Elisabeth Writing

Crimson girl with the cocoa colored eyes, almond shaped, sparkling with mischief. We perched on lockers, sucking lollipops and trying to pretend that we were women; but we were only children. I remember when we replaced popsicles for cigarettes, Jones soda for whiskey, movie nights and popcorn for sneaking out and midnight, drugged kisses. I don’t want to dwell on the darkness that dragged us down, or the reason we no longer spoke. I want to remember us cutting our palms with a kitchen knife to be blood sisters. I looked at that scar in the flickering candlelight last night with a wistful, sad smile. I want to remember how we’d play with the Ouija board on my bedroom floor, conjuring things, screaming when the lights flickered. I want to remember how you came to my small, seaside town; we ate too much pizza, smoked pot under towering oaks, giggled in girlhood with my sister beside us. I want to remember how you were always at our house, how you and Lex tried to smuggle my “moon pants” into the trash can multiple times (I always found them, so ha!), how you became part of our small and cherished family. I want to remember how we’d strut around Olympic Pool as if we owned the very grounds themselves, pushing our hair back behind our ears, trying to flirt with the older boys. Then we’d flock to Burger King or UDF and mix hazelnut coffee and hot chocolate, or gobble up Hershey sundae pies and steaming fries. I want to remember us in low rise jeans and three tank tops, jelly shoes and butterfly clips, blue eyeshadow and crimped hair. I want to remember how you’d stroke my back when I’d cry over unrequited love. I want to remember how I threw the vodka bottle against the clubhouse wall when my heart got broken; and how you quietly picked up the pieces of both. You weren’t a bad person. You were the brightest light… that was smothered in vines, thorns, and tangles of bad circumstances and addiction. I know how hard it is to kick the latter; sometimes it still feels almost impossible. I wish I were a true faerie godmother who could have eased your pain, saved you from that nightmare, gifted you an easy path on a sunlit road with rainbows overhead. But I was just a woman who had been hurt. You weren’t the villain, you were just a woman who had been beaten down, someone who was lost in those shadows and moments of the past. I truly wish you peace, wherever you are now. I always did. I always will.