All the Demons We Sow

January 15
Dear Diary,
There’s a man at my door. He knocks on my windows. Tip tap. Tip. A pause. Tap. Then incessant. Tiptaptiptaptiptap-
I don’t know how to tell him to leave when I can’t move. When his eyes are so sincere- crimson and wise - just pleading a way in. His mouth twitches when I consider the request; he doesn’t think I see but I do. Oh I do. I just wish he were more honest.

Yours Truly,
Lily Adams

Mother tells me not to invite strangers in so late. Our house isn’t one of those houses, she says. We’re better than them. I’m just nine years old – N-I-N-E, I saw it spelled out on the birthday cake which ended up speared on my cheeks and then the floor – but the hollow smiles I see on my nanny, Christina, tell a different story. I don’t think she’s right.

August 11
Dear Diary,

Some days, he waits. Still as one can be. Solid like the wall stopping his venture inside. Just that smile on his face always. And the look in his eyes melting the bricks away.
Some days, he apologizes for being so impolite. For every rap of bruised knuckles against chipped wood. For an urge so patent.
Some days, he makes it to our front porch.
Some days, just some, he doesn’t stop walking.

Yours in health and fear,
Lily Adams

There are fingers gripping my arm so tight, I am afraid they’ll stop the blood to my heart. That’s what they taught us in science class anyway. Or something like that. I don’t like science. Yet mother insists that I go. Be normal. Maybe I don’t like normal. She isn’t.

June 23
Dear Diary,
There are just a thousand ways to say the same things over and over and over again. Maybe it’s that. Maybe, for what it could be worth, repetition is my curse. And my cure.
Yours evermore,
Lily Adams

Christina is taking us to the new amusement park today. I am borderline euphoric, jumping in glee. I want to ride all the carousel horses and shiver from the creaking floorboards in the haunted house; eat charcoal ice cream and hurt my throat begging for Divine Help on the spinning Twirl o Wheel. Most of all, I want my mother to push me down the elongated water slides. Too bad she’s in a wheelchair.

December 27
Dear Diary,
I’mnotmadI'mnotmadI'mnotmadI'mnot mad. it’s not my fault he’s there. Inside.
I’m sorry. I wanted to be better,
Lily Adams

She combs my hair every day. Gently. Carefully. As if I was glass that would break. So I don’t tell her about the times a hairband grips my golden locks too tight or when spikes in the brush rips some of them.
I don’t want her to worry.

December 1
Dear Diary,
There’s a demon inside me. It has plunged its claws so deep inside me, I am afraid it will tear my chest apart. It already tore off something of mine. My shrink says I’ll get used to it. I’m afraid I’m getting too used to it. Too used to glances through keyholes and tinted glass. Tip tap. I look away.
There’s a demon inside me. I think it is a he.
Maybe I should let him in,
Lily Adams

In the distance, there is a scream but I only hear mere echoes from the walls. My eyes numb over. I don’t stop looking.
There is a limp body hanging from the roof of our home.

September 29
Dear Diary,
Lonely.
I am lonely.

The vines embracing my heart…

Don't let my tears fall.

And I am so, so alone in this fight.

Solitude feels like a confession I could never make, even after all this time.

The thought of sharing breaks me.

And because I am selfish,

I want Poe to love me still.

I mistook you for a salvation.

My cowardice could never let you save me.

I am to be my own savior, they say.

The journey is full of thorns, they say.

They say it's not easy getting there.

And it isn't.

But only now do I know why such few people make it past the finish line of this race.

My breaths are weighed down by my guilt.

Every second my heart beats again is a victory of its own.

Maybe hearts were meant to be torn.

Maybe my wings were meant to be broken.

Maybe my tears were meant to be taken away.

Maybe you and I are one and the same.

You the evil, I the good.
You the good, I the evil.

I am an enigma to my own-self.

And nothing has felt more tiring.

More draining.

Curling in on myself feels inevitable.

The end of my anguish is inevitable too.

But maybe, I gauged that too late.

I wish I wasn’t yours,
Lily Adams.

It’s a Tuesday morning and I’m no longer nine.
I close the box brimming with ruffled paper and allow a grief not mine spill to my cheeks.

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