People Left A Lot Of Things Behind

She Loved Her Mother And Depended On Her Mother, And Yet Every Single Word Her Mother Said Annoyed Her.

You Could Feel Things Or You Could Find A Way To Shut Down. But Once You Were Feeling Things, You Couldn’t Decide Exactly What To Feel. That Was The Trouble With Letting Them In At All. They Made A Mess Of The Place.

How Sad It Was, Carmen Thought, That You Acted Awful When You Were Desperately Sad And Hurt And Wanted To Be Loved. How Tragic Then, The Way Everyone Avoided You And Tiptoed Around You When You Really Needed Them. Carmen Knew This Vicious Predicament As Well As Anyone In The World. How Bitter It Felt When You Acted Badly To Everyone And Ended Up Hating Yourself The Most.

Maybe Happiness Was Just A Matter Of The Little Upticks- The Traffic Signal That Said "walk" The Second You Go There- And Downticks- The Itch Tag At The Back Of Your Collar- That Happened To Every Person In The Course Of The Day. Maybe Everybody Had The Same Allotted Measure Of Happiness Within Each Day.

So Far, She’d Been Her Usual Lame Self: Solitary And Routine-loving, Carefully Avoiding Any Path That Might Lead To Spontaneous Human Interaction. Lena Kaligaris