Is it Over?
by Yilin S., 14
There's a different version of me that can’t stay still in rooms very long.
All of them are soft,
Careful,
Observant,
Trying to understand the rules
By breaking them.
I thought having friends was a simple thing.
As if standing somewhere long enough
Would eventually label you as someone who belongs.
The first time I left
Was so quiet
Everyone forgot it happened.
A favor for someone,
That came back like a sharpened knife.
It wasn’t gratitude,
But a consequence.
I remember telling myself:
This is how things work.
You bend over for someone,
You stay bent
Even if the reason is gone.
They talked about others
As if it were normal.
It didn't sound right to me,
The way they reduced a human being,
And no one even flinched.
So I stepped out.
Not dramatically.
Not out of line.
Just
Permanently.
Second time’s the charm though,
right?
I tried again with people who felt closer,
Laughing together,
A safer feeling together.
But then there was someone
Who tipped the glass over,
Who’d take up all the air in the room,
Still begging for more.
I spoke once.
For all of them.
But when I looked back,
I was standing alone.
That was the part I didn’t know how to name.
It wasn’t absolute desolation,
But absence where presence
Used to stand.
Apparently I heard it wrong,
The verdict was:
Guilty.
Decided by a room of people who agreed I was right,
But choose to say nothing.
I guess I stood there for too long
Staying in the moment for too long.
Thinking perhaps if I were still enough,
Someone would direct me back to a place called home.
As if silence would turn into a speech
If I waited in the dark long enough.
But it didn’t.
It stayed quiet.
All of them.
At the same time.
Yet somewhere in that quiet,
It stopped feeling like a moment,
Rather,
A pattern.
I don’t think I left the room of mirrors immediately,
I think I left it slowly,
One realization after years of tears.
Maybe,
being right doesn’t mean
Being backed.
That knowing what's morally right,
Doesn’t mean cowards will say it with you.
And that's when
I see her.
A younger me.
Before I learned what it was like
To be understood privately,
Abandoned publicly.
She looks at me
Gleaming with hope
As if I’d have an answer.
AS if I were able to read the space between the lines.
She asked
“结束了吗？”
Is it over?
I don’t answer.
Not because I can’t hear her through the glass,
But because I don’t know how to explain.
Explain that some things don’t end when they’re over
They just happen like rereading a book.
She’s still watching me from behind the glass.
Waiting.
“结束了吗？”
Is it over?
I can’t answer.
