The ice at ten at night.
Again.
Again.
Again.
You do not get to be this.
Be different.
Shove it down.
I am fourteen in a car for four hours in silence and my shoulders are bruised under my shirt and I have learned — I have learned completely — that there are things you do not show. There are things you do not let anyone see. There are things that if they become visible will be used to take everything from you and you will have no one to blame but yourself for letting them be seen.
Control.
That's the cure.
That's the only cure.
Control.
Control.
Control.
You feel it and you bury it and you keep your face still and you give them nothing and you survive.
You do not get to be this.
I am in a bar. I am in a bar and the person I—
The man I—
Fuck. Focus.
I am in a bar and my father's voice is so loud I cannot hear the winger anymore. Cannot hear the laughter. Cannot hear anything except the internal machinery of a person who has spent his entire life being conditioned to go very still when the thing that could cost him everything becomes visible.
Don’t be obvious.
Be different.
My hand is tight around my water glass.
My father built this.
Brick by brick, night by night, skate until your hands bleed, again, again, again — he built this stillness into me so deep itdoesn't feel like a choice anymore. It doesn't feel like anything. It just happens. The room goes loud and the thing that I want more than everything else is right there in the open and something older and deeper than conscious thought takes over and I go still.
I go silent.
I go somewhere behind glass where I can see everything and touch nothing.
Somewhere I’m silently drowning and no one can see.
The laughter carries.
Rhys hears it.
