“You can tell me”

She says it midway through another movie.

We’ve been on the couch all day.

Maybe she thinks she can wait me out.

She doesn’t know I’ve been holding

everything in for so long already.

Even if you don’t tell me everything, she says.

Even if you just want to say a piece.

I’m not friends with Sarah anymore

I say, before she can ask more questions,

before her tongue in her mouth becomes

a sword in my heart. She stopped talking

to me in April. She said she never

wants to see me again.

Beside me my mother takes a deep

breath. She’s going to ask why,

she’s going to do the thing

that mothers do, when they

can’t help but transform

into scissors, needle, scalpel:

surgeons over the lives

of their children.

Sarah was always a judgy

little bitch, my mother says,

and I almost snap my neck

turning to see her face,

and when I see her raised

eyebrows, her half smile,

I can’t help but laugh,

a sound that rises and rolls

out of me like magma,

so fast and hot

I can’t stop.

I’m still laughing when she says

You’ve probably been feeling

really lonely, and I realize then

the faint, faint line that exists

between laughter and tears.