the things they carried

On her back, constantly, unceasingly, is a large homemade wooden basket. Over time, the basket has been stained by rain, dried by consistent sunlight.

She carries babies in her basket. Tiny babies with almond shaped eyes and fine dark hair. She carries suicides and biological parents. Alcoholics, whores, the mentally ill. She carries lost boys hiding sadness in their liquid eyes who brawl their loneliness away. She carries car accidents. She carries knives and limes and weeds and socks.

And then there are the dark days, the days she isolates herself because she 'just can't face the world today'. She can't walk outside for fear people will see her failures all over her face. Some days she hears him tell her mother she won't get into college...that she's gained a lot of weight...that it was her fault, their fighting. She wants to believe she's better than what he tried to do, but some days she just can't.

Her basket gets heavier, and strangely, she says less than before.