When I Ran From Nothing
opening excerpt
I slip in to watch her last moments of sleep before morning’s rise. Sinking into the chair by the window, I’m caressed by the shadows. We are familiar, these shadows of the past and I.
I watch as she twitches her dream dance. I am as much short and aching as she is all limbs, long and lithe, tangled amongst the blankets. I exhale as she settles, her dream torture forgotten. In this moment, we are both safe, and I can breathe.
I’ve watched as my desire to protect has become too heavy for her to carry — an unintended burden instead of a gift. From the moment she was born, I wanted to be her guardian against life’s worst offerings. She was an angel well fallen. It was my duty to shield her from the evil that lurked just around the bend.
As she grew, however, I came to fear that the world would not have it, that it would instead push all my failings upon us both. I saw how we were at once the same, yet not. How she was still the little me, the girl before the bad things happened. I would do anything to stop these things from happening to her.
So, I keep trying to craft a worthy shield with those splinters of me.
I shift in my perch. The morning sun has begun to caress her face, taunting me with the reminder that, at least for now, she glows the kind of beauty born from kindness, empathy, and trust.
The bad ones, they’ll want to crush that. They’ll try to wrest her uniqueness from her or want to claim it as their own. To paint her with their blackness until their hunger dims her light — my thoughts hide behind dramatic lines. I know better. There is just one fear that summarizes all the others.
That they will take from her what is not offered willingly and destroy her in the process.
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