a eulogy for girlhood
by Rachel Budd
The last time I saw her she told me the only way to know you’re alive is to run as fast as you can until you don’t think you can breathe anymore and your lungs collapse and you think you’re gonna fall down hard onto the road, and your cut elbows bleed into the dirt, and your blood spills secrets in red rivulets. I didn’t know what that meant then, but I think I’m starting to get it now.
She lives in muddy footprints on new carpet, in a too loud laugh, in nail polish coated cuticles, in daisies woven into long swinging braids, in the biting bathroom mirrors, in dim flashlights flickering under covers, in too-big shoes and too-small clothes, in the smears of bright red lipstick, and in the joy of rubbing it right back off.
I want her to hear the music of her pulse, I want her to buy flowers for herself and hang them upside down in her room and watch them dry out and keep them for years and years and years and years and one day show them to someone else and say I did this because I wanted to and I did this because I deserved it.
She wanted to taste her own mortality, she wanted the flavored pain, all sharp and metallic and free flowing from her body. She wanted to run.
I want to shatter everything that hurt her, to gently carry her out of her numbness and away from the broken glass, I want to cradle her in my arms until she falls asleep, murmuring empty promises of a better tomorrow.
I hope she ran hard that day, I hope when she fell onto the road that she briefly caught her breath in the grass and felt its tickling growth embrace her one final time, with her elbows watering the earth beneath, and newborn flowers slowly intertwining with her hair.