He thought it was
a phase,
just a hitch in her thinking.

He thought she would wake up
and she would rebound like she always did,
pulling what was left of herself
from the acidic depths of her mind,
but today was the first day
she didn’t wake up
with a silicon smile
and synthetic cheer.

She didn’t wash the blood from her pillow.

She didn’t stir when he went to wake her
and it wasn’t until then that he
realized where he had gone wrong.

She wasn’t waking up today or
any other day
because it wasn’t just the hitch in her thinking
it was the way in her living,
it was her mind that kept choking the life from her
and he only thought it was
a phase.

It’s mistakes like these
that shouldn’t be made,
The kind that you remember
fifty years down the road
because she should have had help
we should have listened.
But we didn’t.

Instead of getting help we
let her take care of it herself
she was a big girl now,
she could deal with it.
She was an adult now,
she didn’t need them to ask her
how she felt
she didn’t need another person
playing God with her life.
Telling her she was on the fast track to disaster
she already knew.

It was what she intended.

This is how she was
and she was always going to be.

Now instead of planning the future
we plan the past
for a girl who would have been
beautiful
a girl who would have been
wonderful.

But instead is a girl whose
grave is next to a lady who
died at the age of ninety-five.

All because he thought it was a phase.