got myself out of a black place once. Sort of. Sort of got out, Scott free. You know, Lucky Scott. He’s so free. Good for Scott; he has his own saying! I hope he appreciates his good fortune. I should feel lucky — you know, “glass half full”, all that. But, often, I peer at dregs.

There’s years and years of weight gain. Not the kind that ups a size — you can’t see or measure this weight. Unless your meter gauges hollowed eyes, etched cheeks, dishwater dull hair. Unless you read aura.

I’ve learned to be quiet. Mostly. Occasionally, I blurt out. No one wants to know, you see. It exhausts people, chances losing them, to expose life’s harder travails — the tallied toll of repeated and ever-looming trauma, the generalized, internalized threat of it. For the listener, too traumatizing. It makes you kinda the opposite of bubbly.

For the sufferer? What new word?

I stuff stuff down best I can. Until I don’t. It’s hard for people to understand. The ones that do? They’re broken, too. Silence our sentence, our goal. Silence, like a new sense, is deafening, blinding, but all-seeing. Silence smells to high heaven. It’s a horizon-less desert of frozen, putrid sludge. We walk on shit-filled icy shards with paralyzed tongues and feet necrotic, fetid, fermented in fear. We’ve lived in silence so long, we’ve lost words for what we quiet.

“Anguish” works. Works you up. But, no one can hear. Some try. I try a small story. A tiny tale of sorrow — something easy. For Beginners Only. When I get to the part about the two AM calls, the three AM calls, the missing animals, the dead animals, the missing people, the ER, the anxiety, stomachs churning, pounding hearts, punishing thoughts, sleepless nights, mad dashes, more ER, the counselors, the meds, ER again, and, again, the changes in meds, the Crisis units, stunned, bewildered expressions tell me story time’s over. I stop, don’t speak of darker torments. Go back to the shadows. Go back to things hidden. Hum something random in a minor key.

Must be getting close to dawn.

Copyright © 2025 lisa stathoplos/Slay Me, My Hapless Darlings

Lisa Stathoplos in What We Get To Keep by Roland Tec