“You handled it so well.” they’d said-
but I didn’t.
My entire world was uprooted.
I drowned in the embrace of fire as it scorched my throat for three months.
Screams echoed in a completely silent bedroom-
scraping against my brain as the mound of blankets at 3am failed to block them out.
I bled in silence with “get over it’s” and “you can’t stop living’s” while blank eyes burned into the back of my eyelids every night;
Phantom cold hands still laced through mine and took the color in my face with them.
I needed medication to quiet it-
before the fire finished what it started.
They say that to ache is to be alive but-
I moved like something that should’ve already been buried.
So no;
I did not handle it well, I survived it.
But all I can manage is “thanks.”
