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Play - not a lot, just forever by Adrianne Lenker

Wishes for freedom

When I was a kid, my mother was alone. She’d been trying to survive on her own since she was fifteen. I remember not understanding why her eyes were always red, or why she’d cry or scream whenever I asked where she went at night.

I didn’t know what addiction was. I only knew the version of her I saw; dark circles, bruises she never explained, tears she pretended weren’t there.

She was never beautiful to me, because pain was all I learned to recognize.

She used to tell me that I ruined her life and I believed her. I thought I was something she was stuck with. A disease she couldn’t get rid of, something she had to carry against her will.

I didn’t know she would die of an overdose when I was fourteen. After that, I was sent from one foster home to another. I fought, took whatever work people would give a kid who didn’t ask questions. I learned quickly that feelings were a liability.

When I grew up, I kept my distance from women. I was afraid of what wanting might do to me. If I let myself touch someone, it was carefully. I made sure she was okay at every step, then I left. Clean exits, no damage, no expectations. And they were fine with it.

I’ve always seen women as strong. Stronger than the world that keeps pushing against them. My mother raised me alone, she fought her own mind just to keep a roof over my head. My father was nowhere to be found. I never knew him or searched to find this bastard.

Never knew what he sounded like, or what he looked like. Not even the shape of his absence, only the damage it left behind.

Sometimes I wonder if that’s the worst part. Not knowing whether he left because he could, or because he was built that way. I’ve spent years asking myself the same question.

What if it’s in me?

What if whatever made him disappear is something I carry too, buried under the discipline and rules?

I don’t trust blood. I don’t trust lineage. I don’t trust the idea that love alone can undo patterns that have already been written.

So I keep my distance because I refuse to become another man a woman has to survive.

I learned this early, and I never let it go: I can hurt a woman, and I don’t want to.

I always kept my distance. But seeing my student, Mireya, standing there in a white dress, blood spilling down her stomach, something awakens.

I do not want to hurt her. I never have and I never will. But someone did.

I have spent my life afraid of the damage I could cause and now I’m faced with proof that someone else didn’t hesitate. For an unimaginable reason, the thought makes my blood boil in ways it never did before. So I grab her hand and take her to my apartment.

Probably reckless to take my student in, knowing anyone could see us. But I don’t feel like I control anything at that moment.

We’re inside in a few seconds. She lets herself be guided in silence and it’s not like her. Mireya always has something to say. A sarcastic comment, a complaint, some excuse to pretend she doesn’t need anyone. She keeps people at a distance even when she’s standing right beside them. But tonight she’s quiet.

The bathroom is cold and I see her shiver the second we step in. I turn the water on, lowering the pressure until the sound softens. Too much noise drowns out the signals. The changes in someone’s breathing, the moments where they’re trying to convince you they’re fine. And I need to hear her, and I hate that I need it. Because I’m supposed to be objective, I’m supposed to know where the line is. But right now, all I can think about is the fact that she looks exhausted from holding herself together for too long.

So, I work like I always do. Protocol. Blood, wound, making sure it stays clean, I know how to handle all that. What I'm less good at is handling her in that state.

I want to ask, I want to be angry, ask who did this. But none of that would help her right now. Instead, I take a long and slow breath, trying to keep pretending that this is all protocol.

I carefully move the fabric of her dress up to look at the injury. The second I realize how close I am, how vulnerable she is in front of me, I look away.

“You need to get under the water, Mireya,” I say softly.

She looks up at me and I’m graced with her pale blue eyes. I thought her eyes were empty before this. I understand now that emptiness wasn’t the problem. It’s the distance.

She’s too far gone into herself.

“Okay,” she murmurs as a lonely tear falls down her cheek.

She moves toward the shower silently. I step back, giving her enough space. Through the frosted glass, I can see her silhouette as she turns on the water.