If I am a mermaid, my heart is a treasure chest. In my heart someday perhaps somebody will excavate and they will find the secret to my story.

They will find you.

I said, I needed somebody to love, I was so scared of all those men. I thought I was helping. So you wouldn’t know how badly you hurt me.

I wrote you love letters you didn’t want and I spent money I didn’t have on a statue you threw away. I fell off the edge of a planet when you let me go. I stopped being either middle class or hopeful.

I became a girl who speaks to no one. Who writes notes in class to the people who will never speak to her out loud. The ones whose relational helplessness is naïveté and fragility combined. Who like me because I’m angry but are certain, certain I tell you, that they cannot have earned my ire themselves. They are good people. They’ve earned their successes. They work hard. If they exist leagues above me it is because they work harder think smarter try more (are more lovable) than me.

That slight twist of resentment, the clang of the bell that once tolled their birth in the background as they speak. These people who are used to being listened to, cherished, believed.

People like me are no fun, and. People like me don’t smile enough. We must not have read the right self-help books. We must need more therapy or a paleo diet or a juice cleanse. We must not be very good at this whole life thing but perhaps if we tried harder. Perhaps then…?