Poems from my Demented Mind

Between the Lines

I walk downstairs in the middle of the night, both of my parents asking why I'm still up.

I answer with a simple because I can't sleep, in a tone like they should have known that already.

My father's advice is to "take a Benadryl". I scoff. Yea, I say, like that'll help.

He says he was serious. I get more angry. Of course he was serious. That wasn't the point. He didn't know, but I did. I can see my thoughts so vibrantly that I forget he can't.

He pulls me into his arms after I take the puny pink pill, asking if I'm okay. He asks if I was crying.

I say that I'm fine. He takes the answer. He asks if anything's wrong. I pull away, repeat my excuse. It almost leaves my lips itself.

I want to scream. I want to look at him. I don't. He can't read my mind but he can see the lines of text. He should read between them.

Had he read between the lines he would have heard my cries for help, watched as I drowned in the silence I have had for two years.

He would have felt the hand around my throat, not my own, but the hand of my anxiety, gently killing everything I work for,

He would have tasted the words that are so many that I could write a book with them, longer than any book there was and twice as meaningful, full of exploding pain and death twenty times over, all to keep myself together, to keep this little girl inside together, who's only said words are "I'm fine".

Had he read between the lines, he would have followed me anyways when he asked if I wanted him to come upstairs with me. He would have know I wouldn't protest, that I was too ready to cry into the sheets.

But he didn't read between the lines. I squished them up too tightly, and reading between them is like deciphering a doctor's handwriting before their break.

I say goodnight and pull my hand slowly from his. I smile at my parents lightly before heading back up the staircase.

Maybe had he read between the lines, if he could, he would have cried too.