She tells me to pretend
she’s not there, to just talk. She says I can do that,
I’m good at talking. I don’t want to talk to her.
She says that’s okay, she knows. That’s why she
wants me to pretend she isn’t there. If I don’t
want her to help, the least she can do is listen. There’s
a point she trying to get to, something she’s trying to
get me to say, but I’m good at talking and talking and
talking before the person I’m talking to realizes that I
haven’t really said anything at all. Going unnoticed. I
ignore her questions. She can tell. She notices. I ask if she
can keep a secret, and she’s says yes, of course,
that’s her whole job. But she’s lying, there are
lots of situations that permit her to not actually keep a
secret. I tell her this, that if I said I wanted to harm myself
she would be well within her rights to repeat it to my parents.
She sits back, as though I surprised her, asks if I want to
harm myself, but I know better. I say that she can’t tell
anyone, not a soul, that’s what keeping a secret entails.
She asks about my friends, and not even them. Especially not
them. I say that she thinks I don’t care about them. She
says I don’t trust them, and that’s not the same
thing. She’s right, it absolutely isn’t. I look out
the window at the sky. It’s one of those weird mornings
where you can still sort of see the moon. I comment on it. She
thanks me, and leaves. She thinks about negative space in art.
It reminds her of me, and how I only ever fill myself with what
people want to see. It’s easy to forget about the
negative space, and miss seeing the whole picture entirely. She
wonders what angle she isn’t getting, what facet of the
story isn’t visible to her. She wonders about all of the
secrets I’m not telling, if she’s looking in the
wrong places for them, and she supposes that would make as much
sense as anything.