Lilly

One. I haven’t written anything in my journal in a week. It’s like, I share one entry with the world and now it spits at me, “Who are you to betray my trust?”

“It’s my own trust,” I tell myself, bewildered. “It’s no betrayal.” I think about that dream I had where someone stole my journal and I stole it back and ripped all the pages out saying, “Forget, forget, forget,” like I could change the past. Did they even read it in the dream? I don’t remember. It’s not written down in the list whether they did or not. Need to have more dreams. Need to fill up the page. I’ll write it down in better detail next time, I think wildly, I won’t forget anything. But I always do. I know I’ve dreamed since then but everything fades too fast, gets eaten up by the blare of my alarm at six in the morning. I’ll set it for 6:10, I think. 10 extra minutes of dreaming. I’ll remember it that way, I think. I’ll have something to write about.

Two. “When are you coming back to open gyms?” she asks.

“Soon,” I tell her, happiness rising in my gut. “Maybe this weekend.”

She turns to me and she is skeptical. “So soon? Are you sure you’re ready? You don’t want to injure yourself this close to the season, do you?”

I think about that for a moment. “You could apply that logic all the way up through the start of training,” I say lightly.

“I guess so,” she says. She looks at me with dark eyes. In my stomach I can feel the joy and anticipation being eaten alive, swallowed up inside a skin of self-doubt. I don’t say anything else.

Three. I detach myself from everything that makes me feel more than I need to. Social networks, mostly. I wipe photos from my phone and go through file after file on my laptop, reclassifying them in a stark web of systematic numbers and underscores, everything in its place. My head is quieter than it has been in weeks.

Four. The gray flannel sheets trap my body heat the best. The air is cold outside of them but warm inside. When I stick out a hand to pull up my quilt the cold of the morning is still in the air. I stay where I am. In the other room there are voices and the sounds of people moving around. I can hear my brother’s footsteps in the kitchen. Unusual. I forgot he was home. They’re different from my mother’s—they’re heavier. They resonate. I stay where I am. Soon I get hungry, but ignore it. Curl up and try to sleep again instead. The clock ticks away another hour, two hours. I don’t sleep. I stay where I am. My dad’s shoes on the stairs. The house creaks as he comes downstairs. Everyone is up except for me. I stay where I am. The air is cold outside but warm inside. Usually I like the cold. I just don’t like the numb. I stay where I am. I don’t sleep but I’m too tired to do anything else. I stay where I am. I’m OK. I’ll sleep. I stay where I am. ♦