What I Couldn’t Say
Monet Lessner

I CAN’T THINK of anything more depressing than being stuck behind the counter of a Pizza Hut, squeezed between luxury apartments and the strip of drug-laden motels whose death the adjoining neighborhood anxiously awaits. Especially the day after Christmas. 

I walk past in a hurry. I can't even look in the windows. I know how it will be- dimly lit and deserted, maybe a divorced dad and his weekend/holiday kids. The motels don't bother me nearly as much. No pretense there. A seedy exchange and cop cars slowing down as they pass. 

It's dusk when I get back to campus. The whole south mall is lit up and twinkling. Something about the scene gives me a heart-thrill. For a brief moment it feels like I've walked out of my life into someone else's story—where the bathroom doesn't have hard water rings and I don't spend hours wiping down tables. Magic is still present in the let-down, string lights and little wreaths of garland hanging on every post. 

With everyone away, a certain stillness surrounds the school. I sit for a moment on a cold bench and do what I never do—enjoy the present moment. The lonely quiet of a half-dozen pine trees decorated with shimmery spheres. My God, why is it always so beautiful? Then I spoil it with a brief, romantic fantasy that involves a handsome stranger stopping to ask me if the library is still open. Reality, of course, prevails. If some guy approaches me I will probably high-tail it to the nearest, open building because he could be a psychotic murderer. For real. Something happened here last year- I don't want to think about it. 

By the time I get to my dorm I realize I'm crying. I wonder if I'd feel this bad if I was still home, if I hadn't spent half the night driving because retail and restaurants spring back to life December 26th and skinny-scraping-by college students help keep their blood pumping. The two days at home were a pleasant distraction. Even if it’s no use crying to my mom, not about a boy. If I had, she'd pretend to be sympathetic because she loves me and maybe cried over boys a million years ago, but silently she’ll be wishing and waiting for me to have strength like her. 

I wish—and fear—that I'll be like her. Strong and alone. Everything seems cyclical and escape futile.

What I fear is actually a lot more than that. I'm afraid of getting indefinitely stuck in an elevator. That my decision to ride a rollercoaster will result in my freakish death. I'm afraid handsome strangers stopping to talk to me are actually psychopaths. Honestly, I don't understand why other people aren't more worried. The world is a terrifying—albeit beautiful—place. 

I immediately change out of my work clothes, though they smell pleasantly of roasted coffee and sweet cream. I pull up the blinds of my third-floor window, still crying. It isn't the boy, really. It's the whole world. The pizza huts, empty streets, the divorced dads and back-alley drug deals. It's my parents tottering on the edge of a twenty-year itch and the minefield of hurts that accumulate. It's the dead girl from a year ago, just walking home late one evening, like me tonight.

I keep crying at the window, my tears temporarily blurring the view. I wipe them away and drink up the clear, crisp vision. I'm like a parched traveler, I gulp and claw at the feeling I know won't last. I think, maybe, if I could fold up the scene below, with the smell of pine needles and the deep red of holly berries, the fragile, solitary wonder of this winter evening, if I could somehow get it inside, swallow it like a pill, I could live in a world like this. 

I could say something like I love you. I could hold someone tight. Because I had a wonder in my soul.