Sparks
Stories
I'm fine - one finished page, free to read
For whoever says I'm fine before anyone has asked. You are the one who checks the door is locked. Not because anyone asked. You got up at eleven, did it in the dark, and the house went on sleeping, and the lock had been locked the whole time. Nobody will know about the second time you checked. That is the shape of it. You hold the smallest jobs nobody assigned. You remember the birthdays. You notice the glass by the bed is empty, you fill it, you do not mention it. You are the one who leaves the gathering while it is still warm, so someone else does not have to be the one who leaves. So when someone asks what do you need, your body answers before you do. Nothing. I'm okay. It is not quite a lie. It is a door you learned to close fast, because a person who needs things is a person who can be left. I know how the list works. Everyone else's name is on it in ink. Yours is at the bottom, in pencil, and it keeps getting rubbed out and rewritten by hands that are not yours. I am not going to hold that against you, and I am not going to tell you to put yourself first. You have been told that already, by people who wanted the conversation over. What I would write on the card, if you were someone I loved and it was your birthday, is smaller than that. Only this: you do not have to earn the room you are already standing in. And the second thing: being wanted is not a wage. Put it down now. Nothing is owed. Search words: words for someone who gives too much, letter to a friend who never asks for help, what to write to a person who is always fine, birthday card message, condolence card wording.
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