February 11th

By Hannah Yale

Now it’s been five years

since the night that  a curly-haired boy I loved

killed me in my sleep,

in the back of his parents’ Honda pilot.

It wasn’t the first time he killed me,

but this was the one 

that truly left me feeling dead– 

a corpse wandering through those crowded hallways.

And he was the monster that lurked

around every corner.

There is too much I could say about

the scars he left on me– on the little girl he killed:

the years of incessant nightmares,

the high school bathroom breakdowns,

5AM hallucinations, drinking to forget,

the cruelest rumors, Christmas flashbacks

several revenge fantasies, three therapists,

so many Notes App poems, a police report,

and a letter . . .

And after all that– and after five years–

closure, I think, is unreachable.

It looks like the only thing left for me to do

is write about it.