2008

“I wouldn’t leave.”

She says this to me again. She says it often. She re-tells stories, and this utterance is the punch line. She has said it to a friend and a doctor. I assume that she has said it to him. She hasn’t ever told me that story. But she’s told me that he’s told her to leave. I can only assume she said it to him.

“I won’t go.”

This is a strange thing to say, when someone wants you to go. I would never say it. I am always asking “do you want me to leave?”

Sometimes I leave before any questions are posed. I gladly leave before I am an unwelcome guest. I left him, before I could work out what he wanted. After he’d come, and fallen asleep beside me, I left the room. Left him alone, moved to another bed. In the morning he followed me there, and he put his hands on me until I moved against him and left myself for a second. And then I closed my legs and left him again, gathering my things with haste… leaving, leaving, leaving… quickly, quietly, head spinning, running, gone. Now, I see his hands and I wonder what my world would look like if I was the kind of girl who said “no, I won’t go’ instead of “I’m going now.”

Now, I drive along, alone, listening to that girl singing with her school girl voice: 'I left him, and I can leave you too' and I wonder who I’ll leave next, and if he'll still be in the room when I go. I wonder when I’ll feel I can stay.