Opaque

I looked at her, eyes the same as mine,
yet entirely different. Mine searched for truth, not rescue.

I couldn’t nod like I knew, couldn’t get angry, because it would make no difference. So I just listened.

Too often, my mother spoke about things I didn’t want to understand, but I knew her words needed somewhere to go, so I absorbed them through my skin, until my own breath tasted brackish.

I shelled it all in until I became little cracks, unobservable to the naked eye. A weeping window that grew opaque.

-image via Prexels

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