darkened side
By Jessica Sanfilippo


i would like to listen to pink floyd’s “wish you were here” with you in your mercury mystique with the golf clubs in the trunk and my The Help in the backseat and the cigarette butts stuck in the cigarette butt cup and my stray hairs in the carpet and your sweaty hair under the same hat you have worn for the past two and a half years. i would like to grab onto the curls near your neck and taste your mouth that always tastes like salt. i would like to see you healthy with your sharp red washington and jefferson lanyard hanging around your knees. i would like to see the shoes you have worn spring, summer, fall, winter. i would like to see the clothes drying in your basement, your beautiful slobbering dog. i would like to see your room just that one last time. the sheets still crumpled and the pillows strewn. you did everything right but you could never learn how to sleep.

you can still beat this. you are a family member. you are my lover, you will always be the 'you' reference in everything i say. i will think about your mother reserving bowls of raw onion during dinner. i will think about how you helped me pack for school by separating the metal and plastic clothes hangers. i will think about the day we swam until i had to go to work and i will think about the bad things too. i will think about going through your phone and how sure i seemed that everything was terrible but you kept to your word and promised not to speak to the only girl i cannot talk about with anyone anymore.

it takes me years and years to fully understand that these people have hurt me and it is better to stay away and for them to no longer exist in my social, emotional life. sometimes i feel like that all i have left are these new people that will never quite measure up to the old ones. i was brave enough to tell my mother that i don't make you wear condoms. i never really made you. and after a thousand days of paranoid pregnancy scares, i realized that if you and i made a new life, i would kill it and it would be our secret and we would still be okay. all of the things we have gone through have been much much worse.

i have never witnessed any of your suicide attempts but i always watched the way your arm scars crinkled when you flexed. i remember when you got home from rehab and we kissed and kissed and i felt like i met you for the first time. three months will be nothing compared to six months, to nine months, to a full year. you will look nothing like the boy i used to fuck. i will look nothing like the 18 year old from high school. the grass will forever grow in our graveyard spot. i will never visit your neighborhood in fear of my heart exploding right out of my body. i will never know how it is to love someone, to make love with someone, besides you. i know your last priority is to find a new girl to share your problems with. for split seconds, i do think that you have gotten sick of me. but you are just sick in general. you are sick in the head when you see the sick, scary things that no one should ever see. you are sick when your brain tells you that it's okay to steal and use. your parents want to give you electric shock therapy but i don't think you will ever smile again. i don't think you'll recognize me or any of the things we have ever done. i cannot handle another dying old man in my life forgetting my face and name and place in his heart.

my mother prays for you. if i prayed, which sometimes i tend to do when bad things like this happen, i'd pray for you too.


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My name is Jessica Sanfilippo and I am currently going to college in PA. I keep a secret blog that I write in daily.